Merchant Roads | Caravan Trading and Management Html5 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