July 23, 2023 - Day 204 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 223

Game: Merchant of the Skies

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Apr 17, 2020
Library Date: Jul 18, 2023
Unplayed: 5d
Playtime: 48m

I played yesterday, but due to some unexpected surprises, the review is super-late today.

The sixth review for this month's Humble Choice bundle is Merchant of the Skies. It has airships! It has floating sky islands! It has trading! It has pixel-art... again?

This time, your in-game avatar is literally Lemming-sized pixels (ask your great-grandparent).

I was initially frustrated by encountering another pixel-art game, but Merchant of the Skies had other frustrations in store.

This is not a game that teaches you how to play it; when I was as exhausted as I was feeling last night, poking around at things trying to understand what it was I was supposed to do did not spark joy.

Oddly enough, as I kept poking away at it, trying to run down the clock, the underlying gameplay mechanics began to reveal themselves, and the gameplay was enough to keep me playing for 45 minutes.

This is the kind of thing I was talking about in my Kraken Academy!! review. Pixel art isn't a bad thing, per se, if the gameplay supports it, and in the case of Merchant of the Skies, it works.

To the game itself. You have inherited an airship, and your job is to fly from island to island, on a top-down map, buying and selling things, and trading your way to untold riches.

It's basically a capitalism/work simulator. At first, unlocking the map and finding different islands felt interesting, but it became monotonous fairly quickly.

There are no enemies to attack you in the air, no air piracy. The only real challenges are trying not to run out of gold, and trying to make it to the nearest island without running out of energy, because if your airship runs out of energy, you're doomed!

Actually, you're not. You just get towed to the nearest energy station to buy a refill.

Unfortunately for Merchant of the Skies, there are other capitalism simulators that are more fun.

But kudos for rising above the pixel art, in any case.

Merchant of the Skies was ultimately a bit:

2: Meh

#MerchantOfTheSkies #PixelArt #Trading #HumbleChoice #MastodonGaming #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

Playing "Merchant of the Skies", and enjoying the twist where the best way to advance is shifting strategies from "traveling merchant" to "value-added manufacturer"

#MerchantOfTheSkies