Tradewind

Tradewind is a sea chart that lives on your Stream Deck. Every key is a window onto one sea: ports on islands, open water between them, and ships sailing from key to key across the gaps. You open trade routes, grow your ports from hamlets into capitals, and find new ones in the fog. It trades while you work, and it goes on trading while the computer is off.

THREE THINGS TO DO — Open a route, upgrade a port, sail on to a new sea. That is the whole game, and it lasts for months.

ROUTES ARE THE GAME — Tap a port and then Route, and tap where its ships should sail. From then on ships carry each port's goods to the other, all the time, and gold comes ashore with every one that ties up. Every port makes one thing and wants another: Brightwater wants fish, Kestrel wants grain. A route that brings a port what it wants pays double, and the chart shows it in gold.

FROM A HAMLET TO A CAPITAL — Tap Upgrade for a level, hold it for more. A port is rebuilt as it grows: a hamlet becomes a village with a warehouse and boats at the pier, then a town, a harbour city with its own lighthouse, and a capital with a domed hall. Every stage brings a berth for one more route.

THE FOG — Only two ports are in sight at first. The rest lie in the fog, which gives each one up in its own time: the first within the hour, the last after a few days. Tap it when it has lifted, or hold to sail in sooner for gold.

YOUR OWN TIME OF DAY — The sea is drawn in the light of the hour it is where you are: dawn, noon, the golden hour, and night, when lamps are lit in the windows, ships carry lanterns and the lighthouse beam sweeps across the keys. Nothing is fetched for this: it reads your clock.

A SEA WITH A LIFE OF ITS OWN — Gulls circle the busiest harbour, a whale surfaces now and then, bell buoys bob and seals lie on the sandbar. Now and then a message in a bottle drifts in: tap it for its gold. All of it is worth a glance and none of it is a duty.

IT TRADES WHILE YOU ARE AWAY — Switch the computer off and the ships sail on, for up to three days. When you come back, the captain's log says how long you were gone, how many cargoes were landed, what was earned and which route did best.

NEW SEAS — Once every port is found, expeditions sail beyond the chart. Seven bring home the chart of the next sea: Spice Reach, North Ice, Pearl Banks, each with its own ports, goods and colours, and in each everything earns double. Every sea takes two or three weeks.

ONE PRICE, THE WHOLE GAME — No ads, no gems, no timers to buy off, no purchases of any kind. No account and no network: the sea lives on your computer.

READY ON ANY DECK — Put the Tradewind key on any page: it shows a ship sailing round an island and your gold, and a tap opens the whole sea on the deck. Or choose one of the Tradewind profiles, made for the Neo, MK.2, Mini, Plus and XL. On a Stream Deck Neo the Infobar shows the treasury, what the sea earns, and the one most useful thing to do next.

CALM, IF YOU LIKE — One switch stops the gulls, the sparkle and the drifting, and the ships move more gently. Sound can be turned off.

Not sure yet? Tradewind Lite is free and has Home Waters with three of its ports.

macOS 12 or newer and Windows 10 or newer, with the Stream Deck app 7.6 or newer. Needs six keys; best on eight or more. The Infobar action needs a Stream Deck Neo.

A backup that survives a crash

Tradewind now keeps its own backup of your sea on your computer, alongside Stream Deck's copy.

If a forced restart or a crash leaves Stream Deck's copy empty or out of date, Tradewind brings your sea back by itself.

Your sea is backed up the first time this version starts, so there is nothing to do.

Your sea, its ports and its routes sail on.