Merchant Legends: The Founding

A Love-letter to Game Boy-era RPG Games...
"Long ago, the land was a bustling and safe place to live. But darkness rose up and foul monsters slowly took back the countryside. Eager to prove themselves to their guild, a young Merchant has returned to the area. Can they establish a new settlement and push back the forces of evil?"
Merchant Legends is a pixel-art, fantasy RPG that combines trading, crafting, resource gathering, town-building and exploration.
Key Features
Explore a huge world with 9 major locations and many more smaller points of interest

Cosy RPG gameplay. No time pressure, move at your own pace.

Town building - construct a settlement and improve the buildings to unlock more bonuses

Find and recruit workers to gather resources for you

Collect over 50 different crafting recipes

Gather resources and craft goods for trade

Caravan system with supply and demand

Huge research tree with 100's of benefits to unlock

Trading with NPCs (buying wares from traders to sell in your warehouse)

Level up perk points to unlock bonuses

An (optional) storyline with many enemies to defeat in battle

Buy and rent property

Day / night / calendar system with 'energy' management

Custom equipment system

Find and equip 'spheres' to boost your skills

Catch and cure diseases from monster fights

Complete contracts for rewards

Trade rank system: unlock powerful bonuses

Fast travel system that you unlock as you progress

and more!

Rebuild Your Town

Gather resources, establish outposts and rebuild your town.

100+ upgrades to unlock and research

Find and recruit workers to help you gather resources.

Restore an ancient temple and help the 'Goddess of Industry'.

Use your wealth to get stronger and fight the evil forces threatening your empire.

Quest & Adventure

Level up your hero.

Collect equipment and customise your loadout.

Fight monsters and gather loot.

Explore the open world. You choose which areas to unlock next!

Collect Recipes and Make Your Profits!

50+ crafting recipes to collect.

Collect, craft or trade for raw resources and turn them into finished goods.

Many ways to make money, including running your own tavern, doing quests, adventuring and trading.

Seek out the travelling merchants to find bargains. Different traders appear on different days of the week!


Can you tame the wilderness and become a Merchant Legend?!
Message From the Developer
I have been gaming since I was a kid in the 90’s. I’ve always loved games that let me build my own little empire within an explorable world. Many classic role playing games had little moments where you could restore a town, help run a business or manage a Kingdom. Those parts were always my favourite! So, Merchant Legends is my role playing game in the graphical style of classic Game Boy adventures, but with an economic town-building twist. It is my first game on Steam, I put my passion and love into it and I hope you enjoy it! This project has taken me over 6 years to make and I have learnt a lot about Game Boy pixel art, development, game design and game systems. Thank you for taking a look.
Inspirations
My favourite games include things like Stardew Valley, Morrowind, Transport Tycoon, Factorio, Final Fantasy, Pokemon, Civlization and Anno. You may recognise some influences from those games in Merchant Legends.