Sol Trader Review

PC

Sol Trader is a unique, procedurally generated game world, which has different characters and relationships every time you play!

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Premise:

Lean on your network of in-game friends and family to trade, mine and explore in this genre-

 busting space simulation.  Every game is a new, unique, and procedurally generated experience, so the possibilities, characters, and connections are endless!

Visuals:

Example of Visuals in Sol Trader

A cute little game.  Nothing incredibly fancy, but the background is gorgeous despite this, and makes you feel like you are exploring a vast, mysterious, and magnificent universe.

The ships also, while not incredibly high definition, are well defined and fun.

Menus/Interface:

Menu System in Sol Trader

Menus are attractive, clean, and it is easy to access all necessary information from your main screen.

With this being said, it is incredibly difficult to navigate these menus at first, and it takes a great deal of time to actually start understanding them.

It took me at least an hour of trial and error to figure out how to go to my job and work, not to mention trying to figure out how to travel from one planet to the next.  That in itself was a chore.

Gameplay:

Gameplay mostly consists of menus and clicking.  Lots and lots of clicking.  For me personally, it wasn't all that interesting at first because, like I said before, menus are incredibly difficult to navigate and understand.  Once you do understand them though, everything is well placed and extremely intuitive.  Many times though, I was ready to completely drop the game because I was so frustrated by the huge learning curve for Sol Trader. 

Not only are the menus complex, but a lot of the game mechanics are a bit confusing and not exactly self explanatory, and require even more time to learn on top of the already confusing menu system.

At the time of writing, I have already invested 3+ hours into the game, and I still have an incredibly large amount to learn about this very complex game, although the layers of complexity are starting to peel of, and the true charm of the game is showing itself.

Controls:

Controlling your ship through the stars though controls nicely, and feels as well as you would expect it to.  Use the W, A, S, and D keys to turn and accelerate.

Aside from this, there isn't much to speak of, as the bulk of the game is handled in menus as stated before.

Characters:

The main focus of this game is the procedurally generated characters and societies.  Sol Trader makes some very ambitious claims about how every iteration of the game will be entirely unique.

While this is definitely true, and every time you play you will get a different set of characters, Sol Trader does fall short of its promises for a couple reasons.  Firstly, none of the characters seem truly unique.  They are all assembled of some very basic character traits, and they really have no soul and no life.  Each character is a set of compiled data to be accessed.  They have no sadness, no happiness, and absolutely no emotion in anything they talk about.  Because of this, every character feels exactly the same.  Even if they do have widely varying backgrounds, they all converse with you in the same monotonous manner.

Secondly, even though the characters each have a unique profile image to identify them by, their faces also look almost nearly identical.  The variation in character is far too subtle, and after maybe looking at 10 characters, they all start looking like each other.  This only compounds with the earlier stated issue of the characters being very similar to one another in dialogue.

Because of these, characters just start blending together and it becomes very difficult at times to keep them all straight.

With this being said though, there is a certain charm to the game worlds and its characters.  Despite the characters being pretty lifeless, I do find myself becoming attached to some of the characters.  It's like a blank slate, and you can create your own story without the constraints of a predetermined storyline.  You have the option to be a space pirate, or maybe you could be an asteroid miner, or you could even become the leader of the entire game world!  The choice is entirely up to you!

To illustrate some of the character interactions and lasting effects, let me use an example from my game time.  At one point, one of the game's characters started attacking my ship, so I had to quickly escape to the nearest planet.  After this, some conversation options opened up to tell other characters about the attack, and affect their opinion of him negatively.

Your actions will have lasting consequences on how the other characters in the game world think of you.  For example, if you quit jobs too often, everyone in the world will start to consider you, "Erratic".  Or if you complete certain tasks, this will open up conversation options to tell people about your completed tasks, and help them to think you are reliable.

And just as in real life, the more connections you have, the better.

Summary:

A really cool concept with procedurally generated societies which can be played through an endless amount of times which is held back by budget constraints, but nonetheless is endearing and incredibly ambitious.

I am sure as I put more time into this game, it will reward me even more!

If you enjoy trying new and unique game experiences, Sol Trader is something you might want to pick up!

• Pros:
• Procedurally generated society.
• Unrestricted character development and meaningful choices.
• Well designed menus and interfaces.  (Once you figure out how they work)
• SPACESHIPS!

• Cons:
• Characters are lifeless, stale, and difficult to tell apart.
• Repetitive conversations and thus, gameplay.
• Steep learning curve.

SCORE:  6.75/10

Do you agree?  Let me know what you think in the comments section below!