Merchant Colony

Merchant Colony is an early real-time strategy and business simulation game released in 1991 by the British studio Impressions Games (famous for later city-building hits like Caesar, Pharaoh, and Zeus). It is often considered an underdog or a precursor to Sid Meier’s Colonization (1994), though it arrived three years earlier and focused heavily on real-time economic management.
Set during the 18th-century Age of Exploration, the game puts you in the shoes of a merchant prince tasked with expanding a global colonial empire for an European nation.
You purchase ships, load them up with trade goods, hire specialized personnel (colonists, soldiers, explorers, or engineers), and set sail to establish ports across the globe. Once established, you extract natural resources (like cocoa, tobacco, gold, or coal) to ship back and sell at a profit. Each person you bring has a purpose. Workers and warehousemen expand your ports, soldiers protect them, engineers build bridges, and explorers look for underground wealth like minerals.
The world is shared with rival AI-controlled nations and wandering pirates who will try to disrupt your shipping lanes or declare war on you. Unlike later turn-based titles, time runs continuously.

What is abandonware ?