Space Warlord Baby Trading Simulator

You Are One Baby Away From Financial Freedom

HIGH It hits all the right buttons.

LOW Trading gets repetitive.

WTF Pulling off an impressive short just before a baby dies.

Imagine you’re Jordan Belfort (terrible circumstances to be in, I know) but all financial trading markets are off the board. No stocks, no bonds, no mutual funds, no Polymarket, no live betting on whether Jerome Powell will say inflation more than five times in a Federal Reserve Speech.

That is, save for one exception — babies. You bet on babies. Also it’s in space. But most importantly, you bet on babies.

Baby prediction markets is Strange Scaffold’s newest and weirdest title in Space Warlord Baby Trading Simulator. It is also a title that makes the player sound crazy the moment they try to explain it to any normal person. The player assumes the role of a stock trader, but not just any commodity will do in the far future. Since everything else has become so highly regulated in this draconian space world, the only industry left for the dregs of society to bet on is the baby prediction market.

Here, players buy stock in babies’ futures. It’s fairly simple — when a good thing happens to a kid, line goes up. When a terrible event happens, line falls down. Eventually the former child dies, and the amount of stock I sold or bought goes against my bottom line. The goal is to profit, and each dollar amount the player generates over a certain period goes towards a bronze, silver, and gold prize total, with each requiring higher weekly earnings to qualify.

But Space Warlord Baby Trading Simulator is more than just buying low and selling high, as players can try other schemes to win big. “Shorting” a baby can often be complicated, but it can pay out in a big way. Players also can bet beforehand on certain predictions, such as whether a price will reach a certain ceiling or floor, whether a certain event will happen in a baby’s life, or how long a baby will live.

It’s all fairly macabre in the grand scheme of financial markets. Horrible events like catching a preventable disease or being assaulted by a superfan happen just as often as rebuilding a temple or being deployed on the front lines, which are construed as positive events. But everything that makes Space Warlord Baby Trading Simulator macabre also makes it downright hilarious.

One scenario from my last session that can explain everything about what Space Warlord Baby Trading Simulator‘s unique alchemy —

It’s Friday, the market’s open. There are a few options for my character Wenbill to take, depending on where he wants to get his money up. I chose the calm-looking baby Aranachia, which comes with 16% odds on a long position of $2,435. Wenbill isn’t one to back down from a challenge, so he takes those odds before the opening bell.

I’ve had a good week so far, racking up over $40k since Monday. When he begins trading, he’s all in when the price opens at $750. But whoops, Aranachia’s price is dropping. $600, $500, $350. There isn’t even time to short before the prized baby is turning 21 and the price looks like it’s hitting a floor already. “Stay the course,” I told myself.

But disaster strikes. Aranchia’s arm is severed in a mill accident. Dead at 24. Even worse, I’m all out of money. $40k of earnings wiped clean. Absolutely devastating. I thought I could be the Michael Burry of the baby prediction market – instead I’m just like every other schmuck in the galaxy.

This is but one of a thousand scenarios that could play out in Space Warlord Baby Trading Simulator, all thanks to the entropy of the moment I lined up to trade.

Each time I entered a new planet with a fresh stack of cash, I knew nothing was safe. I could take a strategy where I bought low at the very beginning of the day, but that left me open to a baby that died quickly. I could be extraordinarily cautious and buy nothing, but that would leave unrealized potential in my brain when the market closed.

Much like what real-life stock trading seems like to me outside of a Roth IRA, trading in Space Warlord Baby Trading Simulator felt like flying blind. But oddly, I was not surprised by the randomness of everything in this title. In an age where everything is betting and most facets of modern life are financialized, this title feels like a low-stakes, absurdist equivalent of our modern financial hellscape.

Space Warlord Baby Trading Simulator is the perfect antidote for my financial market apathy – I felt the rush when I won, and felt the pain when I lost. It’s an amazing title that simulates both feelings equally.

Rating: 8 out of 10

Disclosures: The game was developed and published by Strange Scaffold. It is currently available on PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on PC. Approximately 4 hours were devoted to the game, and it was not completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: At the time of review, this game was not yet rated by the ESRB, but it has a decent amount of dark humor about people dying, losing limbs, and getting addicted to drugs. This game is not made for kids.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind options.

Deaf and Hard of Hearing Gamers: The only dialogue and sounds are communicated through text boxes. The text for these boxes cannot be resized. There are no relevant audio cues needed for successful gameplay.