Spice Trade

The utter lack of instructions makes this unplayable. It super frustrating b/c there's clearly a lot more game to be played here. I suffered through Kings Quest I (sic) and having to guess the correct noun to progress, the UI shouldn't be part of the discovery/fun of the game. For example: I died many times before figured out your health decreased by planting things (spoiler alert: its that vertical bar that appears above health). Then I grew old and died a couple times before I figured out you had to click on the "left" window of your house to sleep to restore health. Then I grew old and died earning enough money to not scrape by only to have ZERO idea of how to actually trade outside of Baghdad. Not sure if Windows 11's unmovable taskbar are hiding options you need to play or if I'm just not clicking on the correct pixel. I like the time period, concept, and even the bare bones aspects, but players shouldn't have to work this hard to understand how to play.

4.5 Tycoon/life sim in Middle-Eastern setting. TLDR: while it's refreshing to see something that's Islam-themed and even mildly anti-Western, the technical issues and the terrible design make this trader sim almost unplayable. Barely a neutral vote Good: + free + the game gives a perspective of a Middle-Eastern trader whose goal is to fight off the European/Christian encroachment on the world of Islam. Which is certainly an interesting topic! Last time I remember something like that was the Turks or Arabs campaigns in Medieval Total War. It's funny how one of the stats in the character info page is "wives". Meaning, wives are countable items. Adorable :) + illustrations here might look amateurish but I suspect they either re-use historical material (drawings from Medieval times) or the artist is intentionally mimicking the style So-so: +/- music is okay (Arab-themed) but there is some technical problem with looping. There are frequent hiccups in the playback of the tracks, and they seem to end abruptly and re-start Bad: - the game runs in a tiny window that can't be re-sized or toggled fullscreen. Tiny text labels and buttons - clickable areas on the backgrounds aren't marked v…

You dive into history, trade spices, make deals and challenge powers. The world feels alive, decisions matter, and you constantly balance risk and reward — it’s relaxing but with a spark of tension.

"Charming, but..." sort of game. If you are willing to deal with archaic mechanics, it's fun to explore this unique creation of these authors. It's the kind of game that makes me want one just like it, themes and goals and all, but with more sophisticated mechanics and with a modern UI and other nice things. That's a good thing. I don't quite understand all the parts of the game (like the culture bar??) but discovering new things is compelling in that old school kind of way.

I can't really suggest the game in its current state. Key issues: long unskippable animations for every action (including resting, which I was having to do 8-10 times in a row, taking several minutes) Lots of confusing aspects and red tape; can't leave bagdad without a travel permit, can't export crops without an export permit. finally get both of those and go to constantinople to try to sell my stuff, and I can't use the market there without a work permit. I give up man very busy backgrounds, with it sometimes being hard to understand what you can/should be clicking on the world map is very disorienting, and has a lot of cities marked that I couldn't go to (at least in the early game), as well as being an odd perspective where "up" on the map is like E-SE fullscreen is just the windowed version, but moved all the way to the top left with huge white bars at bottom and right

"Spice Trade" is an ancient 2D "tycoon" simulator game... at best this is kind of a glorified knockoff of primitive personal computer games like Oregon Trail or Lemonade Stand (BBC Micro users represent... or don't, there's no shame). And ancient is the word, this has been dug up and is being shuffled around like something out of Weekend at Bernies. It's dead, let it go. What do you do in the game? You pretend to be a medieval eastern merchant and click through various menu screens to do a bit of tycoon business. It's an old, dead format that you still see propped up sometimes as a browser game, but overall, it's obsolete. For gameplay purposes, because the user interface for this game is mostly just 2D static text/images... it might as well be a web page. It's functionally no different from a browser game. And we all know, Steam isn't here to compete with Chrome and Firefox. If the game can be done in a web browser, it's just not rich or compelling enough to appeal to serious gamers on PC. This wasn't designed for typical widescreen monitors, it's locked to a deprecated 4:3 aspect ratio (they put some "wings" on but that's not fooling anyone). It won't look right on mod…