.FLYINGHEAD WE GOT GAME!
.TITLE Set sail with the tradewinds at your back
.AUTHOR James Booth
.SUMMARY Aaah, the salty spray of the sea air. The deck rolling under your feet. The sound of the sails snapping in the wind. This is the life of a merchant trader. This can be your life too, with Tradewinds for Palm and Pocket PC from Astraware. Is this game worthy of a berth on your handheld? The only way you’ll know is to read this article by Senior Technical Editor (and, now, ship’s captain) James Booth.
.OTHER
Aaah, the salty spray of the sea air. The deck rolling under your feet. The sound of the sails snapping in the wind. This is the life of a merchant trader. This can be your life too, with Tradewinds for Palm and Pocket PC from Astraware.
.H1 On the manifest
Tradewinds is a game of merchant trading based in the 1860s on the high seas of Southeast Asia. The ultimate goal of the game is to amass $1 billion in gold and retire at the rank of Tai Pan.
.CALLOUT A light, simple game, packed full of fun.
You have the choice of four different characters to play in Tradewinds, as shown in Figure A, each with their own strengths and weaknesses.
.FIGPAIR A Tradewinds offers four characters that you can play.
Some start with more money than others, some actually start in debt. Some have a solid reputation, others are borderline criminal, and one is an outright pirate.
.BREAK_EMAIL Har matey! If you be wantin’ to read the rest of this here review, you’ll have to sail right through this link by tappin’ yer bloody sword right ‘ere.
There are four permanent settlements that you can trade at in Tradewinds and one hidden, mobile outpost: the outlaw city of Shangri-La. Figure B shows a map of the play world.
.FIGPAIR B This map shows the Tradewinds world.
Whether or not you have access to Shangri-La depends largely upon which character you choose. Some have immediate access; other will have to learn its location from vanquished pirates or tavern gossip.
Each town has a market for trading goods, but otherwise varies in the other shops they offer. Some towns will have a shipyard for the repair, outfitting, and purchase of your ships, taverns for gossip, and warehouses for storage. There is also a Port Authority for the necessary bureaucracy, banks, and the money lender, who is, in reality, a loan shark. Figure C shows the town of Jia-Ching.
.FIGPAIR C Jia-Ching is representative of the towns in Tradewinds.
Tradeable goods are kept pretty simple, as you can see in Figure D. There are general goods, arms, silk, and the illegal Dream Dust. Trading in Dream Dust can offer high returns, but watch out for the Port Authority. If they catch you, they’ll seize your cargo.
.FIGPAIR D Tradewinds keeps the market simple.
In your quest for fame and fortune, you’ll encounter pirates on the high seas. By arming your ships, you can stand and fight like the brave ship is doing in Figure D and collect a tidy bounty on your defeated foes, or flee in order to save your hide. You can also dump your cargo as pay-off for the pirates to induce them to let you go.
.FIGPAIR E Give ’em whatfor!
The screens in Tradewinds are animated in full color graphics with ambient sounds and a musical background track. You have the option to save your game at any point and come back to it later, or Tradewinds will save your place when you exit. Once you amass $1 billion in net worth, you’re given the opportunity to retire, or you can continue the game up to $2 billion, at which point I was forced to retire. In addition, you can trade high scores with other players on Astraware’s site.
.H1 Market value
I had a great time playing Tradewinds. For me, it was one of those "just can’t put it down" games. Its simple interface is easy to master; the real skill lies in your business acumen, and in knowing when to fight, and when to run.
By having four characters, each with their own advantages and disadvantages, Tradewinds has four times the replayability. Fluctuating market prices and random pirate encounters only add to the uniqueness of each game.
Tradewinds reminds me a lot of the PC game Tortuga: Pirates of the New World, by Ascaron, set in the Caribbean. Speaking of PC games, Tradewinds is actually a handheld port of Sandlot Games’ Tradewinds for the PC. With its light system requirements, the PC version could even be played on a laptop, making Tradewinds a triple threat. To my knowledge though, games cannot be traded between the various platforms.
I give Tradewinds from Astraware 4 out of 5. It’s a light, simple game, packed full of fun. It doesn’t require a lot of intense thinking, you can run through an entire career in one evening, and you can come back to it again and again. It definitely has a permanent place on my Zodiac.
There are only a few improvements I’d like to see in Tradewinds. The first is full screen support for devices like the T3 and my Zodiac. The second is the ability to capture pirate vessels, or at the very least commission a ship to be built, as the availability of new ships at the shipyards is a bit random.
And finally, I’d like to see the ability to change your destination after a pirate encounter, as you may be headed to a destination without a shipyard and suddenly find yourself in need of repairs. These are really only enhancements to what is already a great game, but would make it "Totally awesome, Dude."
.RATING 4
.BEGIN_SIDEBAR
.H1 Product availability and resources
For more information on Tradewinds and other Astraware products, visit http://www.astraware.com.
For more information on Sandlot Games, visit http://www.sandlotgames.com.
For more information on Tortuga: Pirates of the New World, visit http://www.ascaron.com/gb/gb_tortuga/gb_tortuga_frameset_ie.html.
For more information on the palmOne Tungsten T3, visit http://www.palmone.com.
For more information on the Tapwave Zodiac, visit http://www.tapwave.com.
.END_SIDEBAR
.BIO
