Other than the fact I’ve not played Warlords, I find myself in full agreement. I enjoyed Age of Empires 2’s campaign years ago, but it has nothing on the mechanical ingenuity here.
This is such a good game. Just played some multiplayer for the first time with Sharaleo and Left Empty, very entertaining but my pause button didn’t work for some reason ;)
Yeah, that was fun, even for someone with three tutorials under their belt!
Curious what the game looked like before we even launched on Early Access? Just came across this video today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saf5e0cO0y0
only looked at a couple of bits of it. I rather like the voice overs that didn’t appear to make the end game :/
Soren is keenly aware of the attachment many hold to the original voiceovers from a post on the official forums. I’m hoping that awareness manifests itself in an upcoming patch. Nudge nudge.
Ah - see, I wasn’t keenly aware of what it was prior to release, as my only experience was at release.
Nothing wrong with that at all. I’d say the fact that you arrived at the same conclusion as so many others despite not being aware of the old voices until just now is even more meaningful, honestly, since it highlights that the whole issue isn’t just the early access folks being crotchety about the good old days.
Personally, I just couldn’t pass up another chance to get up on ye olde soapbox.
Same here. I think the release voice overs are excellent and delivered with real spirit which gives the game some warmth and humanity. To say you’re saving the human race (and turning a profit!), I think it needs that to a certain extent. That said, the robotic voice overs do have an unusual charm about them.
So I finally concluded my campaign. Contrary to my earlier post, it was me and Reni at the top with Maisie Song below me and Frank Dawson in fourth. I managed to buy out Frank and my next target was either Reni with the highest share value and who also had the Red Buyout Percentage Timer of Doom next to his name, or Maisie. I decided to hit Reni and… it was the wrong move. Maisie’s infrastructure was way more solid than I thought because she’d been pumping lots of chemicals into optimisations so she was producing resources at a far greater rate per claim. I couldn’t keep up and before you know it, BAM, hostile takeover, down and out. I tried to restart that final round in defiance but for some reason the Restart Mission button just wouldn’t work – the Main Menu button beside it did however, so… is that a bug? Seems silly to offer the button if it can’t be pressed. I think it’s a sign that I should have just sucked up the loss.
Anyway, yeah, what a great mode. I’m determined to crack it with the scientists, who knows what twists a new campaign will bring?
I thought this was amusing too given the referendum taking place this week month in the UK on whether we should leave or remain in the EU. Free MULEs, core samples and adrenaline boosts? I’ll stay thanks!
Very pleased to have completed today’s challenge after I lost the last two literally as I was moving my mouse to click on [BUY].
I watched the video and I just didn’t understand what was going on on the stock market front in the middle of the game. All that crazy juggling, was that speculating?
Watching it, I also noticed how deeply reliant on the little price history graphics I am.
The most surprising part, to me, was watching 4 real live people discussing in the same room an OTC game. Damn you, digital age!
Also, I prefer bearded Soren.
I played the game for the first time at release, when they were briefly still there, and have been missing them since then… They got a peculiar quality, don’t they?
The auction “thousand!” guy was gone by then, and that one isn’t missed ;)
My thoughts on Early Access: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/274240/Postmortem_Offworld_Trading_Companys_Early_Access_campaign.php
I’ve had a lot of questions about Early Access and its pros and cons, so that postmortem was really interesting to me. Thanks for the insight!
Thanks for the share Soren, very interesting.
Great article and gives a lot of insights into Early Access. I didn’t realise the reviews on early access can badly influenced the outcome of the actual game. And the fact that Steam has the infrastructure to support games during development is an eye opening for me as well.
Sadly, in the current world it seems doubtful Valve would consider the long-term benefits (even the financial ones) of having Early Access actually helping the developers serve better games, instead of it being the quick-impulse cash-grab incentive it turned out to be (which goes hand in hand with the impossibility for the developers to not get their software publicized on the front page, I guess).
Soren explained how much the game evolved during Early Access, in both this article and his designer’s notes, but what struck me with the video he posted earlier was how consistent the game’s vision had been. That is really fascinating to me.
OTC dev stream getting ready to start.
New Map Toolkit DLC is out today for Offworld Trading Company. :)
Info: http://forums.offworldgame.com/477942/
New Map Editing Tool
Design and create your own Martian landscapes with looming plateaus, deep craters, and more
New Maps
Enjoy several new maps based on real Martian locations, perfect for getting you started with editing your own
New Campaign Locations
Explore new maps that work with the “real Mars maps” option, now incorporated into the campaign
Looks like the DLC I will need to unlock all those AI difficulty level tied Steamies.
You can cheese those achievements super hard if you want without needing to go through that much trouble.