Golden Age

Many young Canadians lack financial education. Our immersive "sandbox" turns investment anxiety into an interactive experience, letting users build real-world confidence without the real-world risk.

Comment

Inspiration

We wanted to create a safe, nonjudgemental space to refine investing skills for the youth who may be scared to take risks in the current economic world. Many youth are encouraged to take risks at a young age but nowadays the consequences of those risks.

What it does

Golden Age is a video game that simulates the stock market along with aspects of real life, such as going to work, buying and selling stocks, stock market crashes, etc while including educational AI chatbots powered by Gemini and financial tips from friendly NPCs. It also tracks and incorporates economic sustainability based on which company you choose to invest in, along with resiliency based on company security. 

How we built it

We built Golden Age using Kaboom on an HTML web page. We included backgrounds which were first created on Canva and then pixelated, along with various pixel art, and finally included Google Gemini to power the AI chatbot in our game, who acts as “grandpa” and offers the user in-game financial advice.

Challenges we ran into

In the beginning we had various ideas that kept changing as the game was being built. The game states were constantly changing, as the initial focus was the AI chatbot that offers you financial advice. We then pivoted to a webpage that would include educational modules, offering the user engaging ways to overcome their financial literacy. Finally we ended up on a video game, incorporating aspects that the current youth would enjoy, and added everything together into the final product. 

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are very proud of this whole project in its entirety. It’s the most advanced video game we’ve made in terms of game states, features, AI chatbot incorporation, character movement and object interaction and more. We’re proud of our teamwork and dedication to finish everything within the given 36 hours. 

What we learned

We learned many aspects of creating a functional and useful program that can benefit our own age group.

What's next for Golden Age

If we had more time to work on this project, we would add a larger variety of companies to invest in to mirror real life, which could result in different endings and many more variables for the user to consider. We’d like to expand more on the resiliency aspect of investing into “good", sustainable companies and having a base to fall back on.

Built With

Share this project:

Updates