Barter with frogs the old-fashioned way in cute indie game Trading Time

It's funny to think about a time before we bought and sold everything according to paper money or imaginary digital currency. Maybe it wasn't for all that long, but I assume at some point people simply traded things for things instead of money, and they never had to think about credit card reward points. You know, bartering!

That's the world that Trading Time, an adorable new game from indie outfit Half Past Yellow, is cooking up. You can watch the announcement trailer above from today's Future Games Show.

You play a ship captain recently shipwrecked on an island full of sentient frog people. By the sound of it, you'll spend time scrambling around the island trading with locals for the stuff you need to fix your ship (or score a cute plant for your campfire). But trades aren't always so simple: sometimes an islander will only trade for something you don't have, and the person who does have it wants something else, and that person wants something else else. A classic mercantile chain.

That's basically all we gleaned from the brief trailer. It's unclear how much trading will play into the game, but considering the name, probably a lot. Half Past Yellow hasn't given a release date yet, but you can wishlist Trading Time now on Steam.

Morgan has been writing for PC Gamer since 2018, first as a freelancer and currently as a staff writer. He has also appeared on Polygon, Kotaku, Fanbyte, and PCGamesN. Before freelancing, he spent most of high school and all of college writing at small gaming sites that didn't pay him. He's very happy to have a real job now. Morgan is a beat writer following the latest and greatest shooters and the communities that play them. He also writes general news, reviews, features, the occasional guide, and bad jokes in Slack. Twist his arm, and he'll even write about a boring strategy game. Please don't, though.