Portugues
Meandering Medieval Merchant
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About the game
You are a merchant with a purse and thirty days. The map is a small corner of medieval England, with towns such as Launceston, Plymouth, Exeter, Taunton and Bath joined by roads, and the whole job is to turn a small purse into a bigger one before the days run out.
Each town has a market that deals in six goods: grain, fish, cheese, salt, wool and bricks. Prices depend on what the town needs. A small arrow next to a price shows whether demand is up or down, so the idea is to buy where something is plentiful and sell where it is wanted. Every road has its own level of danger, and when you travel there is a chance that bandits attack. At the public house you can pay a few coins for information about the neighbouring towns, or hire a guard with a weapon of his own; you can only keep one guard at a time, and he fights beside you.
Fights are quick and played with the mouse alone. You click and drag to move and aim: aim at an enemy to attack, or aim at nothing and you will guard instead. After the last day, an earnings report adds up your purse and the value of the goods you could not sell and gives you a rank from F up to S.
Luke Cann made this game for js13kGames 2023, where it had to fit in 13 KB. The map and the little drawings are vector shapes, and the sounds are tiny synthesised effects.
Playing it here
Click Play, then click a town on the map. A menu offers Travel, Enter and Return. Enter a town to open its market or its public house, and set the quantities to sell and to buy on the market screen before you confirm. Press Reset on the market to undo your choices. The game does not save progress.
Controls
| Input | Action |
|---|---|
| click a town | open its menu (Travel / Enter / Return) |
| click buttons | trade, hire guards, leave a town |
| click and drag in a fight | move and aim |
| aim away from enemies | guard |
A few things worth knowing
Check the demand arrows. A price marked with a down arrow is a good place to buy; one with an up arrow is a good place to sell.
Use the public house. A few coins of information show you the towns around you, which helps you plan a route before you commit days to it.
Days are the real currency. A long detour for a small profit can cost more than it earns.
Credits and licence
Meandering Medieval Merchant was created by Luke Cann and is released under the MIT licence. The sound effects use ZzFX (MIT). The licence texts are linked from this page.