Desolation Tycoon
The world has ended, but life moves on. Your home is a wasteland scoured by winds blowing in from a caustic sea. Most large mammals are extinct, and insects have filled their roles.
You are a merchant traveling this land in search of profit. Each character you play starts with a randomly generated history and traits. And eventually, each character’s career will come to an end — whether through successful retirement or tragic death.
The game remembers everything you do, and the world is persistent across characters. As a consequence of your actions, civilization will slowly grow and rebuild. Accomplishments accrued across any number of characters will unlock new cities, new crew units, new challenges, and so on.
There is no fixed storyline. Instead, you have a setting, a set of gameplay mechanics, and complete freedom to do with that what you will.
Core features:
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Travel, trade, and defend your cargo from dangers.
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Improve your skills through usage.
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Find and explore places that are worth plundering.
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Build relationships with city notables, and co-operate with them on various schemes.
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Rebuild a persistent world across multiple lifetimes.
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Make trade-offs in encounters that are purely decision-driven, and avoid grindy minigames.
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Enjoy a high-information user interface that doesn’t ask you to remember things unnecessarily.
Example challenges:
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Local climate calamities.
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Giant insects, bandits, and much worse.
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Each character will automatically retire if they live long enough; this does not leave enough time to develop all possible skills.
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Networks of supply and demand are randomized between playthroughs.
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You can’t stay in a trade route rut, because trading with the same cities too much will make it less profitable.
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You and your crew can become injured or sick — and possibly die as a result.
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The locals that you trade and scheme with have minds of their own, and may betray you.
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Performance-enhancing symbiotes may seem like a great idea, but can lead to unfortunate side-effects.
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Oh, and there are also demons. They complicate everything.
This is not an action-oriented game. Time doesn’t pass unless you’re doing something, and there are no real-time challenges. Instead, gameplay is strictly about the making of intelligent trade-offs in an open-world setting with many potential courses of action.
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
Read More: Best Pixel Graphics RPG Games.
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
Interstellaria
123 hours, just came back for more after not playing for a few months, and had to write a review.
I can not for the life of me figure out the negative reviews (keep in mind though I am more of a ‘benefit of the doubt’ reviewer than a ‘this game is not precisely what I expect/desire therefore I will crap all over it’ reviewer). This game is a blast. I have to assume they are doing the usual ‘reviewing it as compared to some other game they like more’ or ‘reviewing it for what they want it to be rather than what it is’. Either way, my opinion is this game is one of the better unkown space games in existence. All these ‘FTL’ clones, and no mention of Interstellaria, is a travesty, this game needs more PR.
– Real player with 124.3 hrs in game
Read More: Best Pixel Graphics Space Games.
Short version:
It’s fairly similar to FTL with the added ability to explore planets (with simple ground combat), move your ship freely in deep space (with dynamic tactical space combat) and enjoy an entertaining plot that guides you through the open-world universe.
Is it perfect? No. There are issues and the UX is not the best, but unless that puts you off, you can definitely enjoy the game.
Coldrice seems to be working non-stop to fix any issues and there are also some planned improvements.
– Real player with 77.3 hrs in game
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!
Massive Galaxy
Massive Galaxy combines classic point and click gameplay with space trading, turn-based combat and galactic exploration in an immersive pixel-art world
Travel to distant planets full of rich and diverse cultures, investigate technologically advanced space habitats and uncover the history and lore of ancient civilizations.
Become a space-trader seeking to turn a profit by buying and selling goods throughout the galaxy.
Undertake routine missions or embark on ethically questionable jobs for a quick-buck.
Trade in densely populated cities, harsh wastelands and discover rare alien artifacts and ships.
Features
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Point and click narrative adventure with a highly stylized retro-vibe
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Dozens of planets, space stations and habitats to explore
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Trade and work as a smuggler, courier, spy or just be a space-pirate!
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Meet several space faring alien civilizations, explore the fauna and flora of uncharted planets
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Synth-laden soundtrack
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!
Silk
Very nice game! Hope the developers will update and expand it though
+Huge open world for hours of exploring
+Simple mechanics of gameplay - easy to learn in minutes
+History notes makes journey immersive
+Handful of ways to beat the game
-No background/ambient music so it is pretty quiet
-Some pieces of map are empty
-No marching armies, caravans etc.
– Real player with 34.9 hrs in game
Silk is a compelling adventure strategy experience - not a genre name you see very often, and what a shame. The importance of picking a sensible route can be paramount, the threat of storms, raiders, wild animals and dead ends feel real and intense, and the feeling you get when you realise you have hit a dead end and have to turn back is a marvellous frustration.
It also means the satisfaction you get when you bring a caravan of silk back home is magnificent. The smalls joys of exploring a world in which every step matters, finding special locations, taking hidden treasure and fighting each small battle are immense. The feeling when your advisors reach a high enough skill level to start to really make the most of your surroundings is superb. A great adventure strategy title, definitely worth your time.
– Real player with 14.2 hrs in game
Clockwork Calamity in Mushroom World: What would you do if the time stopped ticking?
It’s a Sylvie game so it’s good. You don’t know what a Sylvie game is? Go play JigglyZone. What you will find in her games is cheerful visuals, honest vibes and weird ways to interact with her worlds that often challenge our gaming conventions while being surprisingly well designed and thoughtful.
Clockwork Calamity is all that and delivers unusual ways to navigate her world that need to be mastered first and completely exploited later while also implementing a near-OCD-inducing inventory management that requires pixel perfect precision to fit all the stuff that you’ll need to carry with you to trade and get the objects needed to restore time and beat the game.
– Real player with 12.8 hrs in game
Wonderful fresh game! Exploring the world, learning about what people had/wanted, and interacting with the best inventory management system I’ve seen kept me hooked for the ~10 hours I played before beating it.
I don’t usually take notes/draw maps for games but this one really made me want to in a good way.
The platforming is very goofy and surprising: you bounce off walls automatically. You can use that to ricocheting upwards and reach things you couldn’t otherwise. However, as often as your aversion to walls is helpful, it can also be something to fight against when you just want to stop moving but your momentum carries you from wall to wall. It’s such a neat take on platforming and that’s not even dealing with the items like the bouncy shoes that help you get even higher but good luck stopping or getting into a one block high space with them! Then there’s the way you throw items out of your inventory, many of which you can ride on and use to bounce in a more controller way. Everything combines into really engaging movement mechanics.
– Real player with 12.0 hrs in game
This Merchant Life
Great game in the works. This Merchant Life provides a pleasant and engaging experience of hunting for the best deals while trying to stay alive (economically and somewhat literally). The trading system responds to your buying and selling, so you can’t keep making the same great sale again for awhile. And the need to hire guards for your wagon is a constant tax on your resources; when a lot of your capital is tied up in goods, you may need to make a risky move even into the mid-game. The combat system itself is appropriately simple for an economically focused game, but you’ll still have to make some hard choices, and in some encounters likely never feel safe.
– Real player with 33.3 hrs in game
Steam says I played 30+ hours but I’m pretty sure it’s over 50h…anyway, I finished the campaign and still have 2 heroes to unlock. Here’s what I think about the game thus far:
PROS
great story - the campaign is not your average ‘‘hero’’ saves the kingdom, but you still play a major role in orchestration all of it
great music and art - you constantly watch an animated pixel map and, the animation box on the left while you travel changes according to characters you have on board, cart upgrades, climate and regions.
– Real player with 30.0 hrs in game
Merchant of the Skies
First of all, let me say that this game is a great-looking interesting bite-sized experience. If you are looking for TTD in clouds, this is not that game. It’s a “tycoon” in a very shallow sense of the word. In fact, it’s incredibly hard to describe this game with nowadays expectations other than a “trading game”.
It will not have you coming back to replay again and again, but it will captivate you for a session or two. It’s like a great meal at that new place you are trying out. You wouldn’t necessarily keep ordering it again, but you do not regret the experience. I bring up a lot of mixed points below, but keep in mind that it’s all still held together impressively solidly and does not break apart.
– Real player with 44.5 hrs in game
A niche merchant game with the challenges of completing tasks and finishing five ultimate goals to complete the game. The story is about a you, a merchant who follows requests from an uncle and various other characters, using a airship. Different to the usual games I regularly play, but I love it for the fantasy elements and challenges.
The story is odd in a way where it has five main goals, the last one is the restoration of the botanical garden, while the rest are more like side-quests in this adventure world. How you adventure is by flying an airship across to floating islands, you examine the different tasks, refuel, and can buy or sell items. I really like this due to my obsession with steampunk themes, the fantasy world which is floating while working, as though it is a job. Additionally, you get to know the world a little, like the uncle and a couple of characters that want to go to tourist places, but not as in depth in the case of getting to know your crew. It is a single player game, but it is how you want to play, making profit and buying islands in order to fulfil requests and keep your business a float. As for the art, I love it, pixel art can be simple but make so much detail, and with that sort of colour palate, it is up my street. The little wacky details like the singing carrot, the octopus that has a rapper hat on, all of it adds to the personality of the game. You can upgrade your ship too, making it easier to travel and transport cargo, which is helpful to complete more side-quests to bring in the profit. If you cannot gain profit because of your output on workers and fuel, then the bank will pay you off once, then you are in dept, you will need to pay off the bank or go bankrupt. An interesting way of teaching people about the real world and dept, but it forces you to do some unplanned action by juggling the main story to side-quests, making it challenging.
– Real player with 24.1 hrs in game