Lagoon Ledger

Cinevva's analyzer read this game's design doc and its source, then wrote the brief below. "Make your own" hands it to the game creator as your opening message, so you start from a real spec rather than a one-line idea.

Rebuild a responsive browser trading game titled “Lagoon Ledger,” set in a stylized Mediterranean/Adriatic merchant world around Venice in 1492. Use a dark teal ocean-colored application background with a warm parchment/cream visual language, Georgia/serif typography, rounded panels, subtle shadows, and gold, brick-red, and teal accents. The layout should be a three-panel dashboard on wide screens and collapse into a two-column layout on smaller screens: left is a map/chart, center is the market, and right is the captain’s journal; on mobile the map spans the top and the market and journal sit below it.

Header: show the title “Lagoon Ledger,” a small subtitle “A merchant’s journal, Venice · 1492,” and right-aligned Day 1 plus a gold diamond coin icon and 800 ducats. Maintain visible day and gold values as the player acts.

Map panel: title it “Chart of the Adriatic.” Render an abstract teal/aqua sea chart with a diagonal blue-green gradient, a large pale dashed oval route/sea boundary, faint rotated “MEDITERRANEAN SEA” lettering, and a small pixel-art merchant ship marker. Place clickable rounded dark red/brown city labels over the chart, connected downward by short dashed white markers. The 14 ports and approximate relative positions are: Venice (50%,57%), Ragusa (25%,64%), Ancona (43%,77%), Bari (62%,83%), Corfu (76%,69%), Durres (84%,55%), Constantinople (91%,39%), Rhodes (88%,78%), Alexandria (80%,94%), Candia (69%,91%), Naples (36%,93%), Genoa (12%,35%), Marseille (4%,49%), and Barcelona (2%,75%). The current port is highlighted gold and the ship moves to its marker. Clicking a city immediately docks there, updates the map highlight, market, and journal destination/current-city information, and produces a short toast/log message such as “Docked at Ragusa.” Include current city descriptions, including Venice “Canals, glass, and ambitious bankers.”, and show a route label: “Your home port” at Venice or “Port N of 14” elsewhere.

Market panel: title it “Market at [current city].” Display a scrollable list of ten goods, each as a parchment card showing the name, “Best in [origin port],” current price in red with a diamond currency symbol, and Buy and Sell buttons. Goods/origins/base prices are: Spices/Constantinople/34, Silk/Constantinople/48, Glass/Venice/20, Salt/Ragusa/16, Olive oil/Bari/22, Wool/Ancona/26, Wine/Candia/18, Sugar/Rhodes/31, Cotton/Alexandria/28, Silver/Barcelona/55. Start with zero cargo. Buying one unit subtracts its current price from gold and adds one unit to that good; disable Buy if gold is insufficient or total cargo reaches 30. Selling requires owned cargo. Selling normally adds the current price and removes one unit. For the first/only unit of a good, use its base price as the purchase cost used to calculate the displayed profit; for subsequent units use 92% of the current price as the purchase cost. Track the highest individual sale profit as “Best profit,” and increase reputation by 1 whenever a sale profit is greater than 20. Prices should fluctuate with day, current port, distance from origin, and a strong discount at the good’s origin: base price times a deterministic day/good/city swing from -10% to +10%, plus a local adjustment of -38% at origin or +5.5% per city-index distance elsewhere, clamped to at least 5 and rounded. Add bottom action buttons “Sell profitable cargo” (sell every owned unit, one by one) and “Check manifest” (log a manifest status message without changing cargo).

Captain’s Journal panel: title “Captain’s Journal.” Show four stat cards: Cargo “0 / 30,” Reputation “1,” Ship value “500,” and Best profit “0.” Include a scrollable event log and transient toast notifications. Start the log/toast with “Welcome, captain. Buy low, sail far, and return rich.” The bottom travel controls should be a destination select containing every city, initially Venice, a red “Set sail” button, and hint text: “Travel changes local prices. Storms, tariffs, and rumors can make or break a voyage.”

Travel mechanics: selecting the current city and pressing Set sail logs “You are already in that port.” Otherwise calculate travel distance from the absolute differences in the cities’ percentage x/y coordinates, charge a passage fee of max(12, rounded distance*0.35), and refuse travel with “Not enough ducats for the passage.” if gold is too low. On successful travel, increment the day and move the current city. Use a deterministic event roll based on the new day and destination: on one outcome, lose up to 3 cargo units (remove from the cargo goods in sequence) and log that a squall damaged the cargo plus the passage cost; on another, add 45 ducats and 1 reputation and log that a customs favor paid 45 ducats plus the passage cost; otherwise log arrival and the passage cost. Refresh map, market prices, destination selection, HUD values, and journal after every action. The core goal is to buy goods cheaply near their origins, sail to other ports, and sell for profit while managing the 30-crate capacity, gold, day, reputation, and occasional travel events. Do not add combat, quests, timers, or extra mechanics not described here.