Naiive Studio has released a new update for Insider Trading, its stock market roguelike deckbuilder available on Steam. The patch introduces a Trainee difficulty mode aimed at newcomers, Russian language support bringing the total to eleven languages, and a set of quality-of-life improvements including warnings for suboptimal moves and a smoother tutorial flow.
Insider Trading builds its entire deckbuilder around a single volatile idea: the market you construct is the market that can destroy you. Each run casts you as a trader with a starting deck of cards that don't deal damage or summon creatures but move stock prices. Play a card and the market reacts, prices shifting based on what you've put into motion. The goal each week is to hit a financial target, cashing out at the right moment to lock in profits. Push too aggressively and the cost of entry skyrockets, pricing you out of your own game. Play it too conservatively and the market drifts beyond reach. The tension between greed and restraint sits at the centre of every decision, with greed itself acting as an accelerant that amplifies both gains and risk in equal measure.
Between market days, you enter the Aftermarket to draft new cards from different pools. The catch is that upside rarely comes clean. Some cards strengthen your deck while others actively weaken it, meaning every draft choice carries a cost you'll feel later when the market opens and your deck is the only thing determining price movement. Disruptive events like recessions can derail a run entirely, forcing you to adapt a strategy that was working moments ago. Over 120 cards let you pump, crash, and exploit prices, while 60-plus stackable pills and perks create the kind of wild synergies that roguelike players live for. A combo system rewards smart card positioning, giving runs a layer of sequencing that goes beyond simply playing your strongest hand.
What makes the stock market framing more than cosmetic is how naturally it maps onto the push-your-luck dynamics that drive the best deckbuilders. The language of trading, buying in, cashing out, reading the market, watching a position collapse, gives every mechanical decision a narrative weight that abstract card games struggle to match. You're not just optimising a deck. You're gambling on your own ability to read a system you built, deciding card by card whether the next play secures your fortune or wipes it out.
Each unlockable character arrives with a distinct deck and special mechanics that reshape how you approach the market. Their starting configurations encourage strategies you might not otherwise attempt, giving runs variety beyond the card pool alone.
The pacing follows a rhythm familiar to roguelike deckbuilder players: market days where your deck does its work, punctuated by Aftermarket drafting phases where you shape what comes next. Multiple difficulty levels scale the challenge for players who want to push harder, with the new Trainee mode now offering an entry point at the other end of the spectrum. Insider Trading is not a trading simulator. It is a deckbuilder that borrows Wall Street's vocabulary and volatility to fuel a game about knowing exactly when to walk away from the table.