A boring precursor to Impressions' vastly improved High Seas Trader, Merchant Colony is an 18th century trading game that suffers from the same syndrome that characterizes all Impressions games of that period: long, tedious lists of statistics presented in static screens. You can set sail and recruit settlers to explore the New World, but very limited options and bland graphics seriously erode long-term play value. Fun for a while, but it really doesn't stand up to other, better games, such as Holistic Design's Machiavelli The Prince.
Review By HOTUD
English 
Comments and reviews
Game is absolutely broken, not sure if by poor design or intended. You just buy 16 gold bars at any location that sells for 1 pound (Nigeria is nearest one) and sell in Rome for the best price (90 pounds). When pirate shows off, buy 2 frigates first one will lose but second one will always win. Ta-da. Game over. You can repeat over and over until you are rich according to the spreadsheet.
I loved this game back in the early 90s. I really feel like I would remember the pricing bug because it would throw off all the trading. I don't remember that in the game at all. The bug in every copy I can find. I even tried getting the original disk but am still seeing it. I've tried running it on an emulated 486 to check if it's dosbox. Still happening after day one. I think the original game was probably for 286 or 386 computers so may try that next. Maybe the speed up causes the bug? Will post if I figure it out.
There seems to be a bug in the dos copy of this game. After a few days all the values at foreign ports go to like 1 an 0. I wonder if it's the game or dosbox?
How do you speed up and slow down the amiga version? alt s and alt r only work on pc version.
H8rs aside, Merchant Colony is about colonization and not trade. It is a wonderful little game and very fun. You have to use alt-R to go 5x speed and alt-S to go 1x speed. You can tap alt-S when at speed 1 to advance up to speed 4 incrementally.
The goal of Merchant Colony is to take
over the world.
Awful depressing game. Sure it's got a world map instead of just the Atlantic or Gulf, but it's dog slow. Also, not that I would want to play a slave trading game, but that was one of the largest "commodities" of when this is supposed to take place. So it's not even historically accurate. There is very little to even do in this game. You can pirate or merchant. No real goal except proto-capitalist Imperialist dawdling.
Better off playing Colonization and if you want a world to interact with play a custom map or Civ custom scenario.
No comment nor review for this game at the moment.