Compound Clash

Inspiration

Attending a low-income high school, where learning wasn’t always prioritized, taught me the beauty of piecing something together. Building something from scratch, especially when it can serve as a tool for the future, became a passion of mine. Compound Clash is not a finished project, it’s a start. The first brick in what I hope will one day become a mansion. It’s designed to be a resource for anyone interested in learning financial literacy, something that can be used anytime, anywhere. Financial literacy is a skill that impacts every stage of life, whether it’s deciding if buying Balenciagas is the smartest choice, or realizing that ordering takeout for the sixteenth night in a row might not be the best financial move. Compound Clash aims to build these skills early, in a fun and engaging way. Inspired by how Prodigy makes math accessible through games, Compound Clash goes a step further. It’s built to include definitions, interactive gameplay, and real-world scenarios, keeping players engaged while preparing them for smarter financial decisions in the future.

What it does

The story makes finance relatable by pulling Sage into an adventure, and the gameplay teaches financial concepts by making the player live through them. Instead of reading definitions in a classroom or memorizing abstract terms, players step into Sage’s shoes and experience the realities of money through challenges, risks, and choices that feel like part of a game world. The adventure structure draws them in emotionally, with characters and conflicts that symbolize real financial struggles, while the gameplay transforms lessons into lived experiences—earning wages at a lemonade stand, losing money to a crypto scam, paying rent, or grinding through work to hit a financial goal. Successes feel rewarding, failures sting, and every decision has weight, which makes the knowledge stick in a way lectures never could. By blending story and interactivity, the project turns financial literacy into an immersive journey where the player learns not because they are told, but because they have lived it.

Challenges we ran into

Challenges I ran into were making functional mini-games that not only entertained the player but also served as genuine financial learning moments. It wasn’t enough to simply create a game mechanic that worked; it had to tie back to the larger lesson of financial literacy. For example, designing the lemonade stand required me to think about how to balance fun gameplay with the concept of wages, bonuses, and performance-based pay, so that when players “worked” in the game, they were experiencing the same dynamics they might face at a real job. The difficulty was in building mechanics that felt engaging, but also meaningful, where every action, whether collecting bottles, mowing lawns, or taking risks with gambling, was connected to a financial principle. This meant approaching design not just from a technical perspective, but from an educational one, ensuring that each mini-game reinforced the story’s purpose of teaching money management through lived experience.

How we built it

This was built entirely with python in Visual Studio Code to showcase a good demo of what Compound Clash can become.

Built With

• python