🚀 Inspiration
We were inspired by how common—and convincing—online scams have become, and how unprepared most people are to recognize them. Media like Missing and Welcome to the Game showed us how immersive digital experiences can feel, and we wanted to bring that same realism into something educational.
Most existing tools focus on blocking scams or warning users, but very few actually teach people how to think when encountering one.
So we asked:
What if users could safely experience scams before facing them in real life?
That idea became ScamQuest.
🎮 What it does
ScamQuest is an interactive simulation that places users inside a realistic laptop environment where every app can contain a potential scam.
Players explore emails, messages, websites, downloads, and even live phone calls. Instead of being told what’s fake, they must make decisions themselves—marking content as safe or a scam.
- Correct decisions increase score
- Wrong decisions cost hearts
- A helper highlights suspicious patterns—but never gives the answer
To connect gameplay to reality:
- A “Learn More” feature shows real-world examples of similar scams
- AI-generated calls simulate real-time social engineering
ScamQuest turns scam awareness into an interactive, decision-based learning experience.
🛠️ How we built it
We built ScamQuest as a web-based interactive system using:
- Frontend: HTML, CSS, JavaScript
- Backend/Auth: Firebase (user login + persistent data)
- APIs:
- Tavily → real-world scam examples
- ElevenLabs → AI-generated scam calls
- Tavily → real-world scam examples
- Tools: VS Code, Git, GitHub
- Planning: Notion
- AI support: ChatGPT and Claude for debugging and development
We designed the interface to mimic a real operating system, with draggable windows, apps, folders, and interactive elements to create an immersive experience.
⚠️ Challenges we ran into
One of our biggest challenges was making the experience feel realistic without overwhelming users.
- Designing scams that felt believable but still understandable
- Integrating AI-generated voice calls smoothly into gameplay
- Keeping everything responsive across multiple interactive elements
- Managing multiple APIs within a limited timeframe
We also had to shift from building features to building a cohesive experience.
🏆 Accomplishments that we're proud of
- Building a fully interactive desktop-style environment
- Creating a decision system with real consequences (score + hearts)
- Integrating AI-generated scam calls
- Connecting gameplay to real-world scam data
- Successfully blending education and entertainment
🧠What we learned
- How to integrate multiple APIs into one seamless system
- The role of psychology in scams (urgency, trust, manipulation)
- How to design systems that teach through interaction, not instruction
- How to balance technical complexity with user experience
đź”® What's next for ScamQuest
We’d love to expand ScamQuest into a more advanced training platform by:
- Adding more scam types (job scams, crypto scams, impersonation, etc.)
- Personalizing difficulty based on user performance
- Expanding AI interactions to be more dynamic
- Bringing ScamQuest into schools, workplaces, and communities
Our goal is to make scam awareness accessible, engaging, and practical for everyone.
Log in or sign up for Devpost to join the conversation.