Silk Reviews

Very immersive trading simulator, where you manually travel across the entire Silk Road. It is minimalistic, and allows you to experience the immense journey that is ancient Silk Road trading. Also pretty cool to see the other travellers whom you can take along on your team, especially because every place has a mix of locals and people from far away, with pretty drawings giving a lot of personality to represent them.

This is a fun game! This review is specifically focused on the Traveler destiny. As a non-"Gamer" attempting to provide context for other non-"Gamers", this game is spiritually similar to the Oregon Trail, if the Oregon Trail was open-world. You manage supplies (provisions) and livestock, which are necessary (or helpful) for the journey, while also managing/trading for trade goods (Silver, Wool, Spices, Silk). You can take any path you like (or no path at all), visit as many cities/towns/shrines/camps/ruins as you want (or none of them). You can just take a cute little tour of the Silk Road region and fully ignore the destiny tasks (still gotta watch those provisions though!) - which is also really fun, because there's a lot of research that has gone into the history of this region, and the pre-Medieval Silk Road as a phenomena, and the dedication to historicity is so charming and fun (the fast-fact voiceovers at most of the cities/large settlements/shrines of note are awesome!). [side note - I did study the Mediterranean Bronze Age at the postgraduate level, so while this is a bit beyond my scope of time and region, I am specifically someone who appreciates historical research and it is something that actively factors in to my appreciation of media.] The gameplay is pretty simple, once you "get" what is going on - go from here to there, trade when the trading is good, make sure your caravan is supplied for the journey. However, the myriad potential travel paths, trade good value fluctuations from region to region (even the intra-regional fluctuations between cities, towns, fortresses, camps, etc), regional reputation system, random/side events (battle/bandit encounters, abandoned wagons/hermits, horse/camel encounters), advisor system and leveling, and supply management (provisions vs livestock) provide a lot of nuance for someone who wants a bit more of a deeper experience that just "Trademaxxing Simulator 200 AD Edition". The game really doesn't hold your hand - there is no tutorial, it just says "here are your buttons! ok, bye!" I hadn't realized how much I had come to expect games to be heavy handed on tutorials and explanations, and it was actually really refreshing to have to figure gameplay out for myself with trial and error. I found it frustrating in a way that really exercised my brain, in a way many modern games take great pains to try and avoid. It's just /refreshing/ to have to figure out what to do, instead of spending two hours having an NPC lecture me directly on what buttons to press when. It's designed to be the kind of game you can take notes for, like, with a pen and paper, which is an extra layer of fun (and can be immersive if you let it - write about each settlement's trade options like you ARE your character chronicling their Silk Road expedition). If you do need some help, there's a SUPER charming and well-written guide in an old-school narrative style available on Steam, and the game developers at ihobo have a manual reminiscent of the old-school game booklet manuals available on their website, along with a full map (side note - "Silk" as a title is pretty hard to Google, but "Silk Wilderness Adventures" provides much better results!). The graphic style (which I've seen elsewhere described as "simple, but not low-effort") and the "figure it out!" ethos of the gameplay have made me REALLY interested in this 80s style of RPG, which it was specifically designed to emulate. I greatly enjoyed my first playthrough of the Traveler destiny and will be trying out the others soon! I would love More Games Like This!