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Reviews for "Slavery Triangular Trade"

Well, at first I thought it's going to be just another plain idle clicker game, but very soon I was proven otherwise. This game actually requires your attention and was fun, especially in later stages when everything became a bit intense. The game's topic is also interesting, you don't see originality very often in this genre. By the way, the "Science !" popups were quite funny, too.
What I think you should improve though, is the graphical interface. In online games, you have just a couple of seconds to impress the player and both because this game has a slower start (before you get the knack of making money) and the GUI doesn't look that good, some people might just quit.

E.g. the menus are somewhat simple (plain text in semi-transparent boxes), try to decorate the buttons slightly and choose some kind of captivating background for the title screen. But the thing which quite bothers me, is the unnecessarily large log area which covers a part of the map (which is not used, but still) and the ships which sail below it all the time.
Also, in later stages you don't have the time to properly read the log, but messages pop up in high frequency. I'd suggest you to keep the text, but assign a specific colours or use icons. You can't possibly read all the messages, but because they are generic and repeat themselves, all you need is to register what kind of message it is through your lateral vision.
For example, if you saw some red text appear in the log, you'd immediately know either slave or soldier died without even reading it. Or something like "(red) ▼ Tobacco: By order of the king, prices of tobacco dropped by 20 %.", "(green) ▲Sugar: Fire in sugar factory.". Just try to make the messages recognisable at the first glance and, please, resize the oversized log area.

Just one thing that came to my mind now is that the ships sometimes bundle together and sail in one large group, so instead of constant, steady flow of goods, you get one big haul of goods which most probably won't fit in your warehouse and then several seconds of nothing. Maybe you ought to place the ships more evenly on the trade route.

In the end, there's also something like "You completed the game in 6 months, 46 years" which should probably be reversed (months aren't as important as years, which is why the years should come first).

But anyway, as I said, it's an interesting, quite enjoyable game; well done!

Sebbernery responds:

Hi !
Thank you very much for your review and your advices. It's very valuable for us, game developpers (especially for me as a beginner). I'll try to update the game later using your advices.

Thanks again !

The Vikings and the Franks had a similar trade back in the 8th and 9th century

Very unique mechanics in this game. It could be a bit better visually, but other than that I liked this game.

Hi !
Nice game ! I understunde it is from a gamejam so it was made rapidely. But to improve it I would say it lacks of sounds. Some sounds to indicate events (riots, dying slave, etc...) would help.
I have not been able to finish the game. Maybe my strategy was bad, or this game is too long.

On the historical purpose of the game, it is very interesting to show this periode of history from a global point of view, to show the big picture.
However I think it is a little "gentelly racist". This shows natives affricans as pure victims of history and not as actors of it. Actually, in triangular trade, traders company would not send soldiers to Affrica. They would send gold borrowed to a european bank, and would buy black slaves to a dominant african tribe. This was their main argument to not take the blame. They said " African tribes do enslave each other in tribe wars, we just took part of this pre-existing trade". This information is right, but it has no value to excuse slavery.

I'm going to be seconding what a lot of reviewers have said here. I like the historic/educational aspect of the game, but there are some glaring issues. My biggest though would be the extra ships. I tried the game twice in campaign mode, and both times, as I created new ships, they seemed to route to the other ships currently on the triangle instead of starting independently, leading to a coalesced blob of ship that would reach each port at the same time. Because of this, instead of a steady stream of trade, I would have a single ship carry everything, with 10 other empty ships tacked onto it, while my warehouses quickly filled to capacity again. As the game is now, the extra ships were completely useless. This could be remedied if you had a fixed amount of time that a ship would stay at the dock, perhaps, instead of being based on what it was picking up or dropping off. Just a thought.
One other tip would be, instead of starting by having to buy a soldier for 0g in europe, start with a single soldier already in Africa. After all, a lot of slavery was the result of tribes capturing other tribes, so it would make sense historically, and it would certainly streamline the start of the game, (where not much was explained).