RogueTrader Review

RogueTrader is a stock market guessing game from Acespire. If players have ever wanted to play a game where they have to depend purely on luck to reap game rewards, this is certainly the game to check out. For me, though, RogueTrader just doesn't really feel like a game; making for a rather unpleasant experience overall.

The setup for RogueTrader is that players are controlling the decisions of a young hotshot stock trader who needs to prove himself in order to be a global player in the stock world. To start with the only market available is Frankfurt, and players need to earn a certain amount of money and experience to move onto the next territory. While this premise is certainly interesting, the gameplay that results from this setup is rather banal. Players simply look at a line graph and guess whenever to buy and sell stock. To succeed, buying low and selling high is the name of the game.

If this experience were a little more varied with other gameplay mechanics, it could be a lot more interesting than it currently is. However, RogueTrader as a game is literally just staring at a constantly-scrolling line graph and determining when to buy and sell. There's no "end of the trading day" to be experienced, no variable events to increase or decrease the fluctuations in stock, and no other indication to predict how the stock is going to perform beyond the line graph, which turns the whole experience into a guessing game.

While RogueTrader looks pretty nice and has a potentially interesting concept, it fails on many levels to be more than the most casual of distractions. The game could be so much more if it capitalized on the thrill of players analyzing information before making their big bets, instead of just asking players to randomly guess their way through the game. Consequently, RogueTrader is a pretty hard sell, even for a free game.