I've been interested in this game since I first heard about it a year ago. I'm eager to see RTS games break out of the Dune 2 mold (C&C, Warcraft, Starcraft). World in Conflict did that to great success by extracting the core combat elements to create an engaging squad-based game. I feel Offworld inverted that very well with economic base-building.
Interestingly, I feel this game better captures the spirit of Frank Herbert's Dune novel than games inspired by Dune 2. His books focused on economics, politics, and religion. Warfare was important, but the hero won a decisive victory in the first book primarily by threatening galactic trade.
Halfway through the tutorials something suddenly struck me... We arrive at an unfamiliar land, extract resources, trade those resources, and use those resources to construct buildings. This game is like a real-time Settlers of Catan! The first time someone blocked me to a resource node I was planning to develop, I suddenly remembered all the times that happened in Catan. Both are excellent examples of "competitive construction" games where competition for limited resources is a primary driving force.
I know yall were hesitant about the game showing up on Steam's front page, but that's what got me here. I'd been interested in Johnson's work for years, then this game specifically, and seeing it on the Steam summer sales reminded me about it. I picked it up immediately, started playing, and enjoyed it immensely! And after all, the best way to improve a game is to get feedback from as many people as possible.
I was able to jump straight into playing without watching any videos or reading about the game. I picked up the basics very quickly. The core fundamental mechanics are solid. It delivers well on the competition and challenge design aesthetics, and even sensation to some extent, with a really nice art and sound style. I love the menu music. I had it playing in the background while writing this post, and music good enough to stand on its own is extraordinarily rare in games.
The resource management reminds me of classic Will Wright games in all the best ways. His games had a lot of resource juggling - city demand in SimCity, individual needs in The Sims, even whole planetary ecologies in SimEarth.
Favorite parts so far:
- Reminded me of Dune.
- Like the music and visual style.
- Very intuitive and easy to understand.
- Engaging resource-balancing gameplay with a competitive element.
I'll post more thoughts as they come to me.
Update: I played through all the tutorials and completed a Daily Challenge. That challenge took me 3 hours and multiple attempts to accomplish! I even failed once. I like how it feels I'm still in competition with the other players right up until the end. This is another good way the game feels a lot like Catan.
