Survive
A browser game on a real stretch of market history with the dates blacked out. How long can you last?
Each game draws one real stretch of daily prices (crude oil, natural gas or an exchange rate) and hides the dates and the instrument. You turn a single risk knob from −1× (bet on a fall) to 3× (bet on a rise). Your capital bleeds a little every second, so sitting in cash won't save you. It shatters when it falls to a line that starts at 65% of your start and rises by half of whatever you gain. You play the same stretch three times; from the second round on, the ghost of your last run follows you.
News is a clue. Real headlines from those days pop up as you play, but only the ones that say why something happened: a central bank, OPEC, a sanction, a supply outage, an economic data release, a hurricane. They appear before the day they explain is drawn, so you can read the clue and guess what comes next. Headlines that only report a price move never appear during play, since the chart already shows that. When a headline mixes a cause with a price, only the cause part is shown, copied word for word, so a pop-up may show only part of a headline; the full original is on the reveal page. Every time one appears, time pauses: your capital stops bleeding, the headline stays on screen, and you can move the knob before pressing on. The pace is slow (one real trading day per second), so there is time to think.
A note on the clues: most of these headlines were originally picked because they explain a big move on that day, so they tend to point the right way more often than a headline would in real life. This is a game, not a trading signal.
After the third round the file is declassified: the instrument, the real dates and prices, and every headline of that stretch, including the price reports you never saw, with a link to each. For each headline that popped up, it also shows how the price actually moved over the next one and three days. You also get your three rounds drawn as curves, so you can see where each one broke.
Challenge a friend. After your third round you can make a link and send it to someone. They play the same stretch, three rounds, with your capital line drawn live on their screen, and at the end the two of you are shown side by side. The link contains only your moves and an optional nickname, nothing personal, and there is no server or leaderboard: your friend's browser replays your moves and works out your scores itself. They can challenge you back on a new stretch.
Where the numbers come from
- Prices: U.S. Energy Information Administration daily spot prices (EIA notes the underlying source is Refinitiv, an LSEG business) and the Federal Reserve H.10 exchange rates. Prices are only rebased to 100 on the first day; nothing is smoothed, flipped or invented.
- Headlines: real past news, copied word for word from the linked pages. They never change the numbers.
Updates
Survive: news is now a clue
Playing it, I found the pop-up headlines didn't help you decide anything. Many only reported a price ("oil falls 3%"), which the chart already shows, and they appeared after that day's move was already drawn. Now only headlines that say why something happened pop up (a central bank, OPEC, a sanction, a supply outage, a data release), and they appear before the day they explain is drawn. Price-only headlines wait for the reveal. When a headline mixes a cause with a price, the pop-up shows only the cause part, copied word for word, so it may be only part of a headline; the full original is on the reveal page, along with how the price moved over the next one and three days. Which headlines pop up was decided from the headline text alone, before looking at any later price. There are 14 stretches now: two were dropped because almost none of their headlines passed. Challenge links made before this update no longer work, because the rules changed.
Survive: challenge a friend, three rounds side by side
After your third round you can now make a challenge link. Your friend plays the same stretch for three rounds, with your capital line drawn live on their screen (in teal, no ghost of their own), and at the end the two of you are compared round by round, with all three curves side by side. The link holds only your moves and an optional nickname. There is no server and no leaderboard: your friend's browser replays your moves and recomputes your scores, so nothing in the link is trusted as a score. They can challenge you back on a fresh stretch.
Also new: the screen before each round now says what you are looking at (type of price, number of trading days, the goal), and every headline comes with its publisher, where you are in the stretch, your position and capital, and a Chinese gloss on the Chinese page. The dates and the instrument are still blacked out until the end.
Survive: every headline pauses, and it is slower
After playing it again I changed three things. Every headline now pauses the game, not only the major ones: the clock freezes, your capital stops bleeding, and you can read it and move the knob before pressing on. The pace is slower, one real trading day per second instead of 0.4 seconds, so a round takes about two to three minutes. The ghost delays grew in proportion (5, 12 or 25 seconds), and the chart is wider and taller now that the news strip is gone. Difficulty is unchanged: capital still bleeds per trading day, not per second.
Survive now pauses for major news
A friend who played it said it only tested reaction speed: there was no time to think. So now, when a headline is a major event (a central bank decision, OPEC, war or sanctions, a supply outage, a government stepping into the market), the clock freezes. Your capital stops bleeding, the ghost waits with you, and you can move the knob before pressing on (Space on a computer, a button on a phone). Time out doesn't count toward your survival score. At most five pauses per round, and which headlines count was fixed from the headline text alone, before looking at any later price.
Survive is playable
A small browser game: 16 real stretches of oil, gas and currency prices with the dates blacked out, one risk knob, three rounds with your own ghost. Everything is revealed at the end, with links to the real headlines.