Play Merchant Prince Online

Game Overview

Merchant Prince is one of those games that tricked me into thinking I'd be good at business. You start with a tiny ship and a handful of ducats, sailing between Italian ports trying to turn a profit on wine or wool. Then suddenly it's 3 AM, you're deep in debt to the Medici, and you're seriously considering piracy as a career change.

The beauty is in the chaos—you'll buy olives cheap in Naples only to find the market flooded by the time you reach Rome. Half your profits go toward bribing harbor masters to look the other way, and if you're not careful, some rival merchant will hire assassins to "negotiate" with you. I lost my first three games to bad loans and one very unfortunate cannonball incident.

It's got that classic '90s PC game vibe where the interface looks like a spreadsheet someone spilled ink on, but once you get the hang of it, there's nothing quite like cornering the Mediterranean spice trade while secretly funding a rebellion. Just don't expect mercy from the ledger books.

Each game uses different controls, most DOS games use the keyboard arrows. Some will use the mouse , "Alt" ,"Enter" and "Space bar".