Ocean Trader

Ocean Trader is a board game published in 1988 by the British company Clipper Games Ltd, based in Portsmouth, and designed by John Rudford, in which two to six players simulate the global commodity trade carried by clipper ships during the nineteenth century. Each player begins with an empty clipper ship docked at the home port of Liverpool and must sail out to buy commodities at ports where they are cheap and deliver them to ports that need them, earning profits along the way. Because only the first two ships to reach a port with the goods it needs are rewarded, speed and efficient routing matter as much as simply choosing profitable cargo, and players must weigh risk against reward when planning a voyage. A player wins by acquiring a majority of the game's ten available trading shares while also holding at least seven hundred fifty pounds in cash and at least one ship still in service. The game's popularity led to a more complex computer adaptation for DOS published by Software 2000 in 1996, which expanded the original board game's trading system with features such as bank loans and custom ship design that were not part of the physical edition.