STONKS-98000 Stock Market Simulator is a Stock Market Game developed by single employee developer Ternox Games. The games casts you as a Japanese stock broker in the 1980s trying to grow their wealth and business. They are assisted by an advisor named Amy. The game includes Life Simulation Game elements that where you have to maintain your relationship with your contacts and Amy, manage your stress levels, and navigate from bad deals.
The game was released for Early Access on July 2023.
This page contains the following tropes:
- Combat and Support: Downplayed. You the Boss execute the plans for gaining money, while Amy assists you with advice and showing information about your stocks.
- Deal with the Devil: On top of making underhanded and corrupt deals, you could also work with the Yakuza to bolster your bottom line even further, at least for so long as you pay your dues and don't piss them off.
- Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": Amy refers to you as Boss.
- Exposition Fairy: Your advisor Amy acts as the player's assistant. She helps give you advice about any bad deals and keep track of the stocks, in addition to giving good conversation.
- Featureless Protagonist: Your player character, The Boss, is never visually seen.
- It Will Never Catch On: Downplayed. Among the various available stocks you start out with in 1980 are those for budding video game companies, which were still seen as relative novelties in Japan at the time, with penny stock valuation to match. Their worth, however, can rise up dramatically over time, depending on performance.
- Just Before the End: After a fashion. The game starts off at the height of Japan's economic boom in The '80s, with all its excesses. Then the bubble bursts...
- Nothing Is the Same Anymore: Once you reach the early 1990s, things become progressively more difficult as the effects of the bubble burst become progressively more pronounced.
- Rags to Riches: You can go from being just barely above a struggling salaryman working from a shady apartment, to being one of Japan's top business magnates. Depending on your actions, however, all that power and fortune can evaporate very quickly.
- Relationship Values: The game tracks your relationship values with your various contacts and Amy.
- Retraux: The game's UI and overall presentation call to mind old NES and PC Engine titles, befitting the time period portrayed.
- Sanity Meter: In addition to finances and ethical standing, there's also a stress meter that has to be managed well.
- Subordinate Excuse: As time goes on, depending on your relationship with Amy, those professional ties can potentially become romantic.
- Video Game Caring Potential: While you could just get your hands dirty on the way to the top, you could also donate to charity and purposefully choose more ethical deals, which will come to benefit you somewhere down the line.
