The stock market offers a fast-moving environment where you need to think on your feet and show fast reaction times if you want to succeed. That’s appealing to a lot of individuals, so it’s no wonder that we can easily find games that replicate this experience and give you on-screen excitement as you play. What are some of the top options, and what do they teach us?
Crash Casino Games Are About Timing Your Exit
They say that “time in the market” beats “timing in the market” (so longevity wins out over simple lucky timing), but getting your timing right is a vital skill in games as well as in making market decisions. We can get an idea of how this works by looking at an online casino, where many games are based on a random outcome that players can’t affect.
Slots, for example, include a set of reels where various symbols land in a way that can’t be predicted. However, we can also see a new type of online gambling game, known as crash games, where timing your exit is the most important aspect. Crash games such as AviaMasters and Dragon’s Crash show us how this genre can be adapted using various themes. The gameplay sees an object – a plane and a dragon in these examples – crossing the screen as the win multiplier grows. Players need to cash out before it crashes or flies away. So it’s sort of like having your exit strategy worked out in advance, and then trying to execute it perfectly at the right moment. These are a fun and relatively new element of online gambling to be explored.
When it comes to a classic card game like blackjack, timing involves knowing when to double down – which is one of the most difficult parts of the game. It’s a powerful strategy, but only in certain situations, so timing your exit in this case means understanding the game and what approach you should take.
Stock Market Simulators
The idea of trying the stock market has been appealing to people for centuries, with the Amsterdam Stock Exchange’s history going back to the start of the 17th century and marking it out as the oldest of these exchanges that’s still functioning. For most of its history, it operated as a physical marketplace where traders bought and sold stock, like the Dutch East India Company, which was the first stock to be created in this way. As technology has taken over, we can now carry out similar trades on laptops or even smartphones, giving a gamified feel.
Therefore, it’s perhaps no surprise that we can now play stock market simulator games that bring this experience to life in new ways. Wall Street Raider is arguably the best-known title. It gives you a wide variety of ways of playing as you can short-sell, take out options, and dip into the crypto market. The Heyt original was released by Intacorp in 1989 and looks a little dated, but a refreshed 2025 version is said to be on the way. Best Brokers is a mobile game that lets you practice using real-life tools like order limits and stop loss. It lets players dabble in a lot of different assets with a realistic feel.
Board Games
Maybe you believe that having a group of players huddle around a board is the most authentic way of capturing the feel of the original stock market. Many of the original transactions were carried out in coffee shops in London because the traders were too rowdy to be allowed into the Exchange, and it’s easy to recreate that spirit when playing a boisterous board game at home.
The Rich and the Good by Ares Games is a solid example of how this works. Players take on the role of stock brokers who buy and sell stock during the Industrial Revolution. Donating cash to charity is part of the game, while players can also choose to share information. Interestingly, the player who has earned the most money is only the winner provided that they haven’t donated the least amount to charity.
Stockpile is another board game that was created to generate an interactive stock market experience. This game is set in the late 20th century and gives everyone a chance to win using insider information. Each player then decides when to make their move and bid on the stockpiles. The gameplay uses an auction format, and the way that prices can rocket or crash at any time adds a dynamic element that brings it to life.
All of these different games that we’ve looked at show you some of the different elements of the stock market. None of them are exact replicas of the real stock exchange, but if you’re planning to track the latest AI stock or otherwise get involved, they all provide some light-hearted relief while teaching you something useful about the markets and how they work.
