SARRAF: The Moneychanger of Galata
Galata, 1645. Your master is dead; the counter, the scales and the ledger are yours.
You are a sarraf — a moneychanger in 17th-century Istanbul. Weigh suspect coins, discount promissory notes, lend against your better judgment and hold your neighbors' deposits... while the state debases the akçe and eyes your growing fortune.
Every customer is an information problem
You can never be sure — you can only sense. Watch how a man haggles. Ask who vouches for him. Weigh his coin, if you can spare the time. Then press the stamp and live with it.
- One screen — the counter, the ledger, the scales
- Two rates for every coin — the official decree vs the reality of the bazaar
- Haggling that talks back — his reaction to your rate is a tell, and tells can mislead
- Rumors with mouths — porters, coffeehouse, flea market, a Venetian broker; learn whom to trust the hard way
- Guarantor chains — one default can topple the men who vouched
- The state is watching — reputation, bank runs, tax collectors, confiscation
- Three endings — leave in time, go under, or catch the state's eye
- Fully voiced in Turkish (as Galata was) — TR/EN interface
Earn enough. Leave in time.
Your master could not.
This is an early demo — your feedback shapes the game. Leave a comment!
Play in the browser, or download for Windows, Linux & Android · Türkçe / English
Source code: the engine behind SARRAF is open source (MIT) on GitHub. Game content stays with the official builds — the playable game lives right here.
Download
Click download now to get access to the following files:
Development log
- We are happy to anounce more os support3 days ago
- The bazaar grows teeth (v0.3.0) — smugglers, inspectors, seven endings6 days ago
- The counter answers back (v0.2.11)7 days ago
- Play SARRAF in your browser (v0.2.10)7 days ago
- Every customer has a face now — v0.2.7 with hand-tinted engraving portraits7 days ago
- The demo is now public (v0.2.6, Windows & Linux)8 days ago
Comments
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where is the source code? can you link it?
The source code is not public yet, but it will be very soon!
hi! do you plan on making a web build for the demo?
Yes, it will relase soon!
Hello, thanks for the web build. I have some feedback and maybe bug reports too.
- an interesting concept! love the stylised interface and all. really builds up an immersion.
- a tutorial and a wider world setting would be nice because im not good with economics lol. Labels are self explanatory maybe but i still find them difficult to understand.
- it would be cool if you could get more clues about the whats happening around you in the city. There could be major events happening, like wars etc that would make more people withdraw their money or make some exchange rates go up and down. It would require you to pay more attention to the story.
- nothing is really stopping us from declining every offer (other than the fact that of course you cannot win this way, but you also cannot lose). Declining does reduce your reputation for sure, but it was not clear to me what reputation actually does.
- do the characters have personalities? like some are more likely to refuse higher rates etc? I think deeper personalities would be cool. There could even be a papers please style chatting interface to get to know more about them.
- maybe there could be more visuals. the gameplay could be extended to more than just button presses and text boxes i mean.
(playing on FireFox, macOS)
- buttons are still interactable behind the settings menu
- the - and + buttons are not clearly visible in bargaining
- some text are not translated when going between languages
followed, I am excited to see whats coming next!
Thank you so much for this long paragraph. I don't think anything would be more helpful than this. We will carefully implement all of your suggestions in a short time. Again, thank you for your time. 💗
I am happy to have contributed! :)
💗