Carolina Capital: OS Game About Youth Finance Management

Inspiration

Students show up to campus already juggling rent, internships, credit, and surprise bills. Most tools ignore scams, late fees, or the pressure to spend. Carolina Capital gives them a safe sandbox that feels familiar, stays playful, and still emulates the trade-offs of a real week-to-week budget.

What it does

It's a financial literacy game that looks and feels like a classic desktop operating system (like Windows 98). Players manage a virtual student's life week-by-week by interacting with desktop "apps" for banking, jobs, housing, and education. It teaches real-world concepts by simulating a stock market, loans with credit-score-adjusted interest rates (APRs), and recurring bills. Players must balance their checking/savings accounts, credit score, and a "Well-being" meter, making choices that affect all three. The objective is to achieve specific savings, credit, and education goals to "win" the game, while avoiding bankruptcy or running out of happiness.

How we built it

Frontend: HTML, CSS, JavaScript Backend: JavaScript UI rendering: modular render functions Accessibility: ARIA roles on windows Desktop UX polish: CSS

Challenges we ran into

Creating a shared vision for what we wanted our project to be Balancing it to be educational but also enjoyable to play Figuring out which features were necessary and which one we should omit for a better user experience DEBUGGING

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Built the entire Win98-themed desktop, state engine, and art pass in one weekend No frameworks, just raw HTML/CSS/JS. Modeled real finance levers: adjustable APRs, amortized loans, auto-pay logic, and randomised financial events/risks that occur in students' lives Polished the UX for judges and students: ARIA roles, keyboard focus restore, draggable windows, and live balance feedback.

What we learned

Credit systems are vague; personally designing every APR simulation helped us understand and thus teach how they work and why they matter. The most effective learning happens when players face difficult choices. By forcing decisions between spending on "happiness" and saving for the future, or dealing with random events like unexpected bills, the game teaches practical decision-making. Building the project without frameworks gave us a deep understanding of foundational web concepts, such as how to manage a central gameState object and efficiently update the user interface from scratch.

What's next for Carolina Capital: OS Game About Youth Finance Management

Add/optimize more features (e.g. scholarship odds, inflation, mortgages). Make multiplayer modes or mentor dashboards that can be used to track progress of various players Introduce achievements, longer-term goals, and graduation ceremonies to extend replay value. Port to mobile-responsive layout while keeping the nostalgic theme intact to maximize accessibility.