Yes, finally! We have a release date for Let Them Trade. The long wait will be over on the:

24th of July, 2025

This is when Let Them Trade will release fully. It only took us 6 years to get to this point, but here it is.

If you played the demo you can expect a lot of new & exciting stuff in the full release, like:

• The higher tiers of the research tree with new resources and production chains,
  
• A campaign mode with varied scenarios for you to play
  
• Bandits and the possibility to shush them away with your knight and their entourage
  
• A map editor and the option to share your maps with the community via the Steam workshop.

Thank you all for the amazing response to our demo so far! We are really glad you enjoy what we showed you so far.

If you like our demo, make sure you don't miss our Steam Next Fest update! This update will bring you a first look into our bandit system and bring a new use to the knights. We are really excited for your feedback on that! The update will go live on June 9th, in time with the Steam Next Fest. It will be served as an update to the regular demo.

In the meantime, if you want to stay updated and chat with our community, please join our Discord[discord.gg]! :)

Sincerely,
Spaceflower

Featues:

• Updated the third demo map. The bridge now has a use on the map!
  
• Added a castle target stock input field in addition to the slider.
  
• Added support for different keyboard layouts.
  
• Added UI scaling settings.
  
• Added an experimental city size limit to guide new players not to build cities that are too large to supply properly.
  
• Castle trade mode will no longer be turned off automatically if the player has manually used the controls beforehand.
  
• Deconstructing now refunds the coin costs.
  
• Moved knight controls to HUD (WiP). *Will be multiple knights in the future*

Bugfixes:

• Fixed more translations. Some new texts and tooltips will be translated in future updates.
  
• Fixed city transporters not taking resources away from production buildings.
  
• Fixed city transporters not delivering resources to residential buildings.
  
• Fixed arrow key navigation when opening the castle direct trade UI.
  
• Fixed tile info tooltip not vanishing.
  
• Fixed UI blocking mouse clicks after changing the language.
  
• Fixed possible crash when destroying cities while the game is paused.

Known issues:

• Some players experience graphics crashes. We are looking into it!

Fixed some translations

It's been a long way, but the time is finally here and we are happy to share the first public demo of our game Let Them Trade with you!

Since the start of the development the game went through many phases: An analogue prototype, a concept version, the first prototype in Unity, the first version in Unreal... And many more. Many versions and features were scrapped in favor of refining the game's design into something that is equally fun, understandable but still fits with the very core values of Let Them Trade.

But now, 6 years after the initial start of the project, we are finally able to show you a version of the game of which we can say "This is something we are proud of." and "This is something people will enjoy".

So, without further ado, you can play the demo here:

https://steamproxy.com/steamstore/app/3465460/Let_Them_Trade_Demo/

If you like to keep in touch with the ongoing development of Let Them Trade, feel free to join our Discord[discord.com]. This also where you can leave feedback regarding the demo. And if you liked it, please leave a positive review on Steam, it helps a lot. :)

Also a big thank you to all our playtesters, who eagerly tested early versions of this demo and gave us a lot of valuable feedback. Thank you all so much <3

Have fun playing!

Sincerely,
Spaceflower

Our current plan is to release a demo for Let Them Trade as part of the Steam Next Fest this summer. To make the game the best it can be, we want to gather as much feedback as possible—and you can help us!

As a playtester, you'll get early access to the game and provide feedback on various aspects, including gameplay, balancing, performance, translation, and more.

We aim to start the playtest at the end of February or the beginning of March. Apply now, and we'll notify you as soon as we are ready to test.

1. Sign up by entering your email address here:
[/b] Let Them Trade Playtest Signup Form[mailchi.mp]
2. Stay updated.
[/b] We will inform you once the playtest starts. You will get an email from us detailing the next steps.
3. Join our Discord community!
[/b] Please join our Discord here[discord.com], as this will be the most direct way for you to share your feedback with us!

We look forward to your help in shaping Let Them Trade! :)

Sincerely,
Spaceflower

Our composer Max went to a very unique event where a bunch of indie studios got together for the chance of recording a piece of their soundtrack with an orchestra.

Our composer Max and our developer Amadeus in the recording studios of the German Film Orchestra Babelsberg.

Usually, recording your game's soundtrack with a real orchestra is too expensive for a smaller indie studio like us to handle. That's why most composers and producers use sample libraries nowadays, where they get the sound of the real instruments recorded in multiple different variations and are then able to arrange them to their liking, all without the overhead of a real orchestra.

But having human musicians perform your music piece is still something different. The way they can articulate musical phrases, the many subtleties in their playing, the interaction between the different instrument groups and the special character of the room and the situation - that is something that is really hard to reproduce digitally. A piece recorded by a bunch of professionals will almost always sound better than one produced in your bedroom.


But how can a studio like Spaceflower afford to do this? This is where the guys over at AudioCreatures[www.audiocreatures.com] come in! They had the great idea to just book an orchestra for a whole day and then splitting this day up into multiple slots where different game studios could get the chance to have a piece of their game's soundtrack recorded. And that was the event "Live Score Berlin"

So our composer Max and our developer Amadeus headed over to Potsdam, to get our title track recorded by the "German Film Orchestra Babelsberg". They captured their thoughts and impressions in a series of videos which we cut together as some sort of mini-VLOG. Max also explains the challenges when you have to translate digitally produced music into music that's played by real people.

You can find the YouTube video below. We originally created the video with the intention of posting it on TikTok (which we also did), so desktop readers, please bring your monitors into an upright position before continuing on to watch the video!

I think the track turned out great. What do you think, should we release the full track outside of the game as well?

Sincerely,
Spaceflower

Updates may have become a bit sparse, but we have not stopped working on Let Them Trade! We will try to keep you more updated from now on, but only time will tell if we can manage. :)

Anyway, here is a small recap of what has happened since the last update:


If you have seen our last announcement post, you will know that we made a trip to Gamescom! If you don't know, Gamescom is a large games exhibition happening each year in Cologne, Germany. If I'm not mistaken, it is the biggest gaming exhibition in the world.

Our developer Amadeus and our composer Max went there to represent Spaceflower and show Let Them Trade at the booth of ByteRockers' Games.

Their feedback: Manning the booth for several days was very exhausting, but at the same time it was very fun and exciting to get the game into the hands of the players. Thank you to everyone who came by and gave the game a try!


Inspired by the feedback we got at Gamescom, we started handing out the game to even more players. We started our first Community Playtest with our loyal Discord members who waited patiently for quite some time. The playtest is still ongoing, but we already got a lot of valuable feedback!

Between a lot of bugs and still poorly-balanced features, we got a lot of positive feedback for the game, which we are of course very happy about!

If you would like to take part in a future playtest, make sure to join our Discord[discordapp.com]! We will inform you there if it's time to do another one.

In the meantime, check out this huge and amazing map one of our playtesters made with our integrated map-editor:

You wouldn't believe it, we actually worked on the game as well!

Actually, that's where most of our time went and that's also why we haven't released a development-update in quite some time. Some things took some figuring out and many things were rebuilt. And while doing that, we most often keep to ourselves, but we are slowly figuring out that working closely with the community helps us figuring out whats best for the game a lot quicker.

We will tell you more in our coming entries of our dev-diary! So make sure to follow the game and keep an eye out for new posts here on Steam!

But for now, have some scribbles:
Sincerely,
Spaceflower

Hey everyone!

Our Team has been hard at work on Let Them Trade and we're happy to say we finally got some exciting news for you!

First off, as you probably have noticed in the Steam Page, we now have a dedicated Publisher with ByteRockers' Games! That means we will have people to support us with all the work that comes with shipping an indie game title and we can focus more on making our game the best it can be.

Secondly, the news you've been waiting for:
We will be back at Gamescom 2024 with a sparkling brand new demo for you to try! We've implemented a ton of new features and updates since our last gamescom, so if you're attending we're hoping you can stop by, play the game and grab some awesome goodies!

You can find us as part of the "Home of Indies" in Hall 10.2.

For all those who cannot attend, we will be preparing a more extensive demo before our launch and can't wait for you to finally play a newer version of the game.

In the meantime, feel free to check out our Steam page for some updated screenshots and of course our new Keyart!

Thank you for your continued support and hope to see some of you at gamescom!