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DESK SIM / GODOT / STEAM
The crash isn't scripted. It's modelled.
A desk-simulation set in 1929. You run other people's money at a fictional Wall Street firm through the months before the crash, and you don't know exactly when it's coming.
You play a fund manager running a portfolio of 31 fictional companies, watching their earnings and rumours, deciding what to hold, what to sell, and when to get defensive. Everything happens through a physical desk: a stock ledger, a ticker tape, a telephone that rings when nervous investors call, a newspaper with the day's headlines, an order pad for buying and selling.
The market itself is a real simulation. Companies report earnings, news breaks, stocks trade on fundamentals, and somewhere in there, at a random and unknown point, the crash begins. Your investors are watching too. They call asking about their money, they get nervous if you hold too much cash, they lose faith if you stall them too many times. It's essentially Papers, Please meets 1929 Wall Street, where the real enemy isn't just the market. It's your own nerve, and whether you can keep your investors' trust before everything falls apart.
Work a physical desk
A stock ledger, ticker tape, a telephone that rings when investors call, a newspaper, and an order pad. Everything happens by hand.
Hold, sell, short
Manage a portfolio of 31 fictional companies trading on real earnings and rumours. Go defensive when your nerve says so.
Deal puts & calls
Trade options with dealers who can themselves go bankrupt on you.
Hire researchers
Send a clerk, an engineer, or an investigative agent to dig up intel on a company. Usually nothing, sometimes a game-changer.
Keep your investors' nerve
They watch too. They call asking about their money, get nervous if you hold too much cash, and lose faith if you stall them once too often.
Gate the fund
Freeze withdrawals to stop a run when the panic starts.
A secret mentor
Someone writes to you under her husband's name, and reveals who she really is if you trust her long enough.
Three difficulty tiers, each riskier than the last: Trust Company, then Investment Trust, then On the Curb. Twenty Steam achievements, and real consequences for panicking too early or too late. The goal: survive the crash with your fund intact, or at least survive long enough that it counts as a win.