Mama Bear

Inspiration

We were inspired by games we played when we were younger like Webkins and Stardew Valley. We wanted to make a similar game, but one that was educational and could help children learn the basics of financial responsibility as well as economics, math, english, and other subjects.

What it does

Our game allows the user to travel to different "villages" that each have a subject like "Finance Village," "Savings Village," or "Budget Village." There are a variety of small interacive activites to complete in each village, ranging from games like fishing to fruit collecting, where the user answers questions about finance, savings, etc, during the gameplay. The user (or the parent of the user) can also upload a .pdf of a specific set of questions or topics that they want to cover, and the questions will be extracted and incorporated into the games of each village. This way, users don't just learn broad-based economic subjects, but very specific and relevant topics that they choose themselves.

How we built it

We started by using React for the frontend and then connecting it to Firebase for our database and cloud functions for secure logic. We used Phaser for the game engine and Gemini api for our chatbot. We got our graphics from free databases of pixel art, and integrated them into the project through our design team.

Challenges we ran into

We found that doing graphics through Phaser was much more complicated than we'd anticipated. Overcoming this took a lot of iterations and persistence, but eventually we were able to develop a UI we were happy with.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

One of the things that came out the best during our project was the UI. We felt that it mimicked closely our inspiration from Webkins and Stardew Valley, which was exactly what we were going for. We were also really happy with the variety and types of games that we instituted into our project. Another aspect that we're proud of is the chatbot that can help the user with any questions they may have.

What we learned

We learned more about how to use React and how to integrate with Firebase. We'd also never used the Phaser game engine before, so that was exciting and challenging to learn how to use. Developing a working, user-friendly project like this one is never as easy as it seems at the get-go, but together we are proud of our successes and grateful for the opportunity to have participated in this event.

What's next for Mama Bear

The next steps for Mama Bear include improving the variety of games, like adding dancing and racing games. We also hope to add tokens that the user can gain from games/correct answers, which can be traded in a shop of accessories to customize a character or a characters’ house. We want to implement finance into this aspect as well, to teach smart money-making decisions. We think that adding a leaderboard would inspire the users in healthy competition and make kids want to challenge their friends (and learn more skills in the process). We want to add more advanced topics that grow with the kid as they develop in their Mama Bear journey, such as stocks and bonds, investments, and other harder topics.