Balancing Act

Example gameplay
Loan system
Welcome screen

Github: https://github.com/br-iscool/hackonomics-2025/

Inspiration

The inspiration for Balancing Act came from our one of our developer's experiences watching others struggling to navigate their own personal finance as a young adult. As a result, we wanted to create a safe and engaging environment where players could experiment with different financial strategies and life paths without real-world risk.

What it does

Balancing Act is an interactive financial life simulation game. Players begin their journey at age 16 and navigate through life by making crucial financial and personal decisions. The primary objective is to achieve $1 million while managing stress. The game improves financial literacy by simulating real-world scenarios. Players learn about the impact of educational choices on career paths, learn to manage income and expenses, and see how their decisions affect their life.

How we built it

This project is a web application built with Next.js, Typescript, and TailwindCSS and react-icons. Additionally, we used various libraries in our game.

Challenges we ran into

One of the biggest challenges was balancing realism with engaging gameplay. We spent a lot of time designing the economic model behind the game: things like salary progression, loans and credit cards, and the impact of life events. Maintaining that balance to ensure the game was both fun and informative was a key focus of our development process.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We were definitely very proud of the frontend part of our game; it felt aesthetically pleasing and was easy to navigate.

What we learned

Developing this project taught us a great deal about financial systems. We had to do our own research in order to implement the game logic properly and make sure it was as realistic as possible in order to educate users in financial literacy. Also, we learned a lot about state management in React and the usage of component libraries.

What's next for Balancing Act

Hopefully, our future includes updating the game with more diverse career paths, investment options like stocks and real estate, and a wider range of random life events to increase the replay value. We also plan to share our game with educational places like schools.