Merchant Quest

I'm sure we're all familiar with the "magic merchant," the shopkeep who magically appears throughout your adventure to sell you stuff like weapons and potions despite the fact that you have to constantly fight through hordes of enemies to get just about anywhere. This game would aim to explain this paradox.

The reality is simple: Every level of every adventure game ever has always started out flush with hundreds of enemies, mounds of gold, and chests full of free loot and weapons all over the place. Why would the ancient evil not leave his warriors flush with things used to slaughter the adventurers who will fulfill the prophecy? Here's the deal: you, the Merchant, have heard of this prophecy and decided to make a buck. So, you find out the path these heroes will be going... and grab all the good loot before they can get there.

Now that the basic premise is out of the way, here's how the actual gameplay would work: The game would likely be either be a 2d platformer or a game with a view similar to, say, League of Legends. (Don't know what that camera angle is called) Your goal is simple: Collect a ton of weapons and gold and kill enemies as you need to. Here's the catch: You don't want to collect all the weapons or gold, and you don't want to kill many enemies. This is because of supply and demand. If you kill all enemies, the adventurers have no reason to purchase your wares. If you collect all the gold, they'll have nothing to spend. If you take all the extra loot, they'll feel encouraged to simply level all their stuff until it's better than anything you can offer.

The game gets much more complex, however, once you set up shop. You choose the price for your goods entirely on your own, and, importantly, whether to sell something at all. After all, the game gets more difficult for the adventurers, doesn't it? And that's after you've hypothetically gone through and cleared some stuff out. So, naturally, you'll want some gear to keep for yourself. The market would also evolve as the game went on, because as they level, they'll want to buy less weapons and more potions, so you'll need to price and reprice accordingly.

The way bosses work would be important, but simple. After beating them, you heal them and can choose to "invest" in them by using some of your funds to make the fight more difficult in some way. This is ideal because, once again, it creates demand.

In order to make this game more challenging and actually difficult beyond "look up what to sell and keep," it would likely need to be a rogue-like with level to level structure similar to Slay the Spire, just slightly more linear and starting from one place, as well as randomly selecting bosses and the things you can invest in. In addition, the adventurers would trail behind, so you couldn't go back after they'd gone to a location.

That's about it for my game idea! I hope that I thought through this idea enough, and that it might be possible for someone to pick up. Once again, this would either be "intermerienced" development or abstract due to the inner workings it would need to function as said in this post.

Below are some features I would love to see in this game if it ever became real, but would understand if they couldn't be put in:

Merchant types: You could pick one of 3 types of merchants, the Exotic wearing robes and a turban with a strange mount and a higher chance of finding weapons with special effects or abilities, the shady dressed in dark clothes and hood with the ability to barter better on the spot and make "fake" sales showing it as though the price is marked down, and the Friendly with worse combat abilities but with a kind relationship with the adventurers who can give tips and tricks in the hopes that they'll be more lenient on harsh pricing. (Friendly would be recommended for new players.)

May edit more if I think of them.