Vector Trader

Vector Trader is a space trading and combat game, a love letter to the 8-bit space games of the 1980s. Every line on screen comes from a hand-written vector renderer, drawn by WebGL as smooth, glowing colour vectors under a fighter-jet style hologram HUD (or green or amber phosphor, if you like).

You start with 150 credits, a Kestrel, a pulse laser and two missiles. Where you go from there is up to you.

• Trade 17 goods across ten sectors of procedurally generated star systems. The exchange shows the prices at the last station you visited (or your destination) beside the local ones, so you can spot a trade route at a glance. Markets remember what you sell.
• Follow the news. Famines, plagues, wars and gold rushes break out and move prices. Get there before the other traders, or end the crisis yourself for a relief bonus.
• Pick a side. Two rival blocs hold most of each sector. Work for one and its shops get cheaper and its contracts pay more; cross it and its police and agents come for you.
• Nine story arcs, with real choices:
  • the navy's hunt for an alien warship;
  • The Archive: a professor, a xeno relic, a dig site, and a Nyx ship that waits with its weapons cold - make peace or fight;
  • The Border: carry secrets across the line between the blocs - and decide whether to turn traitor;
  • The Lantern: follow a lost ship's log buoys from wreck to wreck, one of them falling into a sun;
  • The Plague Run: medicines against the clock, then expose a trading house - or blackmail it;
  • The Black Flag: run with a pirate clan, then hand it to the police or become its king;
  • Sunfall: evacuate a colony from a dying star through solar flares;
  • The Strike: side with the miners or the company;
  • The Return: how the Nyx come back depends on what you did to them.
• Fly six ships, from the nimble Dart to the 80-tonne Bastion, each with lit cockpits, gun muzzles and engines.
• Upgrade with beam and lance lasers, armour plating, manoeuvring thrusters, an engine tune, a gunnery computer, chaff, smoke screens, a missile jammer, an escape pod and more.
• Skim suns for fuel, mine asteroids, and smuggle contraband past police scans.
• Fight pirates for bounties. They get bigger, tougher and smarter as your rating climbs - and go easy on you while you learn.
• Take contracts from station bulletin boards: courier runs, supply deliveries, smuggling and bounty hunts against the clock.
• Climb two ratings, combat (Untested to Legend) and trade (Pedlar to Tycoon), each with 64 grades, at the career pace you choose. A logbook of short goals pays out every session.
• Dock by hand: match the station's spin and thread the slot (a guide helps). Or buy an auto-dock.
• Saves automatically whenever you dock. Export your pilot to a file and bring it to another computer.
• Flight school teaches the controls in five minutes. Play with keyboard, mouse (menus too), gamepad or touch; every key can be rebound.

Controls

New players: press T on the title screen for flight school. Esc opens settings (rebind keys, looks, sound, save export). The menus also work with the mouse: click the tabs, rows and buttons.

W / S	throttle
A / D or ← / →	roll
↑ / ↓	pitch
Q / E	yaw
Mouse	click the view, then steer (left button fires)
Space	fire laser / launch
T / M	lock missile / fire missile
X / Z / R	missile jammer / chaff / smoke screen
H / J / C	hyperspace / jump drive / auto-dock
1–9	exchange, system info, sector map, nav map, pilot record, outfitter, trip report, bulletin board, news
Y / N	shipyard (docked), compass to sun or station
F	flight assist on/off
U, [ ] / K / L / O	sound and volume / music / display look / ship fill

Gamepads work too: left stick to fly, triggers for throttle, A to fire.

Tips

• Press V to look behind you after launch: the station is right there. Fly back through its slot to dock, wings level with the slot.
• Lawless and feudal systems are rich in bounties and dangerous. Republics and company worlds are safe and well policed.
• Buy an escape pod early. Without one, being destroyed sends you back to your last save.
• Pick a destination on the sector map, then open the exchange: the comparison column shows what sells for more there.

Credits

Design, code and direction by the author. Title music and ship concept art generated with Ludo. Everything else - the vector renderer and font, the sound effects, the ships as remodelled for the game, and the writing - is the game's own.