DIAMOND HANDS: THE GAME STONK for Windows

Get to the moon pronto

DIAMOND HANDS: THE GAME STONK is a free single-player action video game wherein you must get enough monkeys to go to space using only the power of money. Developed by Derpmachine, this short 3D indie game is a fast-paced first-person shooter that’s heavily inspired by the 2021 GameStop short squeeze and WallStreetBets subreddit fiasco. The gameplay is fun but doesn’t offer much replay value due to the lack of difficulty levels and a high score system.

Dominate the stonks

DIAMOND HANDS: THE GAME STONK takes a lot of references and memes from the GameStop fiasco, wherein the video game retailer’s stocks suddenly surged in price. In the game, however, you play as someone who can turn money-hungry businessmen into monkeys or “monke” by simply hurling wads of cash at them. You earn money points by doing so and you must reach $1000 to win and launch the rocket to the moon.

The gameplay is straightforward as you just keep shooting cash at the hordes of enemies to convert them until you win. There’s no tutorial but the controls are easy enough to grasp after a while. Left-click to shoot and right-click to pick up objects—although the latter isn’t too useful so press Q to drop items. WASD is for movement and Spacebar is for jumping. Lastly, 1, 2, 3, and the mouse scroll are for switching ammo.

The action can be quite frenetic as businessmen will keep spawning for each one you successfully defeat. There are three types of ammo: wads of cash, coins, and briefcases. Typically, it takes two shots of cash to convert an enemy—and only one blast from a briefcase to convert several in a set radius. You can reload ammo by going to ATMs. You can also get powerups like slow-mo and super jumps. Unfortunately, there’s only one map.

Has potential to improve

All in all, DIAMOND HANDS: THE GAME STONK is a nice little parody to play if you enjoyed the GameStop memes that became viral. It’s not too difficult of a shooter game for most people and you don’t actually need to understand the inspiration or any stock lingo to enjoy playing it. However, it doesn’t have a lot of replay value since there’s only one map and the difficulty doesn’t rise after winning.