Look at that magnificent title. Space Warlord Baby Trading Simulator.  You know there’s nothing good waiting inside, right? At best, this is a game where a newborn has, somehow, become the galactic ruler of some massive empire, and therefore now needs to manage the ins and outs of markets and supply/demand for a civilization. That doesn’t feel like it would translate to the best game, but what do I know? I still don’t understand the appeal of most 4X titles, so it’s not off the table.

But we wouldn’t be here if it was just a cute-but-challenging game of tariffs and embargos. No, we’re here because the stock market, that thing that continually makes a couple people a ton of money and completely screws millions of others, is popular as a gaming platform unto itself. And people want to play games where they’re sort of doing it without actually risking money. Lovely.

Seriously, the tone and jokes of the game are fantastic, as long as you’re ready for it.

In a future where technology has passed the line between reality and magic, virtually all aspects of existence are curated and understood to the point of utter bliss. All elements that could bring chaos into the world – disease, famine, failing businesses – have been eliminated thanks to perfect clairvoyance of what the future holds for static entities. There is no more uncertainty about what could come for investments in traditional means.

While this should make the universal consciousness happy, that also means that people who thrive on gambling are pissed. There’s no more games of chance because everything is understood and played out! Everything, that is, except for life itself. There isn’t a machine in existence that can know what will or won’t happen to a baby who spawns in some random part of a planet in a galaxy far, far away. Guess what, diamondhands: this is your chance to prove your chops.

Each round of Space Warlord Baby Trading Simulator lets you choose one of several babies about to be born on an alien world and then track their entire life like you’re a tweaked out daytrader. As the baby’s life fluctuates, their inherent value changes, letting you buy and sell stocks of their life value with pinpoint precision. You’ll never be certain when the alien is about to die, so you need to use the holy trinity of stonks in order to succeed. You need to have an inherent understanding of the species and what life and circumstances mean for them. You need to potentially call in outside sources of trusted advisors to shed insight with a certain degree of accuracy. And you need to be a goddamn lunatic who thinks they’re literally smarter, faster and more powerful than fate itself.

I think is this the guy that Mrs. Butterworth is seeing on the side.

To its credit, Baby Trading Simulator does several things exceptionally well in terms of atmosphere. The art design, a very gritty pixel art smattering that reminds me of Bahnsen Knights, minus the neon and more focused on Gas Station Story portraits. The concept of a distant, alien future being broadcasts with the same fidelity as snapshots from the Curiosity rover is a perfect juxtaposition of hope and despair for what the universe could manifest. While there are occasionally humanoid aliens, most of them are wildly different in design, from plant-like sprouts to what looks like mechanical pancakes with muscles. Scattered amongst them is what’s clearly just a picture of a golden retriever, and that just makes me laugh. Even in a far flung, morbid reality, there’s still someone out there just trying to be a good boy, albeit as an advisor for when someone will die with 80% accuracy.

Additionally, there’s a ton of infrastructure in place to make the experience more exciting if it gets its hooks into you. Each of the campaign days unlocks different perspectives for those who might be getting into this macabre world of investment. From the retiree who just wants to secure a nest egg to the office worker that’s lost it all, you take on the mantle of a different vessel that’s hoping to win it big. The different identities will last anywhere from four to seven days, sometimes longer, and that basically gives you only a handful of chances to make it big. In order to maximize the time invested in a run, developer Strange Scaffold has really gone all out to allow for a lot of money and options to happen all at once.

NO YOU IDIOT, WHY DID YOU MARRY FOR LOVE??? I’M GONNA LOSE EVERYTHING!

For example, Baby Trading Simulator lets you not only bet on the single baby you’re keeping track of, but also basically put horse-racing style bets on other babies you think might do well (or poorly). There’s tons of insight to be gleaned from investors, including rough estimates of when things will happen, what will happen and the maximum or minimum a stock might hit. If you know, with a strong amount of certainty, that this one baby will live to be over 100, then you might hesitate to place longform bets on them. But if you believe the weird Dude guy who is fairly certain that baby will die from being sucked into a tornado, maybe a few bucks placed will guarantee a buffer if your own bets are off.

Straight up, this game is interesting, even addicting, but I don’t find it fun. You know how there are games where the whole point is to make the numbers go up? Bouncing around like you’re in Nubby’s Number Factory or something similar? This is one of those games, but you have to constantly be paying attention. Stock will fluctuate, and you might have just a second to figure out if “cooked dinner for a neighbor” is going to be positive or negative for this planet. It could go either way, and you need to remember what this planet values. Sometimes getting addicted to steroids is a good thing!  So it’s a lot of hitting the buttons as fast as possible to buy and sell stock as events happen. You could take it easy and just wait it out, but then you don’t get a lot of cash and thus “lose.”

I have to pay 3% for this idiot to tell me the baby will win a science fair. BUT WHEN, DAMMIT?

If you want to try to get money fast, you can short a baby and basically invest when you believe a ton of bad luck is about to happen. This seemed to be the most surefire way to either succeed wildly or lose all your money at once, so naturally I did this as often as possible. It really warps your mind to become excited that another lifeform is suffering multiple bouts of injury and suffering and that equates to your success, but then getting pissed that they died (and thus voided the short) or started doing better (making you lose money). Let’s be clear that Baby Trading Simulator is up front about the trigger warnings for this game and advises you to talk to someone if you’re feeling strange, and I guess that’s what I’m doing here. I became invested in someone’s misfortune and that blows.

This is dark humor, no bones about it, and Space Warlord Baby Trading Simulator really went the extra mile to craft something that’s functional and fascinating and clearly appealing to a large sect of the population. Now, more than ever, people are gambling like mad in stocks and crypto, and a good percentage of that is the thrill of doing so and less about the need to get money (though there are plenty suffering out there). As I would say with Raccoin, Clover Pit or even Buckshot Roulette, these titles are meant to simulate something exciting that could, for a certain demographic, be very triggering and induce bad behavior. But it also is a nice placebo for not actually gambling away your life savings like that one deckhand on Below Deck, and I approve of you giving Strange Scaffold a few bucks instead of some faceless meme coin.

It doesn’t help that I’m terrible at this game.

If you were already rooting for babies to get diseases and now want to profit from it, I’ve got great news. Space Warlord Baby Trading Simulator is ready to take your galactic credits as you confidently bet that some kid is going to have the worst time ever. Follow percentages, heed advisors and bet big, because there’s nothing like the thrill of watching a number line go up and down. Well, probably for someone. Me, I’m going to go play something else, numbers are hard.

Space Warlord Baby Trading Simulator is available now on Steam, Xbox Series X/S and Nintendo Switch (2).

Reviewed on Nintendo Switch 2.

A copy of Space Warlord Baby Trading Simulator was provided by the publisher.