The following is an excerpt from the Designer Notes for Offworld Trading Company. The game, an economic RTS set on Mars, released on April 28, 2016, and is available for purchase here. (A Game Almanac, which includes the full Designer Notes, is available as free DLC.)

Offworld Trading Company was not an easy game to make, perhaps most especially because people needed to believe that it would work in the first place. Thus, I need to thank Brad Wardell, Derek Paxton, Brian Clair, and everyone else at Stardock for believing that an economic RTS would actually be fun.

I also need to thank the team for taking the leap with me and working so hard to build the game. Dorian Newcomb, my business partner, was the game’s official Art Director and unofficial Producer, making sure that life on Mars looks amazing and that everyone was working in sync. Jason Winokur was the first programmer to join us, and he handled the graphics, supported modding, and generally made sure our project was in great shape. Dave Wagner implemented multiplayer, replays, saved games, leaderboards, and all the other details needed for a modern game. Jim Alley created all of our interface art as well as our great logo. Josh Hardy, after being lured away from the Star Control team, made our building, colony, and HQ models as well as our effects. Joel Bowers implemented the scenario system and then built the tutorials on top of them.

Zack Fowler implemented our terrain system and built the map editor on top of it. Tommy Truong helped us finish, animating our buildings and HQs. Mark Cromer made our sound effects and helped with audio design. Christopher Tin composed an amazing soundtrack that scales with the player’s progress. Kirby Runyon created 32 maps by hand, based on real locations on Mars. Andy Hull added some nice polish to our character popups (and invented the giant check for losing). Erik Ehoff made some key early concept art the helped to define the game’s look. Shentloc, our localization team, did an amazing job to help us ship in nine languages. (Ten if you count British aluminium!)

I’d like to thank my wife Leyla who, perhaps unexpectedly, fell in love with the game and sunk 1,000 hours into it, her very first RTS; her excitement and encouragement helped me keep going during the rough times. Finally, I want to thank the fans that provided us with amazing feedback and support during the pre-release phase; the game would have been much different (and certainly worse) without them. I specifically want to acknowledge the contributions of the following players: Zultar, Cubit, PBHead, Gameslayer, Blues, Blackmagic, Death Tacticus, Indczn, Kingmorgan, Jaiwera, YerAnd, GalacticWino, Roler, TheSpinCycle, Veivi, UltraPope, Dermas, Heisenberg, Showcasemike, and Sir Rogers.

Offworld would still just be an idea in my head without the amazing team we have at Mohawk, and I will forever be in their debt for believing in the game and committing to making it great. I think we will all remember that year when we were playing the game internally as one of the best of our careers — iterating on it constantly based on daily games while slowly becoming aware that we were making something truly unique. Actually finishing the game was very hard work, so I am very proud of what we created. I hope the game will mean as much to you.