I hesitate to call Space Warlord Organ Trading Simulator “the best organ trading sim of 2021”, because Cruelty Squad also came out in 2021 and I worry about starting a localised flame war. But it means Strange Scaffold’s sci-fi stockbroker sim was, at the very least, 2021’s second best organ trading sim. Nice to see it’s getting a sequel then, called… oh no. Space Warlord Baby Trading Simulator.
“We aren’t monsters. You aren’t going to be trading babies,” says head of studio, Xalavier Nelson Jr. “You’re going to be trading stocks based on babies, which means you can short a baby.”
The game was announced as part of an online showcase held by Strange Scaffold. They also showed off upcoming co-op cook ’em up, Co-op Kaiju Horror Cooking which looks like if Lethal Company was staffed by drunk medieval monks. A third game, Truck-kun Is Supporting Me From Another World, was also announced, although it’s only about a week into development, says Nelson. It is “a chaotic anime-inspired vehicular action game about driving into objects at high speed to rescue the corporate ladder climber you accidentally isekai’d into a dangerous medieval fantasy world.” Of course.
As for the spleen brokering sequel, there wasn’t much to see yet (it’s also still early in developement, says Nelson). But we’re told it will be a continuation of the grimy space tycoon’s desperate search for high profit margins in the realm of interstellar commodities. In a galaxy where shareswappers can literally tell the future to a high degree of accuracy, speculating has become harder and harder. The last refuge of the Wall Street scoundrel lies in extraterrestrial baby trading.
“In the future, technology has been established that lets people observe macro trends, see whether a war will break out as a result of current conflicts and so on and so forth. This makes a lot of speculative markets flatline because speculative markets are basically just gambling. And the last thing that remains for an up-and-coming investment broker to get into for true speculative trading action… uh… is babies.
“You will be buying alien baby stocks, selling them, shorting them, and in general trying to make as large of a profit as possible,” he goes on, calling the sim “the next major effort in us exploring this series around what happens when you apply capitalism to space.”
Strange Scaffold has released seven games in the last two years, Nelson reminded press at the start of the showcase, which is, yes, quite a high rate of fire. Although it’s maybe only achievable thanks to the studio’s rotating squad of part-timers, each of whom brings their own interests and quirks to the table.
“The studio has been part-time people since its founding because it added different dynamics to who we could hire and how we could hire them,” said Nelson. “So I will say that the studio is and has been a part-time location for folks, but there has also been a deep tension that’s been introduced by the fact that a lot of folks are increasingly not having day jobs to return to. And we’re trying to support people as best as we can through it while not having resources to bring anyone on full-time or take up that load that the wider industry should have.”
Both Space Warlord Baby Trading Simulator and Truck-kun will be coming out “within the next year”.
