About Bayou Trader

Bayou Trader is a free trading game set in the bayou country of south Louisiana in the fall of 1925. "Gator" Gus, who runs the dock in Morgan City, has fronted you a cypress pirogue and a little cash. You have thirty days to work the waterways between six towns, buy goods where they are cheap, sell them where they sell high, pay Gus back, and finish the season with as much money as you can.

A run takes five to ten minutes on a phone or a computer. There is nothing to download and no account to make. Your game saves in your browser, so you can close the tab and come back to it.

The game is inspired by the classic computer trading games, starting with Star Trader from 1974 and the pocket trading games of the 1980s that followed it. Those games had a simple loop: a few markets, prices that change every day, a debt that grows while you think, and random trouble on the road. Bayou Trader keeps that loop and moves it to the Atchafalaya Basin, Bayou Teche, Bayou Lafourche, and the French Market in New Orleans.

How to play

Check the market. Every port lists its goods with today's price, how much is for sale, and the usual price there. The arrow shows how far the price has moved since your last visit.
Buy low. Tap a good to open the stepper, pick a quantity, and buy. Your hold has limited space, and bulky goods like cypress lumber take more of it.
Pick a port and sail. Trips take one to three days. New Orleans pays the best prices on nearly everything, but it is the longest run from most of the bayou towns.
Sell high. Sell where your cargo sells high. News changes prices: a fur boom in New York, a church fair that wants a seafood boil, a sawmill fire, a shrimp fleet that floods a port with seafood.
Pay Gus. What you owe grows four percent every day. Pay him at his dock in Morgan City, then buy a bigger boat at the boatyard there.
Close the books. After day thirty, your score is your cash, plus what is in the strongbox, plus your boat's trade-in value, minus anything you still owe. Cargo left in the hold counts for nothing, so sell it on the last day.

Rules

Ports

Port	Waterway	Known for
Morgan City (home)	Atchafalaya River	Cypress mills, Gus's Dock, the strongbox, and the boatyard
Breaux Bridge	Bayou Teche	Cheap crawfish, rice, and pecans
Thibodaux	upper Bayou Lafourche	Cheap pecans and rice; seafood sells high
Houma	Bayou Terrebonne	Muskrat pelts and oysters from the trappers and reefs
Golden Meadow	lower Bayou Lafourche	Oysters and fur at the source, pricey ice
New Orleans	Mississippi River	The French Market, best prices for almost everything

Ice and perishables

Crawfish and oysters spoil. Crawfish keep one day without ice and oysters keep two. Each block of ice keeps eight crates or sacks cold for a day, and the chest loses a block a day to melt on top of that. Buy ice before a long run. When it runs short, the oldest perishables go bad first.

Boats

Boat	Hold	Ice chest	Speed
Pirogue	30	6	Slow. Easy prey for river thieves.
Putt-putt skiff	60	8	Three-day runs take two days
Motor launch	140	16	Most runs take one or two days. Hard to catch.

The boatyard also sells a bigger ice chest, a deckhand who helps when thieves show up, and deck rails and tarps for 25 percent more hold.

Trouble on the water

River thieves may block the channel and demand a toll. You can pay, run (faster boats get away more often), or stand your ground (a deckhand helps). Leaks and motor trouble cost a day or a repair bill. Storms close routes for a few days, and high water can open a shortcut. Pickpockets work the crowded landings, so lock spare cash in Gus's strongbox.

Ranks

At the end of the season you get a rank for your net worth: Gator Bait, In Hock to Gus, Mud Peddler, Bayou Hustler, Teche Trader, Basin Baron, King of the French Market, and, for the very best seasons, Legend of the Bayou at $10,000 or more. The end screen shows how close you came to the next rank.

Tips

Pay Gus off early. At four percent a day, a debt you ignore for two and a half weeks doubles, and Gus starts sending his men to find you.
The fastest early money is seafood bought at the source and sold in New Orleans or Thibodaux. Buy ice when the trip is longer than the catch will keep.
Muskrat pelts are compact and valuable, but houses only have so many bundles for sale each day. Fill the rest of the hold with something else that is cheap here.
A bigger boat changes the game. The skiff doubles your hold and shortens long runs. The launch makes nearly every trip a one-day hop.
Tap Word on the bayou for the news and tips that are moving prices. A tip from another boatman tells you where a price will spike tomorrow.
Plan your last trip so you arrive on day thirty somewhere that will buy your cargo.

The bayou in the 1920s

South Louisiana in the 1920s ran on its waterways. Roads were few and poor, so goods moved by pirogue, skiff, and launch along the bayous and canals. Spanish moss was gathered from cypress and live oaks, cured, and ginned into stuffing for mattresses, furniture, and car seats. Louisiana's coastal marshes produced more muskrat pelts than anywhere in North America, and trapping camps shipped them to New York furriers. Oyster luggers worked the reefs of Barataria and Terrebonne bays, and crawfish came out of the Atchafalaya Basin.

The great cypress logging boom was winding down by the mid-1920s as the old-growth swamps were cut over, which made cypress lumber valuable. The trade in egret plumes for ladies' hats had been outlawed by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918. Outboard and one-cylinder inboard engines, the "putt-putts," were just starting to replace paddles and poles on the bayou.

About the original trading games

Star Trader was written by Dave Kaufman in 1974 and published in type-in form by the People's Computer Company. Players moved a ship between star systems, bought and sold goods at prices that rose and fell with supply and demand, and tried to finish richer than everyone else. Through the 1980s many small trading games for home computers used the same idea with a short time limit, a loan shark, and random events. Bayou Trader is an original game in that tradition, with our own setting, writing, rules tuning, and art.