This is the first update to StonkBox. I’d like to start out by saying thanks for your time and brutally honest reviews, the only way the game and I can improve is through that.

It’s clear I rushed the initial release, but you live and you learn. So now it’s time to start really improving the game.

 To start, I’ve completely removed the incremental clicker portion of the game and the hourly free spinner. I initially added this to both give players a way to avoid going broke and also for player retention but I realize now that the middleground I was trying to achieve of meme game and simulator just doesn’t work. Its a gimicky player retention mechanic and I should have spent more time thinking about the overall gameplay loop. So I’ve decided to lean hard into the simulator. I’ve replaced it with a bank, including loans credit score, and bankruptcy to start heading in the simulator direction. Loans have an interest applied every 24 hours but this is subject to change, I have to see what people think of it first. There is also a loan cooldown of 45 minutes so you can not just spam repay loans to increase your credit score. 

I’ve also gutted the whale alerts completely and instead added a global trader feed, so instead of big trades being done just to show off, all trades no matter how small or big can be seen in the trader feed 

The UI was very sloppy and I was far too reliant on AI with the CSS styling, I’ve begun a complete rework that you can begin to see the idea of here. I’m going for a CRT/Terminal vibe.  I’ve debated on making the game entirely terminal based with typing and arrow keys but I’m not sure if that’s the move yet so I’m gonna keep refining it before I go that direction. I also fixed the line-height problems that were all over the place causing text to be cutoff. Its happening on the player tier in the global chat in the game but not in my editor when I test it, So I am still trying to figure out how to fix that. 

I added buy limit orders and stop losses so you can trade more efficiently and offline. I think this adds a fun mechanic because you can logon and set your buy orders and stop losses and come back later to check it. It takes a few seconds for the orders to process as it has to cross check the database for stock price history. I am aiming to improve the speed it takes as I do think its slightly annoying. I was thinking about creating my own API specifically for the game which would make things work overall a lot smoother. 

The syncing of the fake s&stocks was not working well and the volatility algorithms were running client side so the prices would sync every X amount of seconds but the prices would differentiate for each player which is not ideal for a multiplayer stock simulation. I fixed it by having the volatility only run on the master heartbeat. 

I’ve temporarily removed the user IPOs, there’s a clear problem of pump and dumps so I have to iron out the system a bit more before it will be back, I think there is better things to focus on at the moment and I will come back to it later. 

 I have replaced the thumbnail/logo art with a self made logo rather than the AI art that was there previously.

I am working on more updates and ideas for the game, I appreciate any suggestions and feedback! I would really like to know what people think of the credit system and if the game balancing is too difficult in its current state.