Merchants of Kaidan
There is something extremely addictive about this game. Most of the reviewers have hit on the positive and negative aspects. There are a few things that would immensely add to the game:
- I played through the whole avenging my father line, and even by the end (which was a loooong time, I only had one fully and one partially staffed ruins (which require 5 different specialists + artifacts + mercenaries). I also only had 2 fully staffed and one partially staffed massage parlor, and no mines at all. It takes forever to a) find the specialists you need and then level them up. On top of that, you only have so many spaces for specialists (which I found no way to open all of those slots), so you end up having to sacrifice someone who’d be beneficial to your travelling team and level each specialist up 1 at a time (2 additional levels at 100 days a pop–and no, you can’t just buy a storage facility and pop them in to finish leveling. They just go into stasis in there).
– Real player with 43.7 hrs in game
Read More: Best Adventure Strategy Games.
8/10 – 80% must buy game if you enjoy turn based trading games. This is a niche genre and I honestly think much negativity is coming from people who buy the game without enjoying trading games, just because it’s £1.09 in sales. Now let’s start with the price – Full Price at £10.99 is excellent value, when it’s 90% off in Steam sales it’s CRIMINAL. Can such a good “full” trading game really be cheaper than a Paradox Sprite, a Total War Hero or a Civilization Map? I have 41 hours in the game and counting, 77% achievements, and the Level 5 badge. Yes, it’s a very good niche game. I’d say this is on a par with Patrician 3, much loved by trading game fans.
– Real player with 42.0 hrs in game
Caravan
Caravan is a trading game with light RPG, survival, and story elements. I’m giving it a recommended rating but just barely. I really wanted to love this game, I hoped it would be similar to Tradewinds Caravan but it just isn’t quite as good as I had hoped.
The graphics are actually pretty good. Clean animation, nicely drawn backgrounds. The character designs are not I’m favorite in fact most of the faces look terrible. They look like rather ugly stereotyped Arab-esqe faces and there’s just not much variety so everyone looks the same. The backgrounds actually look fairly accurate for the time period and locations they are trying to represent though.
– Real player with 62.0 hrs in game
Read More: Best Adventure Strategy Games.
After beating this game (took me 16 hours), I would give it a cautious recommendation - but only to a small number of its prospective audience. If you’re looking for a slow-paced, relatively mindless trading game, it’ll hit the spot. It does have lovely art and a great atmosphere, and some very good ideas as far as mechanics, but…
The real trouble with this game is that the bulk of it is padding. Things take a very long time; there are grindy fetch-quests and slow (repetitive) animation transitions. This would not be a problem if the game had the content to stay fresh for 16 hours, but in truth this only has enough for a 4-5 hour game. Random events start repeating very quickly with same outcomes. The trading/combat minigame is neat but much of the time pointless (i.e. you’re fighting/trading in situations where you 100% know you’ll win but you have to go through the motions for 2 minutes anyway) - and while the commodity trade is generally pretty satisfying, a lot of mechanics like equipment, skills and leveling are totally underdeveloped and almost irrelevant. There’s potential here for a longer game, sure - but I think it was made in a very hurried fashion and then stretched to fit way more playtime than it needs. If it had 4 times more random events, skills, equipment, and avoided descending into grinds, it could be great. Otherwise, at the moment it’s just an adequate yet repetitive time-passer.
– Real player with 16.4 hrs in game
BlueBete
This was on a deep sale, so I figured why not, but wow, it was not even worth it at that price. The character movement feels awkward, like you’re moving a frozen mannequin. The first region is so blacked-out in spots it feels like the whole thing is one giant bug. Then none of the buildings were accessible, making the objective impossible as far as I could tell. Don’t bother! I should have refunded this but missed the window.
– Real player with 0.1 hrs in game
Read More: Best Adventure Casual Games.
Final Profit: A Shop RPG
You are Biz, former Queen of Faeona.
An organisation called the Bureau of Business has pushed your kingdom to the brink.
Starting from scratch, can you earn enough money to take them on and save your people? Or will you lose sight of your goal on the way?
Run your shop as you try to become a Lord of Business!
AN RPG WITHOUT COMBAT: Earn XP by making money!
FIND OPPORTUNITIES: Seek out new products and customers to expand your shop! Some will take more work than others.
UPGRADES: There are many ways to improve and even automate your business!
DEBT: The Bureau of Business will try to keep you down, prove yourself by overcoming many challenges!
CHOICES: The decisions you make might lead to an early end, or different opportunities!
Townseek
Tasked with re-assembling Sir Reginald Sharkingston’s journal, you must travel far and wide, following his footsteps while forging your own path across the skies! The whole world is your sea now, so be sure to see all that it has to offer!
DISCOVER A PICTURESQUE WORLD
Explore this pixelated, hand-drawn world at your own pace, uncovering unique locations, spawning happy trees, blossoming forests, deep reefs, drooling volcanos and beyond! Seek different towns, each with a charismatic host!
TRADE WITH UNIQUE TOWNS AND CHARACTERS
Trade with town hosts for unique items and profit! Complete their requests and improve your trader rank for even more special deals. Discover diverse cultures of sharkfolk, anthropomorphic cats, slimes, regular old humans and more!
FISH, MINE, FARM AND CUSTOMIZE YOUR SHIP
Obtain a fishing rod and catch peculiar fish. Mine for one-of-a-kind artifacts and farm for exotic fruits. Obtain new blimps and hulls to customize your ship and make it uniquely yours!
COMPLETE YOUR JOURNAL
Complete town requests to start reassembling the journal bestowed to you by Captain Jawline, and discover the voyage of Sir Reginald Sharkingston. Fill it with memories of your travels, complete your item collection and make it an unforgettable trip!
Dust to the End
I’ve been playing this game since back in Early Access and I have to say it’s come a long way from where it started out. At first it was just a barren map where you could easily go “point A” to “point B” with a storyline that was alright but with a shoddy translation that would break immersion. Certain aspects for reputation didn’t have any point other than to just “be there” and weapons weren’t very different from another. Base Building and Raiding was just “push through and win” while trying to get as much loot as possible. And Keeping track of all your stuff and what industries were where was a mess.
– Real player with 269.9 hrs in game
Dust to the End is a squad-based, turn-based combat, semi-openworld trading game in a post-apocalyptic setting.
-manage up to 9 units and vehicles(with upkeep)
-multiple maps(or zones) unlocked by story progression(fixed main story)
-real-time travel movement on a free-roaming map, enemies are visible and can be avoided if you’re fast
-turn-based combat, some random encounters
-factions, town relations
-autosaves, multiple manual save slots
-sandworms, but no spice items.
Finally I played a good game after the longest of time. Was somehow shocked by how good it was. These Chinese developers have done an amazing job adapting the timeless classic Caravaneer 2 from Dmitry Zheltobriukhov into a far better looking and ‘noob friendly’ trading game with more depth(combat can get quite brutal), and they actually listened to player feedback unlike a lot of other stuck up indie developers out there.
– Real player with 141.2 hrs in game
Herbalist Simulator
I love the concept of this game. I believe that this is what games really should be used for instead of killing everything in sight. I want to be a naturopath and I love plants. A game like this with more time and money invested could be critical to future learning. I would take pictures of Echinacea Purpurea (Purple cone flower) Indian Pipe, Turmeric, Licorice root, and a host of other medicinal herbs, and scatter them throughout the terrain. Hide rare ones and make it more explore intensive. I love the fact that you have patients to treat. I would make it a bit more simplified for the user so it’s easier to figure out. Like “John has the flu” Treat with Echinacea tincture and then you have to go find the Echinacea and make the tincture in the house. I am playing on a computer and the controls weren’t clear, if I press escape it doesn’t give me an escape menu or anything. Little simple implements could make the game very fluid. The controls and movement already feel very clean like in minecraft, so it wouldn’t take a crazy amount of work to put it a lot more into this. I hope you keep adding to it. I have a Chinese herbal remedies encyclopedia that has all the herbs and tinctures and how to make them ect ect. Might help a lot if you want a legit medical game. Good luck!
– Real player with 1.6 hrs in game
Day One Review
–————
You walk through the forest to collect ingredients to try and cure villagers with basic items until you can pay formulas from the Merchant - which appear randomly per day. The plant items can be difficult to see at the base of trees - and I never came across things like willow bark in the wild, only sold by Merchant. Calendula and sage I only saw growing near home, and you really want them to spawn more often. Same for the beehives spawning wax slowly. Backpack space is very limited so you’re going to running back and forth a lot. I did really like that the herbal remedies were mostly accurate to real life treatments!
– Real player with 1.6 hrs in game
Lost Angel
the plot is a bit far-fetched and the acting isn’t perfect (especially when they fall down), but overall an entertaining game with many branches and choices that change the course of events
– Real player with 3.8 hrs in game
I love FMV games, I almost bought and played every full-motion video game on steam. To my disappointment, Lost Angel didn’t meet my expectation, especially with the topic of the game itself. When you read the game information about the main character, a youtube influencer getting involved in a dangerous conspiracy, you’d think it will be an exciting story, but once they mentioned the Covid-19 virus, it all went down and started to become a cheap story- not that it wasn’t from the beginning due to the mediocre acting.
– Real player with 3.7 hrs in game
Medieval Shopkeeper Simulator
Medieval Shopkeeper Simulator
A visually unique shop management simulator with all of the epic tropes of a medieval fantasy, Medieval Shopkeep Simulator lets you live out your wildest dreams of toiling endlessly under the primitive and patriarchal rulership of your King.
An in-development resource management and shopkeep sim that already has a whole lot of flair in its hybrid presentation, and a solid vision for its routine of medieval handyman and salesman. Medieval Shopkeeper Simulator has so much room to grow, but it already shows a great deal of promise and is quite addictive in its simplicity.
– Real player with 20.2 hrs in game
Everything listed is what is wrong with the game, however, the game is abandoned (not by choice, the dev stated the files got corrupt) and there is no fixing it right now, so if you do wish to play, here is what you will most likely have to deal with…
1 - When you hit escape, you can’t access the “report a bug” nor take a photo options
2 - When farming there are several occasions where you have to leave the game and come back just to see what you have to do
3 - the Tutorial & ability to Jump were removed in most recent patch?
– Real player with 13.1 hrs in game
Sea Legends
Amazing. Was a big fan of this game when it just came out back in the 90s. Despite the absolutely horrible (by modern standards) graphics, the gameplay is great. REALLY needs a companion instructional guide though, on how to play :)
There is a Russian guide on the web (original game is by a Russian studio), which is fine for me, but I coudn’t find an English one. Maybe I will write one.
– Real player with 34.3 hrs in game
In my view, this is the best naval battle game ever made. If you liked “Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag” and want more ships, trading & more details to the naval battles, then this game is for you.
– Real player with 8.9 hrs in game