Unstable Investments by Japayne
A game where you have to trade stocks to win big. Start out by making a little money through manual labor, invest, and sit back and watch your assets grow to the moon! Or perhaps, crash and burn...
Controls: Mouse for everything! - Click the work lever to earn 1 gold coin. - Click and hold the chest or a stock to withdraw gold coins. - Click the chest or a stock while holding gold coins to deposit. - Click the letter that appears in the bottom right corner to see news about stocks.
Tip: Try to invest in stocks when they are as low as possible, and withdraw again when they are high.
The post jam version includes a timer, a simple game over screen, and a bugfix for the stock values becoming negative.

| Link | https://japayne.itch.io/unstable-investments |
| Post Jam version | https://japayne.itch.io/unstable-investments-post-jam |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/unstable-investments |
Ratings
| Overall | 1158th | 3.2⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 1280th | 2.875⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 895th | 3.175⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 449th | 3.85⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 546th | 3.825⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 877th | 2.875⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 1051th | 2.421⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 1173th | 2.975⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 10🗳️ | 14🗨️ |
Some controls for the sound and a way to restart/replay would have been good (unless there was one that I didn't see). I liked the art style and the UI was pretty intuitive.
Overall, good job!
Also note after a while all the stock options flatlined, not sure if that was a bug
Love the ArtStyle. Very great job. Nice
Great job!
And perhaps the hints shouldn't be literal descriptions of future events: when a stock is going up, that's not really news, you can already see it. News should contain something that lets *you* make educated guesses as for where the stock is gonna go.
Maybe there could even be a silly mechanic of a window in which you can see the outside world and changes within it. That smoke on the horizon... ooooh, the Yellow HQ is that way, I guess their stock is about to crumble if they're literally on fire. And that rain over Red farms? I bet the harvest will be good, gotta invest now! Stuff like that, you know? Just an idea :)
And the overall goal seems a bit weird, imo. Why do I need 500 gold in every stock when I could just have 2500 gold for myself? Some stocks are in decline, I shouldn't have to invest in them just to win.
Also, I think it would be nice to have a mark on the graph whenever you buy or sell to see how you're doing.
That all said, very cool game overall! Pleasant presentation and music, the quills drawing the plots are cool looking, the way the graph changes when you hover over the banners is helpful. I liked it a lot!
However, I think the UX of transferring founds back and forth needs improvement. It's a bit cumbersome.
Overall solid entry!