East India Company

Developed by Nitro Games, East India Company is a simulation game with action elements, based on the world as it was during the period roughly between the 1600s and the 1800s, when world trade between nations was still being developed. You command one of eight playable nations: England, France, Holland, Portugal, Denmark, Sweden, Spain, and the Holy Roman Empire. Your goal is to develop your company by trading with other nations, establishing outposts and embassies in other countries, and protecting your interests as your business thrives.

This is done in three distinct views: world map, city, and tactical; each of these offers a different level of play, and you'll need to manage them all to be successful. The map view is your top-down viewpoint where you'll see your ports of call, your own holdings, and where else you can visit to establish contact with foreign cultures.

The city view is where you'll do your manual trading. Visiting a new nation allows you to open a dialogue with them and begin to establish terms, hopefully leading to a successful joint venture eventually. Along the way, however, you'll need to do some careful negotiation. You'll have a number of options to choose when speaking with another nation, including declaring war. Before you reach that point, you'll be able to offer different commodities, like spices and grains, or straight out money. You'll know ahead of time if your offer is likely to be accepted by a useful UI bar that shows by color and length the response you'll receive for each offer. Should none of your offers generate the desired result, you also have the option to threaten your opponent -- sometimes this works, sometimes it won't, but it will always have a negative cumulative effect if used too often. When that occurs, it's war!

Here's where you get to experience some unique ship-to-ship warfare, in one of two ways. Battle between vessels resembles an RTS in the first view. You'll issue orders to your ships and watch them carried out in real-time. You can choose to leave your fleet under the control of persistent commander characters who will level up with experience, thereby gaining access to extra abilities that help your fleet dominate. Or, you can decide to take control of your flagship yourself, to exercise the newly-acquired abilities in person.

It's this last commandeering mechanic that brings something you may not have seen before: first-person, ship-to-ship naval battles. If you've seen the movie Master and Commander, you'll have an idea of what to expect, but it's so much more effective in this game. You'll watch enemy vessels drift into view through the haze, hear the rush of the ocean (which is nicely dynamic with its animation, as opposed to the typical flat sheet that many games have as water), and watch in terror as a flock of swiftly-approaching cannonballs zooms toward your ship. Combat seen this way invests the action with much more immersion, and you'll never blithely send your minions out to die with quite the same detachment ever again.

Watch for East India Company to sail into your port later this year!