The Hunger for More: Merchant 64 Review
Merchant 64 by SuitNtie, all images by me
Are you old enough to remember Dope Wars?
Dope Wars was a simple game about buying cheap drugs, flying around the US to offload them, and working your way up until you had the purchasing power to deal cocaine–all while managing the risk of getting busted or blasted by the cops, of course. It was built on a simple, but addictive, foundation of watching numbers go up. This basic concept has since become its own genre. Merchant 64, the subject of today’s review, sits firmly in that tradition, and while mechanically it doesn’t do much different than Dope Wars, I’ve never played one of these that had set dressing this charming.
In Merchant 64, you’ll start out by peddling “junk,” eventually upgrade to “stuff,” and finally graduate to “goods” (each step up costs more but has the potential for greater profits). After filling your low poly backpack, you’ll bounce between the same three towns until you make enough to buy entry into Merchant Land. Money isn’t everything, it won’t get you into heaven–but it will get you to the ending credits.
Your entrepreneurial journey is complicated by a couple factors. The market prices, people looking to make deals, and loose items to scavenge won’t reset until after you’ve slept or moved. This means you won’t be able to camp out in the safety of the wilderness, casually collecting junk, and only return to town when financial freedom is assured. Believe me, I tried.
Merchant 64 has an unavoidable slow opening and I imagine many players will give up in the first half hour. This is only natural. 20% of businesses fail in their first year. The grind is only exacerbated by the constant, looming threat of thievery.
Changing locations requires resting, and if you can’t afford a bed, your only option will be to get cozy on the cobblestone or bench. This leads to getting robbed–a lot. The local inns provide protection but, like everything else, that costs money (money you don’t have if sleeping on the street is a serious consideration). I understand why the mechanic is there and the game desperately needs some sort of conflict like this, but when you’re acquiring junk for one gold and selling it for two, losing a few dollars here and there can feel downright devastating. Two Steps Forward, One Step Back 64. It turns out the most important investment our little, blue-haired hero can make is buying a gun.
However, if you stick with the rat race long enough to overcome that initial hurdle, your fortune should begin to grow exponentially. Offloading a stash you’ve been lugging around for maximum profits always feels great. Going from barely scraping by to purchasing game-changing upgrades is rewarding enough to justify the suffering it took to get there. Of course, it all still amounts to watching a number go up–but now that number is BIG.
A word of warning, be careful when clicking through prompts or you might accidentally sell something you didn’t mean to. You’re not actually locked to these dialogue boxes–you don’t need to cancel out.
The art of negotiation, know when to walk away.
SuitNtie, the lone developer behind Merchant 64, has a background in 3D modeling and it shows. I recommend throwing on the included CRT filter and basking in the happy glow like it’s 1999 and games don’t cost 80 dollars (yeah, yeah, I know some did). Occasionally, we’re treated to a dynamic camera angle to get a better view of the adorable gardens and courtyards. Even if the tasks the characters perform get repetitive, I never got sick of looking at the world they inhabit. I also didn’t encounter a single glitch or performance issue.
The soundtrack, while sparse, is upbeat and somehow managed to only get mildly stale during my two hour and 44 minute playthrough–not moldy, more like the sort of bread you’d make French toast out of. Still, it would have benefited from a couple more songs, and with how rapidly you change screens (the music starts over from the beginning each time you enter an area), the score may have worked better in a playlist rather than being locked to locations.
You’ll be able to hit credits in two hours and 100% it in three (I purchased all the optional upgrades but only unlocked 77% of the Steam achievements). Don’t worry, the editor in me is very aware of how many percentages I’ve thrown around in this review–but bro, we gotta get those numbers up. A New Game Plus option would have been a nice feature so I could keep my powerful tools and steamroll my way to the other endings. Merchant 64 might suffer some of the pitfalls common from a dev at the beginning of their indie career, but the fact that nearly all my complaints can be summed up as “I want more of everything” means they probably did something right.
68/100
*This review was conducted using a Steam key provided by the developer.*
If you’d like more insight into the development of Merchant 64, I interviewed its creator a couple months ago. You can find my interview with him here: https://www.tactical-reload.com/interviews/suitntie-interview