On Tradewinds: Legends as a Source of Fantasy Art and Portraits

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Tradewinds is a surprisingly addictive game of amassing a fortune on the high seas by trade, and fending off (or hunting down!) pirates. Each character has an interesting story, and along the way you'll complete many tongue-in-cheek side quests.

But how does it rate as a source of art for writers and gamers?

Cons

It may be too cartoon-like if you need an image to display. This isn't really an issue if you will only be describing the image or certain features.

In order to access the character portrait randomizer, you must first complete the game with one of the four story characters.

You might end up clicking forever looking for "just the right combination". It would be more useful if the elements were laid out and could be chosen instead of always being randomly generated.

The random character generator theoretically gives thousands of combinations, but if you browse the portraits enough, they start can look quite samey. There's other art in it, such as ships and various ports, and these might be worth a look. For the most part, however, these are quite simple-looking.

It's an addictive game. You could spend a whole day playing it.

Pros

The art is generic enough to be widely applicable, useful in most settings. If you can mentally swap clothes and accessories, they can be used in primitive, modern, or futuristic settings as well.

The caricature-like images draw attention to the key elements that need to be described. If no picture needs to be displayed, you can probably pick one or two features (Sinister smile? Hot lipstick? More chin than Jay Leno?) to distinguish one character from another.

Did you notice in the gallery that every character had a name? Names are also an area that can stump storytellers. The random character generator also has a name-generator that crunches out fairly good names for the nationalities presented.

If you are looking for good examples of how to draw different emotions on faces, it a fun, interactive resource. (We also have a compilation of facial expressions from the story characters.)

It's cheap. It's an old game (released in 2006), so the price can only go down. Wait too long and it might disappear entirely.

It's an amazingly addictive game. You could spend a whole day playing it.

Final Recommendation

If you are going to use it soley as a source of art, I would recommend against it. It's just too much effort squeezing what you want out of it, and in the long run, I suspect you will find that the breadth of material really isn't there. You may be able to get the full benefit of the Tradewinds portrait randomizer from the gallery.

If you are looking for other portraits drawn in a similar style, you can take screenshots off Tradewinds: Legends: Unlikely Heroes; Tradewinds and Tradewinds 2 (for Caucasian and Carribbean portraits); and Tradewinds: Caravans (for less cartoon-like Mongolian and Chinese portraits).

In any case, this fun little game is worth at least a try with their FREE one-hour demo.

In case you're hooked and want to "play them all", do NOT get the earliest Tradewinds game! It was re-released in 2008 as Tradewinds Classic, updated for Microsoft Vista. (Note that it does not have a random character generator; and the art is of the same style as Tradewinds 2).

Also, you may come across Tradewinds: Unlikely Heroes, an "expansion" for Tradewinds: Legends. This is actually a standalone game, and you get to play only two characters. There is no freestyle play and no random character generator. Some people have also reported it being plagued with game-stopping bugs (though others have successfully played through).