In a previous life, I used to be a professional game player. I still am hard at work on a new tradable blockchain card game, Emergents, now in closed (but soon to be more open) beta, and I still love playing games. This weekend I had the chance to take a break and play This Merchant Life, which (as the game would approve of frontlining) is currently
Did you ever play the old Port Royale (now discontinued) series? Trading (and factory ownership) in the golden age of piracy Caribbean. Think they made 3 games, I forget which was most interesting in terms of trade. They had a Sid Meier Pirate style plot/combat thing, but automating trade routes and production lines was way more fun.
Fun review! Economic/trading simulators are an underappreciated and under accomplished field, in my opinion. A really good model of how goods and services move around and people build cities and civilizations based on that could be a lot of fun to play in, from a number of different angles.
A game I rather liked in this genre, though I never finished, is "Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale." The premise is you are the daughter of an item store owner in a typical JRPG world, and your parents die after apparently developing a huge blow and hookers habit that left them massively in debt to a loan sharking fairy corporation, and the debt carries over onto you. The corp sends over a fairy to help you run the store in an attempt to pay off the debt (or manage the monthly payments) or else they are going to take the store and your house. Hilarity ensues. There's a lot of focus on negotiation (without going too far) and the choice of items to sell, what goes in the display windows, and what décor all determining what sorts of people even come in to buy and what they want, then inventory management and surplus/shortages messing with prices, etc. It's fun and light hearted, and a bit hard not to cry "Capitalism, HO!" with the protagonist as she overcomes obstacles.
> take spices from one port and ship them to another port. No ship for you. You own a cart. So you take less exciting goods that aren’t spices that you buy in one town, and you ship them to another town. Where you sell them.
Yes, but while I'm busy handling all these spices, when do I get the wolf goddess?
Did you ever play the old Port Royale (now discontinued) series? Trading (and factory ownership) in the golden age of piracy Caribbean. Think they made 3 games, I forget which was most interesting in terms of trade. They had a Sid Meier Pirate style plot/combat thing, but automating trade routes and production lines was way more fun.
Fun review! Economic/trading simulators are an underappreciated and under accomplished field, in my opinion. A really good model of how goods and services move around and people build cities and civilizations based on that could be a lot of fun to play in, from a number of different angles.
A game I rather liked in this genre, though I never finished, is "Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale." The premise is you are the daughter of an item store owner in a typical JRPG world, and your parents die after apparently developing a huge blow and hookers habit that left them massively in debt to a loan sharking fairy corporation, and the debt carries over onto you. The corp sends over a fairy to help you run the store in an attempt to pay off the debt (or manage the monthly payments) or else they are going to take the store and your house. Hilarity ensues. There's a lot of focus on negotiation (without going too far) and the choice of items to sell, what goes in the display windows, and what décor all determining what sorts of people even come in to buy and what they want, then inventory management and surplus/shortages messing with prices, etc. It's fun and light hearted, and a bit hard not to cry "Capitalism, HO!" with the protagonist as she overcomes obstacles.
Seems fun; added to my (maybe) queue.
> take spices from one port and ship them to another port. No ship for you. You own a cart. So you take less exciting goods that aren’t spices that you buy in one town, and you ship them to another town. Where you sell them.
Yes, but while I'm busy handling all these spices, when do I get the wolf goddess?
I just bought the game earlier. Your review, and the current ridiculously cheap sales price, convinced me to give it a shot.