Merchant Roads | Caravan Trading and Management Html5 Game

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

Or use any static file server of your choice.