In the midst of the AI feeding frenzy, have you ever looked upon the fluctuating stock charts of big tech’s major players and thought, “Yo, I bet that would be a sick dirt bike track,”? Really, just me?
Well, I know for a fact this is not a wholly original brain wave as StonkRider exists. Made by someone going by the handle ‘Oops I Deployed’ (you can support the creator via Ko-Fi), it’s a very simple browser-based game. Just search for your company of choice, and ride the track.
Naturally, I had to take a look at the swift peaks of Nvidia’s stock chart first. But, let’s be real, it’s kind of a boring hill climb right now (dining well on the AI industry, to the tune of a $5 trillion market capitalisation will do that, I guess). It’s not a dissimilar story for AMD’s track—I mean, stock chart. Then, our Dave suggested I’d perhaps have more fun with the highs and lows of another company’s stock chart.
Intel’s stock chart between 2021 and now is bumpy to say the least, with a recent spike I was not sure how I was going to navigate. Thankfully, Stonkrider’s slightly twitchy controls don’t go full QWOP, and are easy enough to grasp. You accelerate with the up arrow key, jump with the space bar, and adjust your trajectory by lifting your front or back wheel on the left and right arrow keys.
Did I get a great score while touring Intel’s stock chart? Nah. You can easily beat me by making better use of the rudimentary trick system. Lobbing yourself off a peak will get you ‘Big Air’ and maybe even a ‘Superman,’ though you can also do mid-air flips too. If your wee stick man rider’s head makes contact with the stock line, you’ll be set back a few paces so it helps to be ever so slightly careful if you want to score a good track time. Summitting Intel’s peak took me way longer than I’d like.
(Image credit: Oops I Deployed)
It’s a neat little distraction from, well, the state of everything and, judging by the number of rides completed, 5,300+ folks would agree with me. I’m trying to ignore the fact that more than $22 million have been traded since the project went live, though.
So, If you’re looking for similar browser-based distractions, may I suggest this very simplistic FPS with photo-real graphics? Failing that, now is as good a time as any to get into Fallen London, I’d say, or indeed any of the other best browser games out there.
