Trading Post: Cayde the merchant, two inventories, one barter

About this game

Developer: Shining Rock Software LLC · Publisher: Shining Rock Software LLC · Platform: PC (Steam) · Art style: Realistic 3D · Screen type: Trade / Economy

More Banished screens in the Gallery

What to study

Banished has no money, and the Trading Post screen is where that decision becomes an interface. Two inventories are laid side by side as identical tables, Count, Item, Cost, Trade, so barter reads as balancing a ledger rather than shopping: his 11 chickens at 500 against your firewood at 4 apiece, quantities stepped up by hand until the two Totals meet. Nothing is priced in an abstract unit that would let the player stop thinking about what things are; firewood stays firewood. The Event Log pinned beneath completes the picture, trade in Banished is an event in the town's life, logged on the same feed as births, schooling and a fisherman's death, and answered with the same two buttons: Trade, or Dismiss. Frame at about 1:21 in the GameTrailer (Steam; manual extraction from the held trading shot).

Patterns

How the screen is arranged.

data-table price-list notification-feed

Components

Parts on screen.

Window Tabs Data table Log Map Stepper

Screen inventory

• the Trading Post window is tabbed Inventory / Trade / Purchase / Orders, with a '2 of 6' worker readout and a Work button, the Trade tab is open and names its visitor in plain text: 'Cayde the Livestock Merchant'
• two Count / Item / Cost / Trade tables face each other: his side offers 11 Chickens at a cost of 500; the town's side offers 3000 Firewood at a cost of 4, every row carries a Trade stepper, all still at 0, and both tables foot their own 'Total 0'
• there is no currency anywhere in the window: value exists only as these per-item costs, and a deal is built by stepping quantities up on both sides until the totals balance
• the Trade and Dismiss buttons sit under the tables with the cursor already on Trade, dismissing a merchant is a first-class outcome, given its own button
• behind the window the trading post and its dock are outlined in yellow, the merchant's boat loaded with crates at the pier; along the bottom, the Map, the Shepherdston panel (Late Spring, year 37) and an Event Log whose newest lines record this exact moment, 'A merchant has arrived at a trading post', between a child becoming a student and 'Bayleigh the Fisherman has died of old age'

Top 3 colors

#615a4c 18%#302c25 18%#4f473c 18%

Top three palette colors by share. The remaining colors make up the rest.

Source and credit

© Shining Rock Software LLC, Banished screenshot: Banished GameTrailer (Steam), Shining Rock Software LLC, shown for design study and commentary. PlayCraft is an unofficial fan project, not affiliated with or endorsed by Shining Rock Software LLC.

Source tier 2 (publisher-released) · screenshot: Steam store page · Steam page

Source details

Fetched 2026-10-24. verified 2026-10-24: manual extraction manual-trading-post-81.png @ ~81s in the GameTrailer, MD5 f8d050ca661ac254247f1a819188b879, from the verified-clean curl-shim download (36,599,177 B, MD5 70ee2f713fc8318dc8227d38a36e522f; full decode clean), inspected visually at full resolution (1280x720 native); 'Cayde the Livestock Merchant', the 11 Chickens / 500 and 3000 Firewood / 4 rows, both 'Total 0' footers, the Trade/Dismiss buttons, the Map, Shepherdston panel and the Event Log lines (merchant arrival, Bayleigh the Fisherman) all legible; no trailer text or marketing overlay in frame

no published policy found (checked 2026-10-24); fair-use study use, takedown honored within 48h

Rights holders: see Copyright & takedown.