Economy is a vital component of many games; ranging from from picking up new ammo and weapons to buying items in bulk to pad your own pocket. Even in games where there is no financial market, such as Fallout 3, good and services can be exchanged with those magical bottle caps. Money doesn’t just make the real world go round, it makes the virtual one go round as well. That’s the idea behind Hermitworks Entertainment’s Ipod Touch title, Space Trader: Moon Madness. 

Space Trader is all about level one economics; buy low, sell high. Tips about shifts in the market come from reading the news, bribing bartenders, or picking up tips from scurrying denizens of the intergalactic underworld. That’s one thing about Space Trader; it doesn’t make any excuses. If you want to make a bundle delivering genome resequencers to a mad scientist, then you can do that consequence-free. You can also deliver suspicious goods and rat out your supplier to the law. The game may as well be Ferengi 101, profitability is far more important than morality. 

As the title implies, the game is so simple it’s madness. Five buttons at the top of the game screen allow players to navigate. The first shows a navigational map for the game’s three locations, the second brings up your list of contacts, the third describes news items and missions, the fourth shows your cargo, and the last allows you to deposit or borrow money from the bank. Oddly enough, while once you deposit money you can’t take it out again; you are only allowed to borrow it. I guess we’re all really just borrowing our money in the end anyway.