DON'T GO BROKE !

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Inspiration

Financial literacy is often viewed as a dry, complex topic that many young people avoid until it's too late. When looking at the problem statements for the H&R Block and Security Benefit tracks, we wanted to take something traditionally intimidating and make it engaging. Our core gameplay mechanic is heavily inspired by the game Reigns. However, instead of balancing a medieval kingdom, players must balance the four critical pillars of adult life: Happiness, Savings, Investments, and Career. We wanted to simulate "Life After Graduation" in a way that emphasizes the real-world trade-offs between holistic well-being and financial stability.

We are competing in Theme track, H&R Block track, Security Benefit track, Best UI/ UX challenge, ElevenLabs and Hacker’s choice challenge. Please run index.html to run game.

How we built it

We developed the interactive simulation using standard web technologies: HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

JavaScript:Handles the core game loop, state management of the four resource bars, random generation of life scenarios, and calculates the quantitative impact of every player choice.
HTML & CSS: Used to design a clean, responsive, and intuitive interface that provides instant visual feedback when resource levels change, targeting a strong UI/UX.
Multimedia & Content: We integrated catchy background music to maintain user engagement and embedded educational tooltips/advice to actively teach financial concepts alongside the gameplay. To make the game fun, funny, and highly polished, we incorporated multiple sound effects for interactions like clicking, active gameplay, and the "game over" dying screen. We creatively utilized ElevenLabs to generate these unique sound effects, which significantly elevated the overall user experience and directly tied into the ElevenLabs track.

Challenges we faced

Our primary challenge was balancing the game mechanics. If the game was too punishing, players would quit; if it was too easy, the educational impact of risk and consequence was lost. We had to carefully build the resource penalties and rewards for each scenario so they realistically mirrored real-world financial and lifestyle decisions. Additionally, seamlessly integrating factual financial advice without disrupting the flow of a survival game required multiple iteration on our UI.

What we learned

From a technical standpoint, we refined our skills in JavaScript and HTML. Beyond the code, designing the scenarios forced us to deeply research personal finance, debt management, and the compounding impact of early financial choices. We walked away with a much stronger understanding of the exact financial literacy concepts we set out to teach.