Prototyping Week 5: A 0 Skill Stock Market Simulator

Week 5's theme was Maximum Rewards, Make a game that has no fail state and involves 0 skill without the player knowing.

This week involved the most adversity of any week. The game was a stock market game called: Battle of the Billionaires. A survival stock market game in which you must avoid going bankrupt to become a billionaire. Against you is an "Ai" that is buying and selling, you must survive longer then Jerry.

The initial builds had zero functionality. I initially fell into personally my most common pitfall: trying to code systems that are infinitely expandable.

I made a stock list that would instantiate buttons to buy stocks that would then go onto another menu where you would "Sell" however I just couldn't get a working Sell button.

I tried to make a graph, but it had no fluid functionality. However I had an epiphany, and it was my proudest moment, I decided to scrap the current project and restart with a proper plan.

I realised I just need to convey my vision. I decided to hard code a lot of the features and UI elements as it took a lot less time. Luckily using an agile process I was able to quickly redirect my efforts, so that I was more able to define the tasks I needed to do to have a minimum viable product.

I felt like randomness was a great way to disguise the rigged nature of the game.

Had I started with this theme and prototype in week 1, I don't think I would have finished it. I managed to find a way to incorporate the functionality that was in the vision, my next steps would be adding in visual feedback and improving the user experience.