In the race to colonize planet Mars, everything is up for grabs.

Offworld Trading Company’s quick and intensely competitive matches pit up to 8 players against each other on randomly generated maps. Players must quickly determine the best path toward building a self-sufficient colony that can extract the abundant Martian resources while maintaining profitability – and surviving the “talents” of shady black-market characters who are all too happy to raid any player’s shipments or smuggle a paralyzing EMP device into any colony for the right price.

The Early Access version of Offworld Trading Company($35.99) allows players to compete head to head or in free-for-all matches over the Internet, explore the dynamic single-player campaign that responds to your choices and the outcomes of the scenarios, and skirmish against the advanced AI that is already more than capable of wiping the floor with unsuspecting players.

Offworld Trading Company is a new direction for real-time strategy, where money is both your deadliest weapon and toughest defense. After the Earth is tapped out and the asteroids claimed by faceless megacorporations, the stark Martian surface is the final frontier on which dreamers and entrepreneurs can make something of themselves by staking their claim to the red planet’s abundant resources and building an economic engine capable of out-producing the competition.

The real-time, player-driven market is the foundation of the game, allowing players to buy and sell resources, materials, and even the food and water their colonists need to survive. Only by buying low and selling high – and perhaps engaging in a little more overt market manipulation with hacker arrays, black-market pirate raids, and more – can players build up enough capital to gain access to the incredibly lucrative offworld markets that bring in the cash they need to buy out their rivals and claim the Martian economy for themselves.

Unlike traditional RTS games, there are no military units and what you need to win can change at a moment’s notice because on Mars, there are no rules in the free market. None of the 13 resources is more powerful than any other, and everything is for sale. Players gain cash by selling excess resources like carbon, fuel, and silicon on the open market, and spend it buying the resources they’re short on. Prices fluctuate in real time forcing players to adapt their strategy; dump a bunch of iron on the market and its price will crater, making other players’ stockpiles worth much less in the near term.

The game is won when the ultimate cutthroat capitalist completes buys out the stock of all their rivals, thereby seizing control of the entire planet’s economy.

In Offworld Trading Company, the marketplace is the battlefield.

Pre-orders are available now at the official website in two tiers: a standard discounted pre-order at $34.99, and a special edition that comes with access to the prototype version (due out this fall), an extra game key, and other bonuses at $79.99.