Spaceport Trading Company

This is the type of game that I would really like a neutral review option for. It isn't great, it isn't terrible, it is just okay but marred by clunky controls and and kind of dull gameplay. I've given it a few tries over the while that I've had it through various updates and it has just never quite scratched the itch for a trading sim, despite coming so close. The good: -It is easy to see what to trade where. Generally as long as you buy goods when they are near or under average price and take them somewhere where they are in demand (which each item will tell you) then you are going to make a profit. You can make more money by paying attention to which places are paying even more or selling for even less but it isn't strictly necessary. -The music while simple and limited is pretty decent. Maybe it could grow dull after a long play period but I've never played that long. -Some of the gameplay options are interesting. I really enjoy the actually orbiting planets, it creates unique opportunities for trade when two planets get near each other to quickly hop back and forth between the two. Though it feels strange that your ship cannot auto update its navigation so you constantly have to chase it down. The bad: -Missions are really dull and payout far too little compared to trading. Some don't pay even enough to cover the fuel costs so you really have to plan them out alongside trading or other jobs to make them worth it. But honestly it's far easier to just hop between two planets trading than to do random missions. -Factions and contacts, what good are they for, probably something but again you have to do the really boring missions for who knows how long to get anything out of them so I've never really seen it. -Navigating the solar system map is kind of bad, sometimes you can drag with the mouse, sometimes not and the default keyboard controls has S double mapped to down and turning on the scanner. -Not enough happens while in space. Maybe this is because I never left the first star (not for lack of trying as I did get a ship that was supposed to be able to travel between stars but couldn't find how to use that). But for the most part even with the scanner I rarely find items and mostly just get events of "why are you scanning in this area?" -Station amenities feel tacked on, again maybe they do something later, but having a hangar for ships feels pointless, and the bar seemingly does nothing and has no way to even attempt to interact with it that might hint at a later use, if any. Development on this still looks pretty active, and I really want to see this game become better. But unless you are really really into trading games and don't mind a sometimes slow game, I can't really recommend this.

Do you like "Star Traders Frontiers"? Do you like pixel games? How would you like to play a game that is essentially ST but in pixel format? That is what Spaceport Trading Company plays most similarly to at this time. It has 3 factions, its a trading game, and its in space! Now, Spaceport Trading Co definitely doesn't have as many nuanced aspects as ST while it remains in early access and there is (as far as I've seen) no combat. There are a couple (easy) areas of expansion I hope to see in the future: more ships and more galaxies (and therefore more planets). A bit more lore and differentiation about the factions to read somewhere. But, as one who enjoys trading games this is a nice, if simple, one to buy. Hopefully, after another year there will be all the improvements needed to flesh this out into a full-fledged game that stands entirely on its own merits. For now I am tentatively rating positively (I encountered no bugs).

I'm giving this a positive review because there's promise here. But if you're the sort of person who reads reviews, take the time to see what sort of development has happened since I've left this one. Because today, right now, this game has a lot of ground to make up. At surface level, it's a really fun space trader game, at least for a few hours anyway. You have extremely simplistic missions you can accept on each planet or star colony—deliver these goods, scan or patrol that planet, find me this resource. You can general buy low and sell high between various planets. Grind your face off through the first star system, and eventually you can buy a ship capable of taking you to a different system where ... well ... you continue grinding your face off. Combat? Nope. Crew? I can't figure out how to hire them. Mission diversity? It gets bland pretty quickly, at least for me. And you'll definitely encounter some bugs. For instance, if you have a mission to scan a planet three times, you'll need to exit the scanner and bring it back up again to scan it a third time. Hardly game-breaking, but it does get a little frustrating when you're scanning your 19th planet. That all said, there is A LOT of potential here. If they can diversify missions, work in some form of combat, make the factions meaningful, add crews and crew-empowered gameplay, and give star systems more substance, this could be transformed from quirky EA buy-sell grinder into a sci-fi cult hit. It's definitely on my "games to watch" radar now.