This week: Let Them Trade
Baby's first city-building experience?
I’m watching tiny buggy carts scurry across the map along the roads I laid out, while the sounds of sawmilling, logging, coal mining, and upbeat music all mix up. Potatoes are at a premium, while the freshly built quarry is flooding the market with much-needed stone. Maybe I should add a few more sheep farms?
Three hours into Let Them Trade, I’m completely entranced. A game in the genre I would typically never go for, it has the right combination of colour, whimsical detail, a touch of humour, and a subjectively moderate amount of challenge that, coupled with bite-sized campaign scenarios, manages to suck me fully in.
Described as a relaxing city builder, Let Them Trade strikes a good balance between the two for a player like me. The strategy elements won’t impress anyone with a passing familiarity with the genre. In fact, the simplicity of the game’s scenarios is a frequent subject of complaint in Steam reviews.
Not to me, though.
Let Them Trade isn’t a hard game by design. It can’t be―to stay chill, it has to be chill, and I love that for it. What is a detraction for others is a boon for me as a strategy game noob. I enjoyed learning the ropes in a straightforward game that’s built to be a calm experience.
The premise is simple: found, plan, and build cities, exploit resources, keep inhabitants happy, and make money for your king while you’re at it—medieval capitalism in a nutshell. There’s just one catch: you’re not in charge of the market forces. You can research and develop different buildings, attach homes to them, and even inject investment into cities on demand, but it’s the cities that control the market. You do the building and planning, and then you just have to… let them trade!
The campaign portion of the game includes 10 scenarios, each building on the difficulty of the previous one. Still, they are uncomplicated and take very little time to complete. Only the final portion of the map presents a challenge, demanding more time than half of all previous “chapters” combined.
Much of the game consists of building and then waiting for changes to help the economy grow. Some players found the idle wait frustrating; I found it nice to be able to eat a sandwich while I play and observe my tiny subjects do their trading thing.
Watching the world you’re building to hustle and bustle is part of the charm. Aesthetically, Let Them Trade is a distant love cousin of Dorfromantik and Civ games. More Dorfromantik, to be fair, with the beautiful visuals, a cool level of detail in every homestead that you plop onto the hex grid map, and small animations that make every hex come alive.
Zoom in and observe tiny cardboard-like characters milling about their business.
Or zoom out and discover that you’re playing a virtual board game. (I squealed with delight when I noticed!)
My gripe with Let Them Trade is the outsized complexity of its systems relative to the goals you have to meet. A cluttered UI is part of the struggle; despite lengthy tutorial explanations, parts of many menus and dashboards remained a mystery to me for much longer than necessary until I managed to figure out what they meant or did by simply playing. My hope is that the developer, Spaceflower, will reiterate on it all as more feedback from players rolls in.
The game has good expansion potential. The base game is barely a 10-hour experience, but the foundation for an unlimited number of starting maps, challenges, and scenarios is there, not to mention additional mechanics that can be added in the future. Sky—and budget—is the limit.
Let Them Trade may not be for strategy veterans who’d find it too easy, but for fellow cozy game lovers, it’s a fun time. Mix cute graphics with bright colours and unhurried gameplay, throw in the word “relaxing”, and you've got Katya in the bag, even if the genre isn’t something I typically play. (I’m starting to suspect that I’m actually very easy to please.)
Hold off on buying or wait for a sale if you want a lengthier game experience, though. Hopefully, campaign and scenario updates are not too far off!
Let Them Trade
Platforms: PC
Genre: City-building, strategy, simulator
Price tag: $23.49 CAD (17.99 USD)
Thank you to Terminals.io for providing me with a Steam key to write this review.
From the moment you started describing the game, I instantly started getting Civ vibes. It also was reminding me of Tropico. I love a good strategy game every now and then. I think the most interesting detail about this game is that you can zoom out and see that it's an actual board game you are playing. I also like that it's not too complex. It feels like they want to appeal to a wider audience. They want to draw in fans of real-time strategy games, but they also want to appeal to casual gamers who want to just chill and not be bogged down with complex mechanics.
When I saw your first screenshot, I honestly thought this was a real tabletop game and got confused! I like how it looks like it plays on your kitchen table though, very cute. Thanks for the write up!