When it comes to the city-building genre, a lot of the time, there will be mashups within that. Against the Storm has roguelike elements, Dawnfolk and Frostpunk 2 include survival. You’ve even got your regular management sim games like Cities: Skylines II. Now we can welcome the cosy genre, with Let Them Trade, developed by Spaceflower. It’s a cute little game where you build settlements within your kingdom and help them grow. You’ve also got to manage your resources and watch out for bandits. Are you able to create an empire that’ll stand for generations? Or will you lose your head?

The major draw to Let Them Trade is its relaxing nature. So, newcomers (like myself) or even veterans to the genre might enjoy the slower vibes. It’s relaxing because not only can you trade with other cities within your kingdom, but the cities themselves will also trade with each other. Each city can manage their needs without the need for a benevolent God to micromanage. However… you’ll have to do some micromanaging. Cities will need trading routes that connect to each other and your castle. You’ll also get control of a knight who helps out with scouting the map for more tiles and getting rid of bandits. The combat is simple, with it only being a dice roll that is automatically rolled. The only thing you need to worry about is the number of infantrymen left, and the bandit hasn’t robbed traders.

It might seem a bit intimidating, but it’s really not, as Let Them Trade includes a few tutorials for newcomers or those in need of a refresher. You can also skip the tutorial and start off with the campaign, which houses scenarios for each level. What I appreciated about the campaign is the fact that it can also act as a tutorial in understanding mechanics, such as bandits, and using the resources found on the map. Each scenario is different, but you’ll use the skills you learnt previously and apply them. Sometimes, a goal isn’t explained well enough; for example, needing 50 loaves of bread in storage, but you only have potato farms, so where does the bread come from? Only to realise that you can research and then build a bakery. Luckily, each scenario shouldn’t take too long to finish, in the long run.

To give the game some credit, it’s quite forgiving when you make a mistake. Each map will have resources, such as wood, stone or coal. It’s best to create a few cities near a resource, but you only have a finite number of these. Thus, if you hit capacity, you’ve got two options: upgrade the amount via the research centre, or destroy a city. If you decide to level a city, you don’t receive all its resources and coins, but you still get some money back. One of the reasons why I don’t tend to play city-building games is the need for strategy and thinking five steps ahead. Due to the cosy and relaxing vibe of Let Them Trade, this is something that I don’t need to worry about, and I don’t lose a copious amount of time and effort.

As mentioned before, the game offers a research centre. This is where you can learn and upgrade the buildings within your kingdom. The research tree is massive; not only do you have the individual upgrades, but some even need further research to advance their output of resources. But, they don’t come free, as there is a material cost to each advancement. While most of them are quite self-explanatory in what they do, such as the ability to receive an extra knight to help with defence or scouting, others say the name of the upgrade, and that’s it, such as the tavern. The question is, what does it do? Does it increase the happiness of the citizens because they’re getting drunk? Or does it debuff the output of resources because they’re drunk? Having an explanation would help in situations to better understand what players are researching.

There aren’t many accessibility options aside from keybinding and difficulty when playing in sandbox mode. During my time with Let Them Trade, I encountered some bugs and glitches. The campaign mode progress reset itself onetime, and thus, I had to begin from the start again. While each scenario doesn’t take too long to complete, it’s more frustrating having to start over because of this. Other issues include the UI buttons vanishing, with the only way to bring them back being by using another UI pop-up. Whenever a dialogue box shows up, attached to it is the 2D model of the speaker, and sometimes it’s the incorrect one. So, sometimes if it was the king talking, the bandit would show up instead. Even with these issues, overall, Let Them Trade is a decent game if you’ve been itching to give the city-building genre a go.