Welcome to the future where you can trade and shoot your way into owning your own star ship. Hermitworks has updated their original release, Spacetrader with Spacetrader: Merchant Marine. This latest incarnation has you flying throughout the galaxy trading everything from iron ore to organs.

SpaceTrader has you starting out in a space port with your newly acquired trading license and little else. The first objective is to work your way into the good graces of a benefactor who will front you the money to get started. As is with most wealthy benefactors, there’s a catch, you must go and shoot someone who owes him some money first before her will help you.

When I first read about the game I was afraid that this would be the ideal game for an accountant or someone who loves to frequent flea markets so that they can sharpen their negotiating skills.  Then I had visions of joining the Ferengi nation and becoming part of the trading guild, but alas this was not the case.  This was not the case with the game. I was pleasantly surprised when no more than 15 minutes into the game I was off to shoot “The bad guys” and collect some weapons and product from him. Then it was off to begin shuttling cargo between the earth and the moon which was interesting and unique while I learned how to play the game. You learned about “bad guys” and black market trading, commodities and how to read what was the hot product and what was not.

This was great until the end of the first campaign, I had wealth and status and a good side arm and I had done it all without resorting to the black-market dregs. When the second campaign started I found myself without a side arm which was a little frustrating when I had the opportunity to go off on a small side quest and shoot more bad guys. This was the point where the game started to get a little repetitive, do get me wrong, when you play a FPS it can be very repetitive shooting the same zombie or bad guy all the time.

I found the graphics of the game a little flat for a video game that was released at the end of 2008 and the detail level matched. I actually found the audio tracks clean and pleasant and the background track was relaxing, if not hypnotic. The voice acting was a little flat for the small amount of it that was present in the game. As far as the multiplayer portion of the game I cannot comment on it as I was unable to find any servers on the internet to support head-to-head trading. When I went to the publishers site to see about support for the game in case I had to configure a parameter for multiplayer online play, their site simply said that the support portion of the site is still under construction.

Spacetrader: Merchant Marine is a fun diversion and a completely different genre than I have seen in quite some time. The game is easy to pick up and play without a lengthy learning curve and the subject is quite unique. I think that this game is a good effort from a small developer and I would recommend it as a distraction when you grow weary of shooting zombies or need a break from middle earth.