Let Them Trade News

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://store.steampowered.com/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. 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
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.

[h2]How To Apply[/h2]

Sign up by entering your email address here: Let Them Trade Playtest Signup Form

Stay updated. We will inform you once the playtest starts. You will get an email from us detailing the next steps.

Join our Discord community! Please join our Discord here, 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 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!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

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! 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