GDC: Space Trader Hands-On

By Matt Dunn, USA
for www.touchgen.com

Published: March 25, 2009

I spent some time with this ambitious first-person trading game, and I like.

I came into the Space Trader: Moon Madness demo having no idea what to expect. I heard it was a 3D, first-person environment, and that’s about it. Hermitworks definitely knows their stuff. Here is a short list of what pleasantly surprised me:

1. FANTASTIC first person controls. Best I’ve ever used on an iPhone. I spent the first 5 minutes just walking around the levels without even talking to anyone in the game.

2. Great Visuals. Sure, some of the textures could have a been a bit higher in the level itself, but the lighting and design was great. Also, the NPC characters in the game had surprisingly detailed faces. Definitely not the best looking game on the iPhone, but a great start, especially if graphics updates or on the line for the future. More importantly though, it was very smooth, even on the iPhone.

3. Updates, updates, and more updates. Cameron (CEO) promised tons of features in FREE updates to the game. Achievements and trophies, better graphics, multiplayer, new locales, and most importantly, FPS COMBAT. Woot!

The game itself is all about buying and selling goods, working the market to make money, and adding to your “net worth,” which is the overall score for the game. You

Yes, I would love to sample your "warez."

do this by meeting contacts at one of three locations, and doing business with them. Along the way, you will find goods scattered throughout the locations to help add to both your net worth, and add items that you can sell to people. The game itself is limited to around 131 days, and traveling from one location to the next takes up this time. When the days are up, the game is over. Luckily you can upgrade ship engines and other things to reduce the time, but at a high price.

The game mixes things up with characters that give you both tips on how the market might be turning, and side missions to complete. It’s interesting, because at the moment Space Trader is a fairly simple game, but after a few months of updates, I can see this turning into something more along the lines of a first-person space RPG, which is pretty damn awesome.

My one issue is the lack of engaging sound in the game. At first I thought there was no sound, until I turned my volume all the way up. A game like this could really use some immersive ambient sounds to go along with the locations. It seems like many times sound effects/music are an after thought in iPhone games. In seeing how much work went into the graphics/controls, I can see how that could happen.

Space Trader: Moon Madness has been submitted to the app store, and will be released in about week at the way-too-low price of 99 cents. I will have a review out close to the release.

Review disclosure: Any games reviewed on this page may have been provided to us by the developer for the purposes of this review. Note: the resulting review score is never impeded by this fact, all opinions are that of the TouchGen reviewer and not the developer. This is in keeping with our O.A.T.S oath. Read more about O.A.T.S here

One Comment on "GDC: Space Trader Hands-On"

Scott on Wed, 25th Mar 2009 8:27 am

looks cool but are they changing the name as there is already a game called Space Trader on the app store

I understand it could be called Space Trader: First Contact and such I guess but it could cause people to grab the wrong game.

GDC: Space Trader Hands-On

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