Carts & Coins

Carts & Coins is a trading game about a merchant, a cart and a very long road. Buy cheap where goods are plenty, pack them tight, haul them across a living fantasy world and sell them dear where they are wanted: to townsfolk, to elves, dwarves and giants and, if you speak their tongue, to the monsters in their dens.

There is no set order to it. In every town you choose: raise your stall, open your cart, let the night go by or plan the next road. A good day is simply one that turns a profit.

Raise your stall in the square, lay out your goods and put a price on each. Every customer walks up with a purse, a want and a temper: the shrewd, the thrifty, the hurried, the haughty, the outright liar. Ask for a little more, ask for a lot more... or push too far and watch them walk away.

• Buy from traders whose towns each have their own gluts and shortages
• Read a customer's temper before you raise your price
• Trade on past sunset, and remember where every good was cheapest

Crates, sacks, barrels and bolts of cloth all take up room, and every wagon only has so much of it. Fit the load piece by piece, turning each one until it slots in. When the cart gets small, the stable sells horses, mules and more wagons, and stranger beasts for those who can handle them.

Midlanders, Norse, Sahri and the Eastern lands; elves in their tree houses, dwarves in carved stone, gnomes, giants and dragonborn. Each people builds, dresses, speaks and bargains in its own way. Start your merchant from one of eight origins (some are earned along the way) and learn the tongues that open other peoples' doors.

Every run rolls a new world: new roads, new crowns, new towns with their own wants. And the world trades back. Shanty quarters grow into fine stone streets as a region prospers, and slide back again when times turn hard.

Vampire castles, crypts, wolf dens, spider nests, orc ruins and witches' huts dot the map. Seven monster factions grow, raid and send their leaders out on the road. Speak the Blood Tongue and Count Adrian becomes a customer. Or take a rival's contract and come for the Count instead.

Bandits, trolls and giant spiders wait between towns. Hire blades and guild heroes at the inn, read what your enemies intend and fight it out turn by turn on the road itself, with charged strikes like Cleave and Fireball. Win, and the spoils go in the cart. Lose, and part of your load goes with them. (Your hired hands may also decide they are not paid enough to die.)

And when the road gets strange, get stranger: hire a hill giant (he will eat your grain), harness a wyvern to your wagon, or race the risen dead to a fallen star.

Buy low. Sell high. Survive the road.