Dragon's Vault

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Inspiration

We wanted to find a fun way to teach kids financial literacy. Kids learn best when they’re engaged, so we built an interactive experience where taking care of a virtual pet reflects healthy financial habits. It only made sense to draw inspiration from this classic treasure-hoarding creature.

What it does

Dragon’s Vault makes financial literacy fun and engaging! Kids care for a virtual dragon that grows stronger and happier as they complete lessons, set (and achieve!) savings goals, and practice healthy money habits.

How we built it

We built Dragon’s Vault using React Native and Expo to make it cross-platform. We focused on clean, modular components for animations, progress tracking, and interactive tasks that reward users with XP and dragon happiness.

Challenges we ran into

Balancing game design with educational goals was tricky—we wanted it to be both fun and meaningful. We also ran into our fair share of technical hurdles, especially getting animations and state updates to feel smooth across the app. Most of our team had never used the things we implemented until this project, so sometimes it felt like hurdle after hurdle.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're very proud that we were able to have some sort of working app, especially since most of us had never made anything close to this before.

What we learned

We learned how to combine creativity with technical design—balancing game mechanics, UX, and financial education. We also gained a much deeper respect for React Native animations.

What's next for Dragon's Vault

We plan to expand Dragon’s Vault into a full app with custom dragons, mini-games, and real-world integration with financial learning tools to help kids everywhere grow their savings—and their dragons.