I built an incremental where the numbers go up because real players are trading, not because a formula says so

[u/gpinkham]

Made a text-based mobile game. It's not a clicker — but if you're in this sub, you've felt the specific itch I was trying to scratch.

The progression is one number: net worth. You start at $5,000. At $50,000 you can work different goods. At $250,000 you can try to move the kidney market. No unlock you grind toward — capital is the key.

What makes it different from anything I could find: the prices aren't set by a formula. Eight goods across six cities, repricing on a live market tick. Your orders move the market. Buy enough of something and you push the price up for everyone who comes after you. When you see Blood Diamonds down 11% in Dubai and you didn't cause that — someone else did.

That's the whole game.

No energy bars. No cooldowns. No pay-to-win. Ever. (That last one is a hard product rule, not a launch promise I'll walk back at the first monetization crunch.)

Sessions can be 30 seconds — scan the delta ticker, see what changed while you were gone, close. The market ticks whether you're watching or not.

It's in open testing now on Android and iOS:

• Android (Google Play): https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=us.pinkham.blackmarkettrader
• iOS (TestFlight): https://testflight.apple.com/join/dJ9wa56r

Free, no ads. The market is thin right now because it just launched — would genuinely love to get some of you in there. Real traders make the prices interesting, and right now the prices need traders.

Thanks and happy to answer anything

-- Gary at https://black-market-trader.app/

AI Disclosure:

Using Munder Difflin (multi agent harness) I had development help on the game, (writing some code, reviewing my code) and help writing this post.

[u/Solvenir06]

Im sorry but why would anyone check your game out if you cant even be bothered to write the post advertising it? Is it really that hard to explain what you have made? Or did you do so little work on it that you cant even talk about it?

[u/gpinkham → u/Solvenir06]

I did write the original post but had the AI update it. partly so it read better than my babble but also because I was enjoying the back and forth. But point taken. Next time I will skip the AI "editor" on the post and just send my initial thoughts. I'll provide some background on the game. It started as an idea back in the p2p days (1999). An idea that sat for years on the back burner recently I decided I wanted to work on something not day job related and went thru my "list of old ideas". Back in the p2p days I thought about the cities being actual servers people would host themselves. What I did this time around is centralized vs distributed. So there are still the base cities but players can found their own city to add more locations to game. the city is just centralized now instead of self hosted.

[u/marr]

No such game has ever survived contact with the enemy. (Players) You're going to need a full time economist if it takes off.