From Dope Wars to Spice Wars

Spice Wars started as a love letter to Dope Wars, the little trading game where you bought low in one part of town, sold high in another, and hoped nothing went wrong on the way. Throw in a bit of Taipan! as well. Go somewhere, buy something, sell it somewhere else for more, repeat. It's a tiny loop, and I've always thought it was one of the best in games.

So that's where it began: a fantasy spice world, a few towns, and a market in each. It has grown a fair way since.

What there is to do now

You still travel and trade, but the towns have filled up. There are buildings to visit, and goods to stash for later. Events and encounters crop up as you go, some in your favour and some not. You have a camp where you grow and harvest your own crops, then blend them into something worth more. Traders hand out commissions, and every town keeps its own opinion of you, so you arrive a stranger and earn the reputation that opens doors. The bank, for one, won't lend you anything until you've proved yourself.

There's a casino and a daily lottery for when you're feeling lucky, shops selling items that raise your stats, training that improves your attributes for good, and a long list of achievements to work through. On top of all that are the challenges, dotted through the week: some twice a week, some at weekends, and more on the way, such as a timed run in the old Dope Wars style, with local, global, and per-challenge leaderboards to top.

The market is what ties it together. Every player in a town trades against the same prices, so when someone else sells a cartload of cinnamon, you see the price fall on your screen as it happens. Under the hood it's Laravel and React, the world itself is drawn in Three.js, and the live prices arrive over WebSockets through Laravel Reverb and Echo. That's what lets the market move while you're looking at it.

It's now in public beta at spicewars.net. Anyone can play, with one caveat: progress resets when it properly launches. I'm still adding to it, with more buildings, more challenges, and plenty of tweaks, so if something feels off, I'd like to hear about it.

If there's a lesson in it, it's that a small loop is worth building on. The one at the heart of Dope Wars still works, and everything I've added hangs off it.