~/games

Games

I like to make games in my spare time. And play them too.

early access

Merchant’s Venture

A trade and economy game. Found cities, link them with trade routes, and hire merchants who buy where goods are cheap and sell where they’re dear. Feed a city what it needs and watch it grow.

Play in your browser

Free, with nothing to install. Best on a laptop or desktop. The first visit downloads about 22 MB, and your game saves in the browser you play it in. The game is still changing, so best scores may be reset.

A campaign round the world: start in the Ancient World, from Egypt and Mesopotamia to China and Mesoamerica, with the Classical, Medieval and New Worlds to follow. Every stop is the same world for everyone, so your times can be compared. Win each on hard to go on.
Wonders to raise: the Great Pyramid, the Hanging Gardens, the Great Wall, the Pyramid of the Sun and more, each built stone by stone from what your merchants bring.
Real worlds traced from real coastlines: Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, Mesoamerica, Greece, Italy, Spain, Britain and Ireland, France, Japan, Brazil, or the generated Uncharted Lands.
A living economy: supply and demand set every price. Feed a village to grow it into a town, then build bakeries, weavers and smithies to make it a city, and temples and palaces that want the luxuries.
Porters, camels, rafts, canoes, carts, sail boats and barges find their own way around mountains and seas. Rafts ride the current downstream, and their crews walk home.
Charts at the end: your gold and people year by year, and which goods and workshops made the money, against your best run.
Two views of one world: a 2D map, or the 3D view.

Made with Godot 4, and AI have massively pushed this project forward

Merchant’s Venture: Teotihuacan in the Valley of Mexico, its Pyramid of the Sun on a red-edged plaza beside Lake Texcoco, white plastered houses with red bases, and Cholula’s temple pyramid, Tula and El Tajín around it — Teotihuacan and the Pyramid of the Sun

Merchant’s Venture: the campaign map, a cartoon map of the world with a dotted route from Egypt through Mesopotamia to China, the wonders of the stops won standing with their flags and stars, and the pedlar at China — The campaign: round the world, era by era

Merchant’s Venture: China’s card on the campaign map, giving its goal of 3,000 citizens and two cities in 120 years, jade out in the wilds at Dunhuang, its easy win and the hard win still to come — Each stop’s goal, its prize out in the wilds, and your best times

Merchant’s Venture: London on the Thames in the 3D view, with its cathedral and castle among whitewashed and brick houses, wheat fields and thatched villages around it, and Oxford, Cambridge and Canterbury nearby — London on the Thames

Merchant’s Venture: Cairo on the Nile, the Great Pyramid standing beside the city, palms along the river, the delta and the desert beyond — Cairo and the Great Pyramid

Merchant’s Venture: Tikal beside its lake in the Maya rainforest, with its temple pyramid, maize fields and quarries, Calakmul to the north and Palenque on the Usumacinta river — Tikal by its lake, in the Maya forest

Merchant’s Venture: Kyoto in Japan with its pagoda and tiered houses under upturned roofs, and rice growing in flooded paddies along the coast — Kyoto, and rice paddies by the sea

Merchant’s Venture: city labels showing each city’s prices, cheap in green and dear in orange, around London and Oxford — Every city’s prices: buy where they’re green, sell where they’re orange

Merchant’s Venture: the merchant list, showing each wagon and sail boat’s route, cargo and earnings — Your merchants, their cargo and their earnings