Market Maker Game

I have wanted to design my own board games for a while, and this is the one I took the furthest. It started as a tabletop idea about trading in a live market, and it worked well enough with friends that I decided to build it into a proper web app so we could play it online.

The game puts 2 to 8 players into the same market for ten rounds. You buy and sell stocks in real time, news events swing the prices around, and influence cards let you nudge the market in your favour. There is an IPO phase at the start, an order book so trades actually match against each other, short selling and margin for the braver players, and a few difficulty modes so it works for first-timers and for people who take it too seriously (my friends).

Under the hood it is a Next.js and React app with Supabase for the database and real-time updates, which is what keeps everyone’s board in sync as trades and news land. Getting the real-time trading and scoring to stay consistent across players was the fun, hard part.

How you can use it

It is built to be played with a group. Everyone joins the same room with a code, and you trade your way through the rounds together. The code and design docs are on GitHub if you want to see how it runs or run it yourself.