World End Economica (2014) [/]
Sep 07 2026
World End Economica is a 3-part visual novel available on Steam.
Episode 1
The story takes place a few decades in the future on the 25-year old Lunar City, the first and so far only city on the moon. Old enough that our teenage hero Hal was born there and has lived all his life. Lunar City is a place with very light government and no financial laws so that buying, selling, investing stocks is what people do to get rich and that's what Hal does.
Becoming an investment wizard is Hal's obsession but to win an elite contest he has to team up with Hagana, teen mathematician who was brought to the Moon to be a slave but escaped and kind of hates all men. They combine her mathematical skills and Hal's knowledge to create a program (well don't do the coding themselves) that can analyze and predict the stock market, at least well enough to give Hal and edge. As success looms the two get closer but Hal is planning on leaving after the contest and he's not really considering taking Hagana with him...
Episode 2
After the disaster of four years ago a crippled Hal is recruited by Eleanor, a minor nobility on Earth who owns an investment fund in Lunar City and wants Hal to join her team. But she has a secret dream to take down Avalon, the hot new energy company whose rapid rise included cause her family's business to go bankrupt and be bought out by Avalon...
Episode 3
After the Avalon business Hal has been hailed as the Hero of the Lunar Surface and still works for Eleanor, who moved back to Earth. The hot new financial product is ABS which is investing in loans and more specifically mostly home loans. Since there is little land in Lunar City and a growing population home prices have always gone up rapidly so people are willing to take out ruinous loans to buy a home since they can sell it for more later. It makes ABS a mathematically can't miss investment which Hal thinks is too good to be true...
Each episode is about 10 hours and feels like a novella-sized story. The main plot elements are all financial and what I like is that they go over financial concepts throughout. Episode 1 focuses on the stock market and investing in company stocks. I forgot what Episode 2 focused on -- maybe the peril when a company owns both the product (electricity generation) and the market platform (a system where buyers bid for electricity). Episode 3 is about how you can create these synthetic financial products and there's a similarity to housing market bubbles and crashes.
Other than the financial aspects the story is not that great. It's mostly dialog so it moves slowly. In 10 hours I can read a 288-page BattleTech paperback. Here it feels more like a novella (60-90 pages) so three episodes may be 200 pages total. It does have a lot of static art though for the most part you could have only a few pieces of art and do almost as well. There is also background music is actually fairly varied and not bad. From the main menu you can go to the songs and play the music tracks by themselves, electronica and synth.
The novel is $35 on Steam. I got it on Humble Bundle as part of an $18 Sekai Project bundle. Although ultimately an interesting story it wasn't really engrossing so only worth buying as part of a bundle. Not only that, even it were free is it worth spending 30 hours reading this and it's probably yes but barely. Maybe part of the problem is that other than Hal none of the other characters are detailed at all (and even Hal not really all that much as he's not introspective), so it's hard to care for one outcome or the other in each episode.
Episode 1
The story takes place a few decades in the future on the 25-year old Lunar City, the first and so far only city on the moon. Old enough that our teenage hero Hal was born there and has lived all his life. Lunar City is a place with very light government and no financial laws so that buying, selling, investing stocks is what people do to get rich and that's what Hal does.
Becoming an investment wizard is Hal's obsession but to win an elite contest he has to team up with Hagana, teen mathematician who was brought to the Moon to be a slave but escaped and kind of hates all men. They combine her mathematical skills and Hal's knowledge to create a program (well don't do the coding themselves) that can analyze and predict the stock market, at least well enough to give Hal and edge. As success looms the two get closer but Hal is planning on leaving after the contest and he's not really considering taking Hagana with him...
Episode 2
After the disaster of four years ago a crippled Hal is recruited by Eleanor, a minor nobility on Earth who owns an investment fund in Lunar City and wants Hal to join her team. But she has a secret dream to take down Avalon, the hot new energy company whose rapid rise included cause her family's business to go bankrupt and be bought out by Avalon...
Episode 3
After the Avalon business Hal has been hailed as the Hero of the Lunar Surface and still works for Eleanor, who moved back to Earth. The hot new financial product is ABS which is investing in loans and more specifically mostly home loans. Since there is little land in Lunar City and a growing population home prices have always gone up rapidly so people are willing to take out ruinous loans to buy a home since they can sell it for more later. It makes ABS a mathematically can't miss investment which Hal thinks is too good to be true...
Each episode is about 10 hours and feels like a novella-sized story. The main plot elements are all financial and what I like is that they go over financial concepts throughout. Episode 1 focuses on the stock market and investing in company stocks. I forgot what Episode 2 focused on -- maybe the peril when a company owns both the product (electricity generation) and the market platform (a system where buyers bid for electricity). Episode 3 is about how you can create these synthetic financial products and there's a similarity to housing market bubbles and crashes.
Other than the financial aspects the story is not that great. It's mostly dialog so it moves slowly. In 10 hours I can read a 288-page BattleTech paperback. Here it feels more like a novella (60-90 pages) so three episodes may be 200 pages total. It does have a lot of static art though for the most part you could have only a few pieces of art and do almost as well. There is also background music is actually fairly varied and not bad. From the main menu you can go to the songs and play the music tracks by themselves, electronica and synth.
The novel is $35 on Steam. I got it on Humble Bundle as part of an $18 Sekai Project bundle. Although ultimately an interesting story it wasn't really engrossing so only worth buying as part of a bundle. Not only that, even it were free is it worth spending 30 hours reading this and it's probably yes but barely. Maybe part of the problem is that other than Hal none of the other characters are detailed at all (and even Hal not really all that much as he's not introspective), so it's hard to care for one outcome or the other in each episode.