Last updated on November 27th, 2025 at 12:01 pm
Merchant RPG – Roleplaying Game Review
Merchant RPG is a Roleplaying/Simulation game from Tyler Coleman, first launched in 9th June 2016.
It’s rated 9+ and currently has 267+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes Merchant RPG Stand Out
Be the Merchant of your very own empire! Quest, Craft, Profit, Upgrade!
As the Merchant, you are the commander of your own domain!
Blending together traditional RPG systems, tycoon mechanics, and a fantasy overworld, Merchant aims to reimagine the traditional mobile RPG. In Merchant, players take the role of a shopkeeper who must manage a team of Heroes and Crafters. Heroes are sent out on quests in order to fight enemies and gather materials. Crafters then use those materials to create weapons and armor. As the shopkeeper, players must balance their micro-economies between selling items for gold and crafting items to better ensure success for the Heroes.
TAKE REIGN OF YOUR MARKET
- Send Heroes out on epic adventures!
- Pay Crafters to create gear!
- Earn gold and dictate the direction of your economy!
- Grow your inventory and profit from your trade empire!
VICTORY THROUGH CONQUEST
- Choose your cast of characters from multiple Hero classes!
- Ride out to battle to bring back items and loot!
- Customize your champions with weapons and armor!
- Band together to raid powerful bosses as a party!
- Better performance leads to greater rewards!
CRAFT YOUR LEGACY
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Utilize the unique Crafters to create items and gear to use and sell!
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Train the Crafters to create better items, allowing them to master their trade!
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Ensure the victory of your Heroes by outfitting them with superior items!
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This Roleplaying game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, Merchant RPG is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 1st December 2023
Recent improvements include:
UI Fixes
Maintenance
*Fixes for rewarded ads
Download & Availability
Merchant RPG is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Requirements: Requires iPhone 5s / iPad Air / iPad Air (Cellular) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina, Cellular) / iPhone 6 / iPhone 6 Plus / iPad Air 2 / iPad Air 2 (Cellular) / iPad Mini 3 or later.
Compatible with iPhone and iPad devices.
Player Experience Highlights
Community Insight:
Been playing this game for a hot minute and absolutely love it. Honestly, yeah.would like for our music to play without working around it. There is a way to get your music to play. If you have some type of bluetooth device, you can play your music, open the game (which pauses the music) then push play on your device while still in the game. It plays! Alsopeople whining about some optional pocket change that requires addsLEARN HOW TO PLAY THE GAME WHINER! You can do just fine if you manage your stuff right. You dont need any of the ad fueled features like the gold after missions. Plus, againdont really need the free gold each day. Just play the game properly and you get way more gold.
Pretty great game. We would recommend save slots like the PC version has.
Level 50 is maxed out after prestige. We reached Frentir Chasm. It says we cannot reach dungeon level 51 required. The last level required is level 59. Developer need to update this app and add new dungeons, villages, items, equipments, etc. If not, we will do it ourselves in RPG Maker MZ as our own ideas.
We have been playing this game on and off for over five years. We have occasionally uninstalled completely only to save our own schedule from how much time we spend on here. There is not a single other game we have ever played that is as entertaining and challenging as this. Stuff is pretty straightforward, but it makes us want to learn more and adjust as much as possible (like changing our heros move sets to be advantageous against certain enemies). It doesnt take long to get in the groove of grinding by collecting resources and selling expensive equipment to grow wealth. Its not like a tycoon game where youre doing the same things over and over just for inflated amounts of money, money stays the same throughout the game and things get progressively harder. We dont even think twice before spending money on in app purchases to make the game a little easier, these developers have created a masterpiece and deserve our support.
We used to playing this game AGES ago and was happy to come back to discover theyd added new features, maps, and quests. Its both relaxing and satisfying.
This is an extremely underrated game, this is one of our favorite games out there, its pretty easy to progress. The game is pretty easy yet its pretty complicated at the same time. There are a lot of different crafting recipes and equipment that you cant really get bored of this game. There are also a lot of different characters to unlock and play. Overall, awesome game.
Best or second best mobile game and ive played a lot of mobile games.
We give it a 4/5 because its simple its just entertaining enough to keep you busy for a little bit, its progressive & really is progressed based on the player themselves. We do however want to see your heroes change gear as we go through the game. When we craft an item it should show up on the character, thats a big downfall. Im not that far into it but with that being said adding really cool gear later on to the character would be even more epic. Like dungeon sets or something. We think the overall playability is there. Id just like to see more visible results. Thats our only complaint currently. Also side note unlocking all content for $15 is 100% win in our book. We spent it before we even played the game just because why not & it made the game more VISIBLY appealing. We feel like a lot of apps make the mistake of going hard on shops/stores & micro transactions. You hit the mark here.
We have had this game for years, at least ten, and have loved it for just as long. The only thing keeping us from five stars is that we havent yet received the update. We dont know if its the iOS side of things or not, but Im waiting.
This is the first time Ive ever written a review for a game and Im happy our first one will be for this. Beautiful pixel art, cute and satisfying sound effects, optional ads, addictive and fair progression, very easy to understand, relaxing medieval music. Our literal one complaint is the game forcibly pausing any background music from Spotify or videos from YouTube or twitch. Other than that we love this game.
Love the game but the aspect ratio has been screwed up on ios for a while now and it looks terrible. Add black bars so at least it doesn't look so stretched.
This is a great game, but our heros on one save are forever stuck questing, ive tried everything we could but it seems to have no effect, very sad:(.
Love this game dearly but their ads system is abysmal. The longest and most circuitous ads in any game we play. Real shame, hopefully they can get back on track.
Thought Id be able to get the gold after a mission without watching ads. Unreal that you have to watch a 45 second ad to get 15-30 gold, especially after paying for unlock all. Def wont be buying anything recommended by this dev in the future. The unlock all was probably intentionally vague as to deceive people into thinking the same. Good game overall, but we feel deceived by the IAP so Im rating it low.
Love the game but the aspect ratio has been dcrewed up on ios for a while now and it looks terrible. Add black bars so at least it doesn't look so stretched.
This game is easy to pick up and play when you have a few minutes, but you always want to play longer. We really like the design and UI, everything flows together well, and its easy to find what you need to do. Also it uses hardly any phone storage, and its good on battery too. We appreciate that its monetized fairly with ads being only optional. After playing for a few days we bought the Unlock All IAP because we really enjoy the game and want to support the developer because they keep it updated. Thank you for a great game! Ive tried so many and this is the best one to us because its deep but still accessible, its not so complicated that you cant figure things out. Its perfect for casual gamers like us or players who like deeper strategy. The developer struck a rare balance here. Highly recommended.
Good game, but we cannot recommend it in good consciousness until the devs make it so that the game doesnt pause your audio when you open it.
We love this game Ive played it so much its moly most viewed app but we have a few ideas to help make this game better .1 Add a choice to watch a video like lets say your building a snake axe and you have 2 minutes haw about you can click on the axe picture and watch a add to skip it .2 online trading were you can go online and trade with people so we all can have more fun .3 A game chat. 4 you and your friends can have a shop to play together and and talk and do your ideas together.5you can become your fighting player when they fight (like a snake or a spider) you can become them and fight for them over all this games awesome we hope you read this commen.
First off, this is an amazing game. We absolutely love playing this game. But there are some minor imperfections we see that can easily be fixed, and make playing the game more streamlined and enjoyable. Some ideas to consider: 1. When in the crafters list, theres some slight asymmetry with the spaces in between the crafter icon and the crafter name. 2. Add an indicator for how much of your inventory is being used (using x/y slots). 3. Add indicators to see how much time an action will take before starting it. Those are most of the improvements that can be made which ive seen while playing, and we hope that one day we can see these inolemented into the game. Keep up the good work.
Pretty self explanatory, its a good game and we recommend downloading it.
If you like dungeons and dragons and text based games, you will love this game.
We're on our third go round with this game. We've had it for a few years and keep coming back, so that's a good sign, especially considering our usual life cycle with mobile games: download, enjoy for two days, delete. In some part this love affair is thanks to the presentation: lovely pixel art, big chonky buttons, fun music. We love the theme, we love leveling up and training new heroes. The feel of running some business or other in a realm of what we tend to think of as medieval fantasy is quite nice. Merchant is an idle game, and yet not quite an idle game. In truth it's rather involved and this involvement is mainly by way of clicking on buttons by the bushel. Oftentimes it is the same button, that being the "repeat" arrow that presents itself when one of your heroes has completed their quest. You will repeat quests often and with feeling because that's just how the grind works: we must send our heroes to do get the thing so we can turn the thing into another thing and then sell the thing to get the money. We're merchants after all. The level of involvement deepens as we send more heroes out to get the things for they will need special gear to the things and the gear have numbers on them. At this point our previous experiences with Merchant ground to a halt, because our expectations of the game were not meant. We think oftentimes we just want to click buttons and see numbers increase, rather than sit and think about which fancy piece of snake-steel best mitigates the defenses of a kraken. However, that's ultimately what makes this game a game rather than just an idle clicker. One must consider carefully how to equip their heroes to achieve murder. Stats must be mulled over and equations run. One must sit and down, counting their money, and figure which item grants them the best return on gold for their time. There are guides to help you do this. So that's that: if you like an offline idle game that requires a little bit of brainpower, this is well worth your time.
This game is perfect for our tastes. We like how deep it is without being complicated. We HATE phone games, but this one just does it right. LOVE the music as well. Its perfect for the genre of this game. The only reason we gave it 4 stars instead of 5, is because we would really love for the devs to implement armor/weapon portraits to change on your heros portrait. Other than that factor, this is a 5 star game easily. Love it.
Perfect for playing in small increments or going afk a lot. It wont disrupt other more time consuming games. Is easy to fit into into your work day without boss aggro. You can play 1 minute/day and still get something out of it. If you want something engaging and deep, look elsewhere.
Cant stop playing it but Id like a feature to rearrange heros. After a couple making a hero prestige, Id like to move newer heros to the top.
We love this game but Im trying to buy the Unlock everything and it wont let us.
We played this game on an Android and liked it, but after installing on an iPhone we get messages that Merchant copied from messages. This and lack of a privacy statement = uninstall. Hopefully the developer will clarify and remedy this.
Got to be honest this looks like a great game. But for 2 YEARS people have left reviews asking for the ability to play their own music/podcast while using the app. And it still doesnt work. Sorry but thats a deal breaker for us. We hope the devs see this and fix it, but Im not holding our breath.
Fun simple addictive game but for some reason our blacksmith is not able to create anything higher then level 8 even though he is level 16 we cant make mithril ingot even thought on the wiki we should be able at level 10 Update: we figured it out it was our fault.
If you like grinder games this one is fantastic! Best 14 bucks we have spent on a game in a looong time. Way better than the pay to win kaka like Clash, Boom or the myriad others. Can wait for them to release their Space merchant game.
The game is a lot of fun and really addicting. Its also not exploitative with a ton of micro transactions and randomness. Great idle game to pass the time.
During the early game its hard to keep money up so Id be nice to have a system to auto repeat quests and sell select items off of it and pay a tax every time so that we can keep harvesting through the night.
Literally cant stop playing. The art style has an aesthetic look, and we love the gameplay. Its not even that in depth but man its good. Our favourite part is the time/wait for things is usually only a couple minutes, and generally doesnt take long. Unlike other games; which have such long waits and we have no patience for that. We r8 88/8 m8, everyones gotta play this.
This game is amazing, it is unfortunate that you have to backup your save file manually. We hope this game continues to see updates on mobile, because the game doesnt feel good on pc in our opinion. Also there is a bug with combat and healing, a hero cannot leave combat with more hitpoints than they started it with which we think is a hinderance. EX: Lava golem did a total of 234 damage to our Warrior, our priest healed him for 346 health with no overhealing. Thank you.
We love this game. Great way to kill downtime when youre dead in fortnite XD Please provide the scribe expansion to iOS so that we can transfer our steam save to our phone and be able to play anywhere.
Great game, really really enjoying it Trying to use the cloud to move our save to our phone off our android tablet, however when we try to do this the app gives us an error message. When can we hope to play on our phone.
We have played this game for some time and for some reason we feel compelled to restart a lot. IDK if it is the odd feelings of starting anew, but this game, in our opinion is one of the best merchant games out there.
So fun. We love that its ad free! You have to get this.
We love this game, super addicting and really fun. There isnt a lot that needs work and the games very polished. One of our only problems ( its small but it would make it really grate) is that the armor pieces dont switch out. What we mean by this is no matter what you dress your adventures like there appearances stays the same and its semi emersion breaking for us. Other than this its a 5 Star game and we really love it.
A very addicting game where you recruit heroes, gather items, and craft items for your heroes to gather more. Ive played continually since first starting it. The main problem with the game is some things dont work on iOS or are incorrect. Buttons and quests for Ad watching are everywhere, yet dont function at all. The latest everything bundle says $10.99 in the app, but was $12.99 upon purchasing and we didnt even receive the in-game potions. The game also cuts off all background audio on loading, which is annoying when trying to quickly check the app. Its worth playing for sure, but it is frustrating to deal things that dont work on iOS and having paid $12.99 for about $8.00 worth of stuff, since we already owned a portion of the content.
Ive been playing this game non stop for the past two weeks. We dont normally do that with iOS games but this is stupid fun. Instead of playing overwatch like normal we put on Netflix in the background to play this. Its a basic management game set up with an rpg skin but has a pretty deep/well done leveling and gear system. Im really impressed with it. The main quality is that the quest/mission/crafting timed things are super quick. So its not like typical wait 2 hours or but these things to boost the production. It starts off as seconds, and the minutes. But there are things to do in between so youre never really just waiting until you get to the end game. We still cant believe how hooked we are on this game.
This is one of our favorite games by far! We love the crafting, selling, heroes, all of it. Though, we wold like to not wait for things to craft, or heroes to adventure, or anything at all. But other than that great game! Keep up the good work.
This is the kind of game we search for. Its relatively simple: send your PCs into quests, keep them equipped, collect loot to make gear, advance everything. No new concepts there, but the execution is well done. Commodore 64 graphics also make us kinda nostalgic. Another feature we love: the makers want to make money, so they give a few options to spend $.99 here and there, but youre not hammered with it every second. And they dont strongly suggest you spend $99.00 ok diamonds or some nonsense so they can gouge the addicts. No, its a simple transaction and we were actually happy to pay as Im enjoying the game. Its not without flaws, its been crashing on us lately, but the devs are responsive and Im sure that will be fixed. Besides, the crash literally just means a 4 second interruption to reboot. You lose nothing. One of our new favorite games. Well done.
Good game but please allow background audio to play. Otherwise five stars.
When trying to switch between from another screen while audio is on…it cuts the music out. Example playing Spotify…select app.. Audio fails out… We dont think android has this issue.
We love this game so much. We've been playing it for 8 years and we just hope the developers keep updating it. Thanks!!! -SLM616.
Yall if you like mystical like medieval games and rpgs like this is the best of the best literally played for 6 months straight ages ago and cant believe we uninstalled it we need more classes and more items and more enemies and animations and just omg more yall this game is so good.
Its very confusing. Art is good.
We are in love with this game, but it bothers us a lot that it cuts off our music whenever we open it. If we could just listen to our podcasts while we play this, we would be rating it 5 stars.
This game scratches an itch that no other game Ive found on the app store does. Ive played it off and on for a couple of years, and we absolutely love it. Some of the drop rates (looking at you, gems) are painfully low but thats expected. We love how its not pay to win. Why we gave it four stars: the music issue. Everyone else has mentioned it, but Im tired of our music getting cut off when we play.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 3.094
- Size: 67.24 MB
- iOS: 8.0 or later
- Languages: EN
- Content Advisory: Infrequent/Mild Cartoon or Fantasy Violence
- Developer: [Tyler Coleman]()
Last updated: 1st December 2023 | Genre: Roleplaying, Simulation | Developer: Tyler Coleman