The Trade Prince

So I decided to give this game a shot. First impression was that it had a really crappy tutorial. But after that it came together. I've been playing it all day. The increasing demands of satisfying the most complex factories while balancing trade throughput is addictive. It starts to get complex at level 7 and they say it has 100 levels. All good flow to the center planet and from there to the portal. The branching star system allows you to funnel all the production to the center planet. You must raise buildings to create goods to satisfy the mission objective. This is easy at the beginning and gets pretty complex at level 6 or 7. And they say it has 100 levels. Good luck!

This is a very specific recommend, because this game has a very niche appeal. It's an 'idle/clicker efficiency maximization game' and it isn't as smooth as it should be for the price and the experience. The fact that it's impossible to lose a scenario is nice when you're in that sort of mood. The array of choices it presents can seem overwhelming at times, but there are tools and progression strategies that help you manage that. There's a number of optimization choices that it makes available that are meaningfully different. And then there's the fact that there's no zoom controls. Orange numbers displayed with an orange planet in the background, so that it's impossible to read them. Other annoying bits of sand in an otherwise perfectly adequate (and genuinely innovative) time-killer. If you're tired, jaded, and looking for something unique, this may raise a gentle smile. There are better and more interesting games out there that offer a similar kind of challenge, but this one ...

At first light, The Trade Prince looks to be a simple idle clicker set in a Rococo themed space empire. The general idea is that you produce goods that ultimately get transported to the primary population center via a wormhole (The "Revel"). The way goods are manufactured is by ordered delivery with an ever branching prerequisite tree corresponding to its technology tier.  So, for example, in the early levels you will need to send "energy" to the Revel, so you just build the tier 1 tech "reactor" and energy is sent onto the Revel. However, if you need to send ore or glass to the Revel, then you need to [i]start[/i] with energy and then create a production chain, either on a single planet or through linking planets, to deliver the final product to the Revel.  Sounds simple enough, you just need to produce "more" of something and send it off, right? Well, just as history has shown time and time again that the solution to a political problem is never judicial... ... ... ahem....

It's hard to get going at first. But it's not as complicated as it looks. The UI functionality is actually well designed, and supports the gameplay well. It's just not obvious at first. A really important feature is the ability to instantly undo/sell any purchase without penalty. So as a beginner, you don't need to suffer any mistakes. You can freely try something out, and then change it as soon as you have a better idea. It's kind of a distilled essence of factorio. Not that factorio pioneered this essence or anything. Of course not. But I mention it because that's probably the most familiar game with the same hook. There's a good foundation here, that can be built into something more immediately accessible. I definitely recommend trying it

Just love trying to find the optimal route. If the devs are making more like this I am excited.

I applaud the effort. Looks like a single dev project with some interesting ideas. Good use of AI generated artwork (most likely Midjourney) to give the supply chain management context, character, and flavor. To the developer: The UI/UX needs more polish. I found myself often building the network backwards: starting from Revel and adding higher tiers first, then moving outwards to add the lower tier buildings to support the inner network. The UI doesn't make placing the supply chain in reverse order very easy. Following the tree when it branches out a lot to ensure I'm placing all the correct dependencies can get boggled down through the various menus. Future projects should not only keep in mind the design and gameplay elements but attempt to predict and capture the common actions a player may want to do. Still overall interested in the next endeavor from this dev.