Merchant Roads – A Caravan Trading and Management Game

Merchant Roads is a single-player medieval caravan trading simulation built with Phaser 3. Lead your caravan across a network of towns, buy low and sell high, manage resources, hire guards, invest in properties, and survive bandit encounters. No backend, no API keys, no external dependencies — just a single HTML file and a library.

Features

Trading & Economy

22 trade goods — iron ore, stone, furs, grain, livestock, wool, timber, clay, fish, salt, iron tools, weapons, leather, cloth, beer, pottery, lumber, dried fish, flour, spices, silk, gems
Dynamic pricing — each town has unique supply/demand with daily fluctuations, prosperity modifiers, reputation effects, and event-driven price spikes
30% buy/sell spread — profits require travelling between towns
Item decay — goods degrade 2% per day, encouraging quick turnaround
Seller scams — 15% chance of overpriced goods (30% of asking value)
Sales tax — 15% tax on all sales

World Map & Travel

12 towns across 4 biomes — mountain, coastal, plains, capital
23 connected roads with distances of 1–4 days and danger levels 1–5
Real-time animated travel — player icon walks along Bezier-curved roads
Zoom & pan — scroll wheel and middle-mouse drag
Road blocks — wars between factions can cut off routes and spike prices 2.5x

Bandit Encounters

Visible roaming bandits on roads (skull emoji, 2–5 active)
4 encounter choices — Fight (based on guards), Bribe (_{85% success), Surrender (lose goods + 50% gold), Flee (based on road danger)}
Consequences — guard losses, item loss, 5% death chance

Town Activities

Market — browse 4 sellers per visit with unique procedural portraits, buy and sell goods
Properties — 8 workshop types (smithy, brewery, tannery, linen weavery, pottery, smokehouse, carpentry, mill) generating daily income and appreciating +50/day. Max 20 properties.
Tavern — hire guards (5 for 500 gold), rest (+10 morale for 500 gold), gamble (100 gold bet, 50% win chance for 150 gold)
Bank — deposit gold for safety, withdraw, take loans (10% daily interest), repay, issue letters of credit. Properties freeze at 30+ days overdue.

Crew & Survival

Guards — hire for 100 gold each, 2 gold/day wage, protect against bandits
Food system — crew eats 0.5 food per person daily; starvation causes morale loss and attrition
Morale — ranges 0–100%, affected by food, rest, profits, battles. Game over at 0%.

Passive Income

Passive caravans — buy for 1,000 gold each, generate income every 2 days. Max = level × 5.
Workshops — daily rental income with appreciation

Progression

Level & XP — gain XP from trading profits, passive income, and sales. Each level grants +5 caravan capacity.
Reputation — town reputation (0–100) affects prices up to ±25%
Capacity upgrades — start at 20 cargo slots, upgradeable (cost = 2^level × 1000)

Living World

Day/night cycle — 6 phases (Dawn, Morning, Midday, Afternoon, Dusk, Night)
Dynamic factions — Hanseatic, Silken Road, Phoenician, Neutral — with relations and wars
Random events — Trade Festival, War Declared, Famine, Merchant Guild, Bandit Activity
AI competition — 20% daily chance AI merchants buy stock from towns
NPC caravans — 4 named NPC caravans travel the roads with their own progress

Save System

Auto-save every 5 in-game days to browser localStorage
Manual save/load from the pause menu

Tutorial

10-step interactive tutorial that highlights UI elements and guides new players

Tech Specs

Engine: Phaser 3 (v3.60.0)
Language: Plain JavaScript (ES Modules) — no TypeScript, no transpilers
Assets: Procedurally generated PNG sprites and WAV audio — no image/audio editor needed
Dependencies: Zero runtime dependencies beyond Phaser
Resolution: 1280×720 base, responsive scaling
Fonts: Cinzel (headings) + Lato (body) via Google Fonts
Storage: localStorage for saves
Tools included: generate_sprites.mjs and generate_audio.mjs for full asset regeneration

What’s Included

Complete game source code (5,500 lines of well-organised JavaScript across modular scenes, systems, and utilities)
All generated assets (sprites + audio)
Asset generation scripts (Node.js)
Full documentation page
Phaser 3.60.0 runtime library
package.json with dev server and testing scripts

Browser Support

Works in all modern browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge) that support HTML5 Canvas and ES Modules.

How to Run

npx http-server . -p 8080 -c-1

Or use any static file server of your choice.

Merchant Roads | Caravan Trading and Management Html5 Game