Reviewed: December 30, 2008
Reviewed by: John DeWeese

Publisher
Meridian4

Developer
Hermitworks

Released: October 15, 2008
Genre: Strategy
Players: 1

8
7
6
8
7.7

System Requirements:

This game’s cyberpunk setting really began to grow on me, as did the amoral theme. You can make your fortune as an honest trader, or work in the shadows as a black market smuggler. Either way you’ll need to stay one step ahead of the Ministry of Accounts, the evil overlords who hold an iron grip on Earth’s economy.

Space Trader is also the first business sim I’ve played that’s also a first person shooter. To break up the monotony of trading fuel cells and purified water, you can undertake combat missions where you capture pirates or eliminate corporate rivals. Best of all, you can loot extra cargo that you can sell on your next trading run to Venus. Granted, the combat in Space Trader has more in common with Doom than Far Cry 2, but it’s still offers a fun addition to the game’s simulation and role-playing aspects.

In the single player campaign, you begin the game with little more than a pistol and a few creds to your name. Your first order of business is getting a ship, and the corrupt Crimson Syndicate is all too willing to offer you one with a “rent to own” plan. You’ll need to raise over a million creds by making runs between Earth and the Moon, or else the Syndicate will repo more than just your starship. Since the game lacks a save feature, so you’ll need to start over if you can’t raise the Syndicate’s money in time. The good news is the game’s trading system makes it very easy to raise money.

When you go to trade a commodity, the game offers easy-to-read charts showing whether that item is overpriced or a bargain basement steal. If you spend a few minutes browsing, it’s easy to buy energy cells for cheap on Earth and sell them for a big profit on Mars. The game’s AI will also give you suggestions of what to buy, which comes in handy if you’re looking to buy a few items to fill out your cargo hold. I will say that Space Trader’s economic system is fun and challenging, but I never felt like I needed an MBA to win, which is more than I can say for other business sim games I’ve played. Certain merchants will also offer you trade missions, which is another way to make money fast.

When you arrive on a new planet, you’ll quickly discover that certain shady individuals are willing to sell you smuggled guns, narcotics, and even dark matter. Playing as a smuggler will make you a lot of money quickly, but the Ministry of Accounts will come down hard if you get caught with contraband. The good news is your ship is rarely searched by authorities, which makes smuggling very attractive. If you befriend certain members of the underworld, you’ll discover that you can actually fix the market. For example, one black marketer approached me about spiking the water supply on Mars. All I needed to do was smuggle some poisonous Shara Pods past the Ministry’s guards, and suddenly water prices on the planet quadrupled.

After a few successful trading runs between the Earth and the Moon, you discover the Syndicate has no intention of letting you go. Rather, they’ve planted bombs aboard your freighter and expect you to be their gopher for years to come. The only way out is to make friends with even more powerful intergalactic corporations, which will mean you’ll need to be both a savvy trader and handy with a pistol. Your contacts will assign you corporate rivals or pirate thugs to eliminate, and then you have three tries to complete your mission in FPS mode.

I’ll warn hardcore shooter fans up front – the combat in Space Trader is not the most exciting in the world. You’ll be running around abandoned railway stations, military bases, and underground tunnels, killing the same goon body guards to get to your target. Worst of all, you’ll always start with a weak pistol and have to scavenge better weapons. I’m perplexed at how you can upgrade everything else in the game except your personal gear. But there’s a certain old-school charm to the game’s simplistic combat, and the AI is competent enough to put up a decent fight. In many scenarios, you must race to catch the boss before he escapes, which adds an extra level of difficulty. All in all, the combat system succeeds at giving players a welcome change of pace from building their galactic fortunes.

When you’re finished with the campaign, you can also play through the challenge mode either alone or with friends. Since the game is available on Steam, you can also wrack up various achievements for playing either a good guy or underhanded pirate/smuggler.

The game’s graphics are better than I’ve seen for many indie games and mods, and I’m willing to grade Space Trader on a curve considering it’s not a major title. Having played business sims that were little more than a series of spreadsheets, I appreciated being able to do business in nicely detailed 3-D space stations. Each station also offers a slightly unique background depending on the planet.

Unfortunately, character models are a bit weak, with scrunched features and stiff animations. The combat levels are decent looking but the maps become very repetitive. Also, the bots all look the same, whether you’re fighting pirates, Ministry commandos, or even rampaging mutants. In terms of sound, there’s not much to talk about. There’s hardly any voice acting, and the techno music gets old very quickly. On the plus side, the game’s sound effects are well done.

If you’re a hardcore shooter who enjoys a game with bleeding edge graphics and ruthless AI, then Space Trader is not for you. However, this game will appeal to Sci Fi fans, indie game lovers, and wannabe business tycoons. Space Trader offers something very different than your cookie cutter FPS or sim games. In some ways, the game also recaptures some of the glory of cyberpunk classics like Deus Ex or Syndicate. And at a price of less than $10, this trading game is an economical way to forget about real world money woes.