Trader Rush: A Retro Arcade Game Built From Real Market History
I've always wanted to make a game. Stock trading is what I have a genuine passion for, so I combined both into a retro arcade-style game where players trade their way through random days in stock market history.
The Concept
Players are dropped into a random day in stock market history on the 15-minute timeframe. They don't know what day it is. They start with just the premarket data and have to read the chart to make trades: go long, go short, or sit it out. The market plays forward and you trade as best you can.
At the end of the session, your performance hits the leaderboard. Best percentage gain wins. It's competitive, fast, and teaches real chart-reading skills through gameplay rather than tutorials.
Where the Design Effort Went
Custom Charts
Everything is built custom: the candlestick charts, volume bars, price lines. No third-party charting libraries. This gives full control over the visual feel and lets me create the dark, arcade-inspired aesthetic I wanted. Chart playback uses speed controls from 0.5x to 10x, so players can fast-forward through slow periods or slow down when things get volatile.
Leverage Unlock UI
The leverage selection screen is a game design moment: the "5x FREE FOREVER" option with a checkmark, the locked 10x and 20x tiers with "Watch 1 Ad" / "Watch 2 Ads" unlock conditions, the purple glow on the card borders. The free option is prominent, locked options tease what's available, and PLACE ORDER anchors the bottom.
Visual Direction
The dark UI is intentional, borrowing from both the retro arcade look and actual professional trading terminals. Green and red already carry meaning everywhere in trading, so I built the color system around that instead of fighting it. The LONG and SHORT buttons are big, bold, and tactile on purpose. When you're mid-trade, the interaction needs to feel decisive and immediate, not like filling out a form.
It ended up feeling closer to a game than a finance app: the playback controls, the speed selector, the "END DAY" button. Those are game mechanics wearing a trading interface. The whole design is in service of the gameplay, which is about quick decisions and learning by doing, not by reading a tutorial.
Designed in Figma, Built with AI
Designed in Figma and built entirely with Claude Code in native Swift, including the custom chart rendering, historical data processing, and game logic. Getting the game state, animation timing, and real-time chart performance right took a lot more back-and-forth with Claude Code than a typical app screen, mostly because so much of it is about feel and timing instead of layout.