Sol Trader

Its a very complex and interesting space sim. Very dynamic open procedurally generated ETC and very very cool! Worth the price i should say.

You generate your character the universe and explore collect money ETC. its a real awesome adventure game. No one game is the same.

I like this game, but it takes a lot to get it started. The tutorial is helpful, but there are many things that the tutorial leaves out. For instance, to ask someone about another person, you have to click on the person's (who you are asking about} portrait and then hit filter. Then you can inquire about them to the person you are chatting with. You have to have them pinned to do this.

This is one example of something the tutorial missed. If you want to get really into this game, it is worth it. The creator made some youtube videos showing how to play. I watched the first episode only and it helped immensely.

Anyway, I like this game a lot. It reminds me or Escape Velocity. It has very few ships (less than 10) and focuses heavily on making relationships and diplomacy. I might be a bit disappointed if I paid 20 dollars, but I paid 5. This might be because I'm not super into diplomacy/relationship games. If you like games with diplomacy/relationship building, then this game is is 1,000% worth buying full price. If you want to float around, mine, and do missions, then scoop it up on sale.

Oh this game...
This is NOT a space sim as you might be expecting. If you expect flying, trading and shooting, then you might not like the game.
This is more of a ... a ... political simulator? ... private detective simulator? ... trading simulator? ... relationships simulator?

This game is unique and extremely ambitious. The game is challenging to understand, as it is hard to communicate the mechanics of the game properly. I think the idea is well done, but the difficulty of presenting the system makes the game look borring. At this point I can't imagine how it could be done better.
If you get used to the system it is quite enjoyable.

I have spent about 7 hours just talking with NPC in this game, working on my career and making friends, I bought a space ship and never used it.

I can't offer pros and cons as this game is incomparable. Except that from Steam page it appears like typical space trade/fighter sim, and it is not that.

An incredibly cool proof of concept which I'd like to see adapted into some other game(s). The conversation systems, reputation and alliance systems, and the way characters, social networks, and backstories are procedurally generated, is thoughtful and fascinating; but the presentation is so bland and sterile, and the other play mechanics so rudimentary, that I couldn't stick with the game.

Worth playing around with if you're interested in seeing complex systems in action, but otherwise probably not worth your time.

This game is for sure different. I went into it with the right mindset - read some reviews to get it, but this game is more like a detective simulation than a space-pilot simulation. Yes, you can guy goods and make money flying around trading them. You can be a space-taxi, too.

But really the main gameplay loop here is flying around and talking to people - there are 1000 people in the universe and they're all somewhat simulated, they live and move around the universe and make their own friends and enemies - and as a space detective you will probably want to talk to most of them.

Maybe you have a passenger on your ship who wants to meet someone, and you need to fly around asking people (like - workers at space ports, people at bars etc) if they know your target. Do they know someone who knows your target? OK where is that person? Where do they work? Now go to that place, and ask more people if they know your target - eventually someone is friends with them, and maybe will tell you where your target is, or maybe you just randomly run into them.

Either way, it's a lot of talking to random people buttering them up (gaining favor through a kinda conversation minigame) and then hoping you can untangle the social web and find whoever it is you are looking for. The topics you talk about are either generic ("How is work?") or can be about people - everything that happens in the game-world is a 'fact' and you can spread it by telling people. You learn facts by talking to people, then use those facts to gain favor with people in order to get them to tell you more facts about other people.

That's the game. It's fun, kind of a mindless puzzler with some space trading/taxi'ing bits where you talk to everyone about everything you can. I think it'd be better if there was more outside of the detective-stuff (which to me feels like 75% of the game, would be better at like 25%), or alternatively if the detective-stuff was actually the focus of the game and was deeper, so that your conversation topics mattered instead of just clicking topics to share facts.

Few experiences deliver anything as unique and fascinating as Sol Trader.
It boasts one of the most elaborate character relationship systems I've ever seen. I'd love to see how it could be deepened by making characters feel like they're a little more than who and what they know, but honestly that's just me wanting a good thing to be even better.

This game delivers exactly what it set out to do: a fresh take on character relationships built on an impressively complex system of social politics and intergalactic networking.

This review is for v1.3 which I have played for over 50 hrs now. I liked the concept alot and was very interested in the random gen of characters in a sci-fi world. The results however, are awkward and flawed gameplay that causes difficulty in completing missions or achieving goals. I started my char at age 18 and hope than when I replay at 25 I will get better results, but in the game I played most of the businesses in most of the cities has nobody working in them EVER. Since my chosen lifetime goal was to visit every city in the solar system, this became impossible when nobody ever showed up for work at either of the Outer Alliance Embassies I found. I even tracked them down in the bars, the people who had the embassy jobs and befriended them and even became intimate with one so I could try to use the MEET ME btn that lights up when your close enough to someone. So, I went to the embassy he worked at and told him to meet me and his button greyed out and said that he got my request and he never showed up and his button stayed stuck in greyed out inactive mode no matter how many time I chatted with him afterwards. I have had similiar problems getting and selling things since usually there is no one working at those businesses either. I have revisited the cities with the embassies for 50 hrs now with no one EVER being there. This make my chosen goal impossible. So, I proceeded to do mining and other things, buying new ships and trading ore and amassing a ton of money, doing a ton of favour missions for people. I have also had a problem with any passenger missions since I cant seem to get anyone to follow me and get on the ship in order to transport them anywhere. So, my feedback is that random generation without enough EXCEPTIONS or controls to set a functional enviroment that enables easy play, IS A BAD IDEA. Having nobody working in places that a player needs to access to achieve goals because the game randomly gave those jobs to characters who like to drink all day and dont want to work... THIS IS BAD. These glitches that make the game very clunky and awkward to play could be fixed and I hope they will be.. but I see the developer is off to make a new game so I guess we are stuck with this flawed game that is not really worth buying, unless you like frustration.

Added after further play:
More problems... You cant get anyone to follow you on passenger missions, if you get killed and eject to a planet, then try to talk to anyone anywhere you get a error/crash and cant play the game anymore. If you kill the pirate that is attacking you, and anyone finds out about the incident, you get a huge Morality penalty and everyone on that planet soon thinks your a scoundrel for defending yourself, If you befriend the wrong person you get a huge morality penalty and everyone thinks your a scoundrel simply for knowing the wrong person, the autosave overwrites any saves the player has made and you cant get back to previous saves so you get stuck with a horrible event and cant go back to a previous time. All of these problems combined make gameplay very frustrating.

It's as if Crusader Kings 2, Space Rangers, and Dwarf Fortress had an orgy, and now no one knows who the parent is.

It has the most ingenious idea for conversation modeling and social network modelling I have ever seen. It isn't a perfectly polished or balanced thing but I'm so glad that it exists. It feels like a successful thesis, for someone who thought deep and hard about what it would mean to create a truly dynamic world with interacting agents. Who looked at every static, signpost NPC and fetch quest and decided to try and seriously solve it once and for all.

Even if this game isn't perfect, I can pretty much guarantee that some of the ideas being shown off here are going to inspire other game developers who are trying to sove the riddle of dynamic narrative. For me, anyway, that alone makes it worth buying.

I really like the concept of this game - some sort of a career simulator in a futuristic world, with elements of economy and networking. This is what I thought I was getting into when I bought this game and started playing. However, I ended up getting very bored very quickly.

To my disappointment, the game ended up being all about talking to people, getting them to trust and like you, so they ask you to do all sorts of missions for them, usually going back and forth between places or getting information about people they know. In my book, this type of game would be defined as "a gossip simulator". No matter where you are, the main gameplay mechanic is choosing an AI to talk to, so you can impress it in order to complete one of many boring types of missions. /yawn

You can also get a job, except the mechanism seems confusing, to say the least. Instead of getting to your work place and have some activity the game would present you as your supposed job, you have to "get owed" hours first, which means waiting... and waiting... and waiting... I suppose it was designed like that to let you do other things while having a job, but it just doesn't make sense to me. None of it.

I suggest avoiding this game, as it hardly offers any fun, if at all. If you're really curious about it, wait for it to go on sale, and even then, I'd suggest not expecting much.

This game is unique in that it is more about people, relationships and information gathering than a more typical space exploration or combat orientated game. There is some exploration, mining, trading and combat but so far I have been so engrossed with just meeting people and doing missions that I have yet to even shoot at anything with my space ship. The game does a great job of creating a dynamic living universe of charaters that move about from their homes and jobs to the local bars and space ports on the various planets. The portraits of the various characters are also dynamically created but often they don't differ enough to make it easy to distinguish between who is who looks-wise. More distinctive looking portraits would be nice. I would definately recommend this game if you are looking for something a little different to your typical space game.

Neat game in theory, less so in practice. The gameplay is fairly shallow and repetitive and there's a lot of waiting around either in space travel or waiting for time to pass in areas where you can't sleep. The maps are somewhat confusing (tip: there are multiple areas each with their own map) and interaction with space objects is somewhat confusing (tip: the blue text indicates a planet while the green text indicates a station that teleports you to another station. Each station usually has one local planet nearby).

The background is fairly pretty, but most of the faces look exactly the same and the music is unobtrusive at best.

Might be worth $5 as something to play around with to learn about the concepts, but $20 is a steep ask.

For a one man dev team you did something really special here and I hope the dev continues with this diamond in the rough.
I like the focus on connections between people and how you have to use them to your advantage.

This one is worth a least a go or two and I do not regret my purchase.
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What you can do: Form relationships and advance your career as a pirate, politcian, diplomat, naval officer.

What I'd like to see: More attention on the space aspect of everything such as stations, being able to perhaps purchase or build a station(an example would be a mining station in which you can hire people to mine asteroids for profit)
Overall I'd like to see the scope of the game magnified but first I'd rather the dev concentrate on getting what he has now up to snuff, the UI is good but feels clunky and there are some features that aren't in the game (player marriages, children and the like) due to some bug related to those portions of the game.

Support this dev as he clearly cares enough about the game, and remember he is just one person

Very cool concept and design. The interplay between NPCs is groundbreaking in my experience. Don't let 'mixed reviews' deter you, this is worth playingif it seems at all interesting to you! Looking forward to further development, I'm hooked!

Interesting concept. It's not that difficult to get into a situation where you are stuck though. I got a game where I started out in a place where there were only 2 other people neither of which had missions they were willing to give me and no one would answer requests to come meet me so I could borrow a ship.

I could challenge an 8 year old to a drinking competition and arm wrestling though so that was pretty cool.

I had the good fortune to hear Chris Parsons (developer) deliver a talk on how not to launch a game at EGX2016. As well as the valuable information in his talk, it prompted me to come and visit the Sol Trader stand, try the game out and subsequently buy it when I got home.

Sure, there's room for improvement and Chris was the first to acknowledge that, but once you appreciate the depth that the core game delivers, it's hard to be over critical.

The game generates a database of more than a thousand people, generated from hundreds of (in-game) years of interactions between families of generated characters by creating a potted history for each person. But deeper than this: while the individual histories are universal in the game, each individual character is not universally aware of every fact, and it is only through interractions between characters that information is revealed and can be used for better or worse. In essence, since it generates histories for characters, it's basically procedurally generating stories based on a huge randomly seeded cast of characters in a universe where you play your part and your choices ultimately affect how characters perceive you and other characters in the game.

The game isn't a 3D, voiced, open world if that's the kind of game you're looking for, but rather well presented panels of information about characters, planets, ships, tasks etc, interpersed with 2D space navigation, mining and combat when in a ship. If you don't like text-heavy games, this might not be the one for you, but if you appreciate seemingly autonomous universes with rabbit-hole-like depth, you should definitely give this a try.

Looking forward to seeing what future updates (and future games) bring.

The effort that has been put into generating the characters, their stories and family trees is impressive, and comparisons to Dwarf Fortress are honestly earned. Unfortunately, our interaction with this painstakingly generated society doesn't feel quite done yet.

Most non-ship activities are based around a conversation mini-game that is equal parts innovative and monotonous, in the sense that I enjoy doing it, but not quite as much as the game demands. The opportunities that open up from making friends are fun, but I'd like to see this taken further (eg player partnerships, marriages, divorces etc).

The non-conversation parts of the game aren't well fleshed out yet. I would rate the ship/trade-centric bits as roughly similar to Endless Sky, Transcendence and any number of other such games. Maybe this isn't seen by the devs as an important part of the gameplay, but I would disagree. I would love for the space-shippery to be more compelling than it is.

I have mixed feelings about recommending this game, because in a lot of ways it feels like an Early Access game (without the egregious bugs though, which is an important distinction). But it looks to me like the developers are responsive and still working hard on it, and decent modding support looks to be appearing soon.

So in summary: it's worth having a look at for the things it's trying (and sometimes succeeding) to do, but don't expect too much right now. Buy it on sale.

Think Dwarf fortress in space, with less fortress and more talking to dwarves.

Like DF, Sol Trader generates a procedural history at the beginning of the game. Where Sol Trader differs is that it generates a massive number of NPCs, living and dead, all of whom have complex relationships and histories, and none of which you know. Figuring out those relationships and sabotaging them to mess with how NPCs see one another and you is the focus of the game. Yes there's space combat, piracy, mining, etc. but what makes Sol Trader special is its focus on who you know, what you know about them, and how you're going to use the things you know to get what you want.

Character creation is the process if figuring out who you are in the universe it has generated for you, picking broadly from your lineage, skills, and most importantly, choosing your win condition. From there, its up to you how you wish to proceed.

You'll probably start by developing a basic strategy based on the win condition you've selected. Decided to be president? Well, there's already a president. Maybe you want to capture the hearts and minds of the public. Maybe you want to dig up some dirt on the current president. Maybe you want to get in good with the criminal underground or the military and stage a hostile takeover. All of these things are possible, but how easy they are and which one you choose is going to be determined both by your overall game plan, and the things you discover about the people in the universe.

While the UI can be confusing at times and definately needs some work, the core conversation minigame and the impressive detailed story the game generates for each and every character weaves something that's capable of generating all sorts of space epics with you at the center. Whether its your rise to political power, takeover of a pirate gang, establishing a financial juggernaut, or just getting filthy rich, the path you choose and its main characters will be determined by you, based upon who you get along with, who you investigate, who you trust, who you backstab, and who you are.

If you like political thrillers and don't mind a somewhat clunky interface, its well worth the twenty bucks. It's guaranteed to generate you an endless supply for interesting scifi stories.

For five hours, I disliked Sol Trader. I started a character, borrowed a ship from a friend, then found that no one would offer me missions that required a ship. Any missions I could get were in the same city, and all paid less than $100. So I thought to myself, "Another game with a cruddy mission system." I bought a couple tons of food, flew to Venus, and sold them for a small profit. Noting that contraband was cheap, I carted this back to Earth. I found my first milk run. Another milk run from Venus to Mars followed. All this while, I thought that the game was technically well put together, but criminally boring.
I asked for a refund from Steam. That is how bored I was. When Steam said no (on account of my 5 hours of gameplay), I figured I would give the game one last try. Luckily, this was the moment that I realised that I'd been playing the game all wrong. I bumped into an old friend (from my characters history) who asked me to track someone down for them. They were offering an astonishing $2000 for the job! I figured, "Hey, why not. I'll be able to buy my own ship if I can earn that money."
The next half hour or so of my life was spent visiting bars, pubs, hotels, and markets around the inner solar system, chatting with everyone remotely connected to my target. New people brought new information and new leads. Eventually, I found someone in London who told me that my target had been on her way to Ceres last time she had seen them. Back in my borrowed ship, and out to Ceres I went! A couple of questions at the starport and I was directed to a local hotel. Finally, there she was! I had found my target, and received my pay! With this, I had found my calling in this game. I would be a private investigator, tracking down people and information for money!
I bought myself a small ship, installed a passenger cabin so I had a place to sleep that wouldn't cost me anything per night, and found a new job. The more people I met, the more jobs became available.
I'm not far into this game, but I am truly enjoying it. It requires a different approach to the average spaceship game, and having an imagination to build out the details that the game gives you will definitely help. If you want to try something different, strap on your social boots, and start meeting everyone in the solar system!

When I heard about this game in early June 2016 from Rock, Paper, Shotgun, described as being a meeting of Dwarf Fortress and Elite, I was very intrigued, and while I don't think it has completely lived up to that description as of yet, over the past few weeks, I've played a game which I've enjoyed and see an ambitious future for.

Even at this point, the game which is starting to create some interesting stories and emergent situations within individual games. It is also an open-ended game that has some predefined suggested goals, but which also has enough freedom for the player to create their own criteria for personal victory. Let's say you pick the goal of becoming wealthy... you aren't prohibited or discouraged from pursuing other goals like political power, becoming a criminal, becoming universally well-known or any other thing you want to be in that particular iteration of the procedurally generated Solar System. With each major iteration, it seems that there are increasing ways to explore and interact with the game to create your own path to personal victory.

The game is also highly moddable (I've been in and played around with a lot of the files to see what I could do), and in the near future, like Crusader Kings II and Mount & Blade: Warband lend themselves to fantasy-based conversion mods, I can see a LOT of conversion mods for a number of different sci-fi universes popping up with this game in the future.

The developer is also very communicative and open to suggestions as well as being quick to deal with technical issues and as of now the game is very stable.

So in short, it is fun and engaging now, and it is getting better all the time.

This game got my interest piqued shortly after I first got wind of its development. And that curiosity is still there, but as of yet not completely satisfied by the game. It is a bit rough around the edges and at points misses depth. However, the dev is extremely active in both the community and churning out daily new builds. That, in my opinion is a very big plus and a sign that the game is moving in the right direction.

I keep coming back to the game and my story in it because the game, for me, scratches the itch of actually being a person within a sci-fi world.

I would, in it's current state, recommend buying it, IF, and only IF you are willing to give the dev some feedback and if you can bring up some patience in him bringing the game to the next level. Jumping in to this as a completely finished, polished and bug-free title is just not the way it is.

I love the concept of this one, but the game itself falls very flat in the delivery.

For it to work two things are vital;
The dialog needs to be worthwhile, after all its a game about "Who you know" The social aspect however makes fallout 4 seem verbose. You socialise by clicking on canned, recycled options. Most of the time its " I know *name*" and thats about it. Theres no conversations taking place, no getting to know a well developed personality. Great idea, poor delivery.

The other is the space part of the game. This is just as bad if not worse than the social aspect. The controls are on par with asteroids, you either spin in place, or zoom off too quickly to control. The brake seems to somehow make you go faster. There is also a complete lack of any kind of map.

I really wish that I could recomend this one, as the idea is fantastic, but as I said, the actual game born from it, is at best, boring and clunky.

The game, in it's current state, is unique and fun to play. It crashes more often than I'd like, especially considering that it's no longer in Beta, but the developer seems to be very active and set on fixing everything as fast as possible. He said on the main website forums that there is already an update coming out today - only one day after release.

The mining and trading parts of the game feel like mini-games that compliment the heavily emphasized social part of the game well. Although I haven't yet experienced much combat or explored very much so that might change.

Keeping track of who is who is difficult at first but gets easier as you become accustomed to each different menu - which really doesn't take very long. The game makes it easier by allowing you to rename yourself, other people, and ships. You can also 'Pin' specific people and planets for quick access.

The exploration part of the game, especially the HUD elements, are very well done and the 2D environment looks great.

I haven't played enough to really write a thorough review so I will probably come back to this review later after investing more time into the game.

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Some things to note:
It's not an RPG. At least not the type of RPG where you level up and have a bunch of skills to increase and perks and stuff like that. If that's what you're looking for you may want to pass on this game.

There are no graphics options except for fullscreen/windowed and there seems to be some type of adaptive V-SYNC on by default. You can probably turn that off with your GPU control panel.

As far as I can tell there is no way to manually save the game without exiting to the menu. There is an autosave feature which saves your game about every 10 minutes. It doesn't take long to save and exit then reload your save but a quicksave feature would be nice.

There aren't any Steam Achievements (at least not yet)
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Overall, I r8 8/8 m8s. Give it a try.

It's a unique space game based on social relationships. You can befriend people to get better deals (make sure you befriend your banker if you take a loan, it's a big difference) and even borrow ships if they like you enough. If you happen to have a rich family member and you can get on their good side you might be able to borrow a nice ship. You can get jobs, take on missions, and apparently even run for public office - my current char wants to be president, a big dream for a very modest start.

My current character was the result of an affair between two married people. His dad wants nothing to do with him, his mom is on the other end of the solar system and also wants nothing to do with him. Both of them are unreliable. The only person who gives a crap about him at the start is his half sister who lives nearby, but she's a broke factory worker with no ship or influence. So he had to take a loan to rent a starting clunker ship and another loan to buy some valuable cargo. Flying blindly into space to find a place to make a profit, he lucked onto a good trade route and soon faced the option to buy his current ship outright, or rent a bigger ship for an exhorbitant amount per day. I went with purchasing the clunker and went off to explore with my newfound rent-free freedom.

A bit rough around the edges, but it certainly has potential to be a lot of fun with post-release polish.

I don't know if I would have released it in its current state, but despite the issues I find myself strangely drawn to its gameplay. I find myself playing it even with a nasty bug I'm experiencing that makes it difficult to move around in space (due to be fixed tomorrow, according to the very responsive developer).

In short, it's unique. A rough gem.

-Update- The bug with space flight, among many others, was fixed as promised.