Let Them Trade Review: Addictive Hex City Builder & Trade Sim

Part colony sim, part city builder, part tycoon- Let Them Trade is a creative game about building up cities and optimizing trade relationships in a hexagon-based world. Balancing the needs of your people alongside economic growth creates an addictive game loop that had me saying “just one more thing” until the wee hours of the night. It is not perfect, but Let Them Trade is my personal favourite example of the genre.

Each chapter of the campaign is a scenario that teaches the player how a branch of the tech tree and economic development is meant to be used. These were a lot of fun and easy to understand, but they could have been an opportunity to tell a story or weave in some kind of narrative. One complaint I have is the lack of voice acting. I am thankful that the developers have decided against AI voice acting, but any game with this amount of dialogue should be polite enough to include voice-over. I want to hear the king's voice, even if he is the most annoying part of the game!

Upon starting the game, the player is met with a pleasant art style and somewhat whimsical design. The background music is likewise whimsical, but the simple looping tunes quickly become boring. I should have taken this as a sign of the audio design overall, given the annoying reliance on text dialogue.

What we are forced to endure is a pompous king character ordering the player to arrange his birthday party. I found the king to be incredibly annoying, yet he was the only real vehicle for meaningful exposition.

Despite these weaker elements, the game is still incredibly fun and addictive.

Let Them Trade is paradoxically both long and short at the same time.

While the regular “Play” game mode is long, the campaign is too short. Even though there is such a large tech tree, the brief campaign mode acts as a tutorial and introduces enough of the core concepts in a way that is very approachable. Let Them Trade is surprisingly inviting for new players. Accessibility in a game with so many variables is commendable.

The campaign is fun, but it is only a few hours long. There are maybe a dozen chapters, yet the game ends before you can progress very far up the tech tree! This shows that the campaign is essentially a tutorial, and the “Play” mode is where the real experience lies.

Thankfully, there is much more content to explore in the regular “Play” mode, because the campaign was ultimately a missed opportunity to deepen the experience. It would have been fun to continue completing objectives all the way through the ages.

The core gameplay loop is undeniably engaging on its own.

A very large tech tree ensures that a full playthrough can last as long as 8 hours. During my full playthrough, I had plenty of time to observe the sheer volume of variables in the systems at play on the map. I have a strong appreciation for the work that has gone into the game design. The game world is made up of hexagonal tiles in many forms. Choosing where to place your cities and each individual tile on the map is an extremely gratifying experience. You can monitor the needs of your people and the performance of your cities in real time, and it feels rewarding to achieve the perfect, or at least optimal, balance.

That rewarding gameplay loop is a lot of fun while you are first establishing your cities, but it quickly becomes challenging as your civilization progresses through the tech tree. The player is forced to address the different needs of peasants, workers, citizens, and eventually aristocrats, and it can be quite hard to succeed. That final, top part of the tree is the most fun. When my small empire had stretched across the map and dominated every resource, the sense of satisfaction was undeniable.

After an 8-hour examination of the game, I feel confident recommending Let Them Trade to any fans of contemporary city builders or colony sims. Text dialogue aside, the presentation is easy on the eyes, with a pleasant upbeat soundtrack, and, most importantly, the gameplay is easy to learn yet hard to master. At the end of the day, the time investment and satisfying payoff are exactly the feeling every tycoon or city builder game should