Checkout the Game
The game is available live at https://muskangarg12.github.io/SavingsRush-CarGame/
Inspiration
Financial education and literacy are problems that are faced by most adults. And while it’s certainly important to teach them to better manage their money, why not start that education sooner? Teaching basic financial literacy to kids and teenagers ushers better prepared adults into the world.
Of course, teaching kids about money is no small task. Most people under 20 are more likely to play games on their phones and Laptops than learn about budgeting, saving, or compound interest. Heck, most people over 20 would rather play games, too. So that’s why financial education apps work well when gamified. That is, the educational experience itself is turned into a game. There are achievements, activities, and other incentives to make the app more rewarding for the user.
My goal is to make the users more aware of their financial choices and educate them on how some of their decisions might affect their financial growth.
What it does
My web application, SavingsRush works much like the Classic Retro Car Racing Game , which we all used to play during our childhood. However, instead of protecting our car from hitting the other cars on the road, in this game we need to prevent our savings from being drained out due to our virtual financial choices.
Once the user opens the game application, they are welcomed with some augmented reality models implemented using EchoAR. Now, when the user clicks the PLAY button, the game starts wherein the user needs to move their car using the keyboard arrow keys (for navigation). On the road, the user can see different icons which signifies different financial choices which the user can make by colliding with them based on which user's savings will increase or decrease. Some of the virtual financial choices includes, working a job, partying, winning an educational scholarship, going for shopping, having food from restaurant, having home-made meal, going for shopping during sale etc. Some of these choices will increase the player's savings while other's will decrease it. Hence, it is the players responsibility to make proper choices to prevent their savings from getting drained out.
Initially, the user has zero savings and based on the choices which the user makes, their savings gets incremented or decremented. The game gets over once the player runs out of their savings. In order to display whether the player did better than their previous games or not, I have integrated some cool augmented reality models using EchoAR.
How I built it
I have built this application from scratch using basic JavaScript, HTML and CSS. I have also implemented Augmented Reality using EchoAR to make the application more fun and interesting.
Challenges I ran into
This was my first time working on a game hence I had to do a lot of research on what platform to use. However, after all the research I got to know that basic JavaScript is enough to built a great game. Also, this was my first time working with augmented reality too, hence I ran into many blockers here as well. However, EchoAR's detailed documentation helped a lot.
Accomplishments that I'm proud of
I am proud to be able to complete this project in time and being able to build a game which can be helpful for a lot of people in real life.
What I learned
I learnt Augmented Reality and how to integrate it with javascript.
What's next for SavingsRush Car Game
In the future, I want to make this game more professional by including multiple levels with different scoring criterion along with increasing the focus on financial education of the user.
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