coming soon to gamecrafter

Inspired by The Pirate and Traders of the West Indies, a game published by William Spooner in 1847, Tides of Trade was created to be featured in the University of Miami Lowe Art Museum as part of its 2018 Antillean Visions: Maps and the Making of the Caribbean exhibit. Tides of Trade puts players in the shoes of a trader trying to make a living during the treacherous Golden Age of Piracy. Players venture across the Caribbean, competing to obtain goods from the different islands while avoiding the threats that lurk at sea. The first player to make it back to his home port with two sets of four matching crops wins!

Antillean Visions: Maps and the Making of the Caribbean exhibition at Lowe Art Museum, Spring 2018

Tides of Trade was on display at the Lowe Art Museum in 2018 as part of its Antillean Visions: Maps and the Making of the Caribbean exhibition. Antillean Visions displayed nearly 200 rare, beautiful, and historically significant maps of the Caribbean. The exhibition brought together fascinating views of the region, produced by some of the most famous mapmakers of the past five centuries and including the earliest available published view of the Antilles. Antillean Visions explores the powerful role of cartography in shaping our understanding of the Caribbean. Tides of Trade was made available for museum visitors to interact with and was displayed next to a case housing its inspiration, William Spooner's 1847 game The Pirate and Traders of the West Indies.

Game Accolades

Tides of Trade received a 2018 Serious Play student game award in the museum category and was accepted for exhibition at the 2018 Meaningful Play conference.

picture of Casey Lue

Created by Casey Lue

Casey Lue is a University of Miami School of Communication student currently majoring in creative advertising and minoring in interactive media. She first realized her passion for design while attending Florida Christian School, where she worked on The Patriot yearbook as a staff member and later the design editor-in-chief. Lue gained proficiency in Adobe Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator in high school and is now continuing to use those skills as a design contributor for the University of Miami’s award-winning yearbook, Ibis. She is also a senior student member of the New Experience Research and Design Lab (NERDLab) for which she applies her design skills and sensibilities to a variety of interactive social impact projects.

Special thanks to NERDLab for incubating Tides of Trade during the 2017 calendar year leading up to the Antillean Visions exhibition.