“It’s a race to compete with other traders to fill commissions”
Emotional, economical bungee jumping in SPACE WARLORD ORGAN TRADING SIMULATOR
I INVESTED IN PENNY STOCKS, GUESSING THAT THEY WOULD INCREASE IN VALUE
At so many points, my main response to Space Warlord Organ Trading Simulator is, “Thanks! I hate it.” It’s that moment of recognizing something presented to you is awful and compelling. There’s a touch of the archaic definition of the word ‘awful’, straddling both reverence and dread.
Like Strange Scaffold’s previous An Airport for Aliens Currently Run by Dogs, the premise of Space Warlord Organ Trading Simulator is stated upfront. As your mentor lays out at the start of the game, “Everyone has organs, everyone wants organs, and everyone needs organs, which means THEY NEED YOU.” Even with its visceral stakes firmly set, I wasn’t quite prepared for one of the first things I saw to be a counter ticking up the number of breaths I’d taken. Not from an in-game mechanic, but as a measure of my own mortal time.
Lungs sell for a decent chunk of money, in Space Warlord Organ Trading Simulator. It doesn’t say whose lungs, or from where, or how they were acquired, but then I don’t know that about most things I buy. What I can see is how much they buy and sell for, even if the point of origin is abstract. In one life, a warehouse. In another: Organ barge.
1,000 BREATHS LATER
One day the organ barge brings only lungs, which throws a spanner in that day’s trading. A day is two minutes long, and it’s a race to compete with other traders to fill commissions. The list moves quickly, with sales getting sniped out from under you, so the market getting flooded with lungs only makes it harder to sift through for the brain I was looking for.
Outside of moment to moment buying and selling, SWOTS has a stock market. I won’t claim financial expertize, but the aphorism to ‘buy low, sell high’ sticks. I invested in penny stocks, guessing that they would increase in value at some point. And they did! When, in the wider world, a truce was ended, and the value of every single organ shot up. I tabbed around, noticing the identical spike in previously disparate charts, grimacing at the implications —but the worst part of me wished I’d realized that the truce had been a dip before it was already over.
Playing Space Warlord Organ Trading Simulator is much like how I imagine bungee jumping. At its full extent, its adrenaline all the way down, only to recoil with a sickening lurch from the complicit horror of it all, knowing I’ll plunge back into its depths. It’s smart and compulsive to play: Thanks! I hate it.