Merchant of the Skies

TL;DR: This is "baby's first merchant game" and perfect both in theme and complexity for ages 8-13. If you're looking for a 0-violence, 0-explicit-content, feel-good experience for your child - this is a very good pick. ---- Picked it up on being an exlplore-type mercantile simulator with nice pixel graphics. All the promise from the screenshots and promo video are 100% delivered. The characters are all well-meaning, nice, mostly-human beings without a shred of hidden agenda. There is no innuendo, gags are harmless, no fighting and everyone seems to get along with everyone. Even a boss battle is done via an easy version of Mastermind and it's all good-natured fun times. The mercantile mechanics are a bit barebones and become quite easy to exploit once you get the hang of things. The market does not adjust to your actions (except the bazaar, but that's hardly your main engagement), you earn more through radiant quests than running supply-demand routes. Early game can be a bit challenging in the exploration department and managing your inventory, but by the time you get to the second-tier ships it's all smooth sailing. World lore is sparse, but imaginative and lets you run with your own head-canon. The story itself is just a series of missions to fulfill that are hard enough to make you struggle just a bit in the early-to-mid game and built so that you need to engage with most of the mechanics. Endgame is unfortunately a disappointment, as the upkeep costs are balanced for the early and mid game. There is no scaling to them so by the time you get to finance a small company running a single automated gemstone mine with one ship servicing just one trader that buys those for a good price - you've won the economy game and the challenge dissipates. The exploration challenge disappears even sooner - once you get second-tier ships. All in all I still recommend it for the early and midgame fun as well as graphics, fun little stories and absolute non-violence.