I.T.C.B – Interstellar Trade Compliance Bureau

I.T.C.B – Interstellar Trade Compliance Bureau is a management sim with a comedic, bureaucratic science fiction setting. The player is abducted by the Zorbonians, a struggling society within a galactic empire, who won a lottery allowing them to take one person from anywhere in the galaxy to repair their economy. They selected the player because of their background in coordinating the movement of standardised containers over long distances. The player then operates Trade Terminal 7-G.

Gameplay centres on running a planet’s economy from a single screen. The player builds production facilities, manages resources, and works to keep the alien population fed, clothed, housed and content. Goods can be bought and sold on a galactic market where prices shift over time, so the timing of sales affects the value of any surplus. New resources arrive labelled with untranslated alien glyphs, and the player has to work out what each one is. A continuous stream of news headlines influences prices, demand and disasters, and some of them can end a run.

Progress is tied to a corporate hierarchy overseen by a supervisor character, Vellum Quex-9, who contacts the player frequently. The developer describes the tone as a management sim played with a straight face and dry wit, in the vein of Papers, Please, Cultist Simulator and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.