Scurry

Inspiration

Budgeting is important, but most budgeting apps feel like spreadsheets with prettier colors. For teens and young adults, saving money can feel abstract, restrictive, and honestly a little boring. We wanted to make budgeting feel social and rewarding.

That idea became Scurry: a gamified budgeting app where managing your money helps you build something alongside your friends.

What it does

Scurry turns budgeting into a game. Users can set budgets, track their spending, and work toward financial goals while growing a personal or shared virtual squirrel village.

Users can also join a crew with their friends, compare progress, complete challenges together, and encourage each other to build better financial habits. As users stay within budget and hit savings goals, they earn rewards that can be used to expand and customize their village.

Instead of simply telling users that they spent too much, Scurry gives them a reason to come back and improve.

How we built it

We built Scurry with React Native and Expo for the mobile app, Express.js for the backend API, and Supabase for authentication and database storage. The app connects to our Express server, which handles application logic and communicates with Supabase. The project was hosted on Render.

Challenges we ran into

One of our biggest challenges was figuring out how to make budgeting fun without making financial decisions feel trivial. We wanted the game mechanics to encourage responsible behavior rather than reward users for simply spending more.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're especially proud that Scurry feels more like a game than a traditional finance app while still solving a real problem.

We're also proud of the squirrel village itself & the accessory game assets. We enjoyed deciding how the design of the game world looked.

What we learned

We also learned how important it is to design incentives carefully. Gamification works best when the game reinforces the behavior you actually want users to develop.

Most importantly, we learned that social accountability can make traditionally individual tasks, like budgeting, much more motivating.

What's next for Scurry

Next, we want to expand the Scurry world with more buildings, village upgrades, collectibles, challenges, and customization. Additionally, add a better Learn tab with lessons similar to Duolingo.