Trade Routes OnlineDownload
A loaded trade wagon heading for a walled city at sunset

Buy low. Sell high. Mind the bandits.

A first-person multiplayer trading game set on the roads between twelve medieval towns. The economy is alive: towns grow, eat, burn and build; their lords send traders down the roads; and every price you see is the result of real goods moving through a real world. Nobody is fighting here. You are out-thinking everyone else.

See it in motion

In the game

A world that runs without you

43 commodities, each with a real source and a real use. Farms and mines make things; people eat and burn them; workshops turn grain into flour into bread. Nothing appears or disappears by magic. Dump a cartload of timber on a market and the price falls, and it stays fallen until the world has used it up.

Lords, traders and trouble

Every town has a lord with a character: cautious, generous, greedy, warlike or merchant. They set taxes, send traders walking the real roads to fetch what the town is short of, and rule until their people lose patience. Hunger and high taxes become elections and, sometimes, rebellion.

No fighting, still dangerous

One roving bandit gang works one road at a time, mostly at night. Escape with Haggling, Perception and Endurance, or lose up to a fifth of what you carry. The bank is safe. New travellers are left alone. Nobody dies; you just have a worse day.

Make a life of it

Up to five characters per account, each with their own look. Learn to read, study books, train with masters, craft soulbound gear that suits your style. Buy a mule when you can afford one, a horse when you can really afford one, and look after them.

Information is money

Prices change as towns run short and traders arrive. Travellers carry market reports home, time-stamped, so the news you hear in the inn is as old as the trader who told it. Read the room before you load the cart.

Caravans, carts and wagons

Start on foot, then a mule, then a horse. A cart takes one animal, a wagon two, a covered wagon four, and every animal on a wagon must be the same kind. Your caravan moves at the pace of its slowest member, so shoes, harnesses and a carrot on a stick matter. Horses are quick but carry little; mules carry a lot and cannot be ridden.

Merchant Companies

Draw up a charter, collect five signatures and found a company with a hall in every town. Build a bank, a storeroom, a workshop and a loom together, pay dues and rent, wear the company tabard, and take on great contracts: loads too big for any one trader to deliver in time.

Contracts, notices and ledgers

Towns that run short post delivery contracts at the town hall, and the notice board warns of storms, harvests, gangs and shortages. A merchant's ledger grows with you: haggling, then price trend arrows, then price charts, then a route book, then bulletin clippings that reach twice as far.

Built in the open

One developer and an AI pair-programmer, building a game from nothing in days, with 86 test suites, an economy simulator, and a development log you can read. See how it was made.

12towns
21roads
43commodities
51craftable items
702rules the world runs on
5characters each