Trade Bots: A Technical Analysis Simulation Review

Trade Bots: A Technical Analysis Simulation is “an educational simulation game featuring technical analysis and algorithmic trading”, developed and published by Cinq-Mars Media, who have done other fun educational games like Lazy Chess and The Devil's Calculator.

Look, I’m gonna be honest, I have no interest in the stock market. The one time I have interacted with one was in Grand Theft Auto V, and losing thousands of dollars on buying stock in Vangelico, so I’m not looking forward to losing any virtual money. Still, I’m going to give this game a fair shot.

The game, if you can’t already tell, is all about simulating investment platforms, using the real life historic data of an unknown company ranging from the 1950s to present day. Your goal is simple: earn a profit. Take out a loan, buy stocks, then wait day by day looking for the prime opportunity to sell that stock. As you increase your profits, you can purchase upgrades to add more details to the data and automate some aspects.

This is primarily an educational game, and it will pull up actual YouTube videos to watch and learn from. You can also click a link to Investopedia or take a quiz to earn some in-game cash, so it's worth doing so if you don't want to take out a loan. Now, this would be great… if it didn’t rely on YouTube, and if anyone's been on the platform for long enough, you should know that videos aren't permanent, and could easily be taken down. Or there's an error and the video won't play. Although this is not the fault of the game, and the Investopedia is much more reliable, some offline guides would be appreciated.

You can also design bots using a node-based system that will allow you to automate the process, only stopping if something has gone horrifically wrong. It's cool, but it does require a lot of learning, which is why a game guide is available to you at all times. It is practically required to read through it if you’re an absolute amateur because it is very easy to lose money and go bankrupt, just like in real life.

What is not so realistic is that if you've felt that you’ve lost too much money, or you're deep in the red, you can restart your run keeping any money you earned from passing quizzes so you can try again to earn a better profit. You can’t exactly rely on future knowledge, as the game sets you at a random time of that company’s history. You could be trading in 1985 or stuck in 1955.

There are two other styles of investment you can try out: ETFS (Exchange-Traded Funds) and (sigh) crypto. They aren't available at the start though so if you're only interested in one type of investment and want to learn it, you'll have to play the other modes first. There is also a sandbox mode to play around in.

Is this game an effective crash course in investment? I think so. It's certainly safer to do than throwing in real money. It has some real tips to use in the actual stock exchange that could earn someone a lot of money. Unfortunately I'm not that type of person, thus I kinda lost interest after 40 minutes.

I genuinely did not know how to score this initially as it's not really a game. It's a learning tool that simplifies some aspects of investment but still expects you to seriously learn if you want to make a major profit. It has some elements that borrow from idle games and roguelikes, but it still feels like something a school would use for a class rather than a game to play on your off-time. If you want to learn how to trade without risking your real money, then this is for you, but to anyone else this is just… the stock market. An ever changing wall of numbers and graphs that will require more than just a few quizzes to really understand.