Designed and published by Mohammed Qasrawi, and released on the 22nd February 2021 there is a lot this game needs to work on in terms of a proper tutorial, and almost nothing to guide you in this “ascend-to-the-top-like” trading game. However, let’s get into the finer details.

You wake up, exit the house, find your car, and drive around until you enter a store. A simple popup lets you know that you own the store. What an introduction to a game that has no basic tutorial. Things just pop up on the screen every time you enter a specific area, and you get shown a map with icons and titles but no explanation as to what any of these locations might be other than the hint you get from the icon itself.

I spent about 10 minutes trying to discover how to restock my store, driving around in a car that sadly wouldn’t allow me to run over pedestrians, and stumbled across Jabar, the man who was destined to help me restock my store. Money isn’t balanced at all, as you start with $100, earning about $200 more with what stock you have, and are then expected to restock or buy furniture, and unless you invest correctly at the beginning of the game, you’re better off just restarting.

In terms of actual gameplay, your sole purpose is to keep your store afloat and be able to pay your employees without going into too much debt. Like many sim-type games, you can even take out a $1000 loan from the bank, which I could never pay back because I failed to understand most of the mechanics.

I could barely afford any furniture to upgrade my store after my initial purchase of more supplies, and even with a loan, there was not much I could contribute to further this game without investing an extra 8 or so hours.

On top of trading all your general supplies and earning money you also have to keep yourself clean, well-fed, and visit the bathroom whenever necessary which you can access at your home; another location you can decorate with your hard-won earnings.

In terms of controls, there’s nothing really to add, and it suffers from a lack of background music. It’s a very basic trading simulator, as it was intended to be. The only complaint I have control-wise is the car. Drifting isn’t possible, but there is a delay when trying to drive, and a whole lot of rolling. Even when I was being extra careful and had braked more steadily, I still managed to crash into a lot of things.

As for comments on the actual design of the game, it’s made to be what it is; A trading simulator. It’s not an overly great game as it doesn’t really give you a direction and adds nothing new to the simulation game style. This game appears to still be in development, but I’m not too sure because it hasn’t been stated on the steam page. It’d be nice to see some more simple things added to the game, such as making adjustments to the map, maybe add a radio in the car for more active music, or adding more graphical details to the overall game. This would give Trade Life Simulator some extra appeal, and it could be more of an interesting game with just a few extra features, and it could potentially appeal to a wider audience.

Written by: Caitlin