Root Maker by Joe Bustamante
Welcome to Root Maker ©, the world's greatest currency exchange software.
You have just been hired as a currency trader. Congratulations! Currency is now your life. Root Maker © will guide you to unprecedented success in your new career. Money is the root of all good things, and Root is the best type of money there is.
Instructions
- Buy and sell currencies to gain more Root.
- Exchange rates tell you how much of that currency makes up 1 Root.
- On the Buy screen, enter how much Root you want to spend to buy that currency.
- On the Sell screen, enter how much of that currency you want to sell back for Root.
Rumor has it that Root Maker © rewards high performers, and that if you make enough Root, you may end up with some extra options...
Screenshots


Credit: - @joe-bustamante, @dtkelch, @andyp, and @jason-porritt on programming - @jason-porritt on the audio - @kyle-harris-ao on the interface and design
Built with Phaser 3.
| HTML5 (web) | https://josephmbustamante.itch.io/root-maker |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/root-maker |
Ratings
| Given | 52🗳️ | 34🗨️ |
I checked it out for a bit. It was a bit difficult to get into, my numbed wasn't working so I was having to play with the regular number keys. I think it could benefit from some on-screen controls, allow players to use mouse only.
But aside from timing your buy/sells to get the highest numbers, is there really anything else to it?
Other people have mentioned more mouse support and numpad support, which would be good. On top of that, I feel like "buy all" and "sell all" buttons would be helpful. Similarly, if you try to sell more than you own, it would be good if the game just sold everything instead of requiring you to input an exact amount.
Maybe it was just my luck with the RNG, but I don't feel like there was much incentive to buy or sell at any particular time. You've got nothing to do with your money except buy more money. There's no reason to get impatient. I bought as much of one currency as I could when it hit 99, then just waited for a few minutes for it to drop to 1 and sold it all. I made my fortune 99 times bigger just like that. In fact, I just did that same strategy again while writing this review. After that, the currencies all hovered at a really unfavourable exchange rate for a long time.
If there was something else to do with the money that required immediate attention, you could have a decent risk/reward mechanic.
Also, I tried all of the influence options but couldn't tell if they actually did anything.

To improve, I found it hard to see any connection between the influence system, the news system, and the prices. And the prices seemed to bottom out at 1.00 which made certain things too predictable.
I inmediately understood what was going on and what was my gameplan but the UI made it a bit hard on me. A way to sell all would have been nice, the num pad didn't work, maybe a way of adding money with premade buttons of fixed values. I don't really know, but there is a lot of unused screenspace that could be used for other stuff. Maybe even plotting some values.
Well this is me just giving some random ideas in case you feel like further developing it.
Again, I really enjoyed it :D
It was then that an hour had passed and I was deep into forming my own cult that I realized I should probably take a break from it for a while.
Well done!
On-Screen keyboard would be a great help -- can't wait to play the director's cut!