Tax Cats

Learning Reimagined: Does learning have to be academic? Welcome to Tax Cats, an entertaining game designed to subtly teach players about money meownagement. 😼

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THEME: LEARNING REIMAGINED

Inspiration

Often, we're so heavily fixated on academic learning that we struggle when facing real-world challenges like navigating taxes. Young adults, whether living independently at 18 or starting university life, often find themselves dealing with such tasks. Tax Cats is a game designed for all ages but subtly tailored for young people to develop this knowledge unconsciously.

What it does

Tax Cats keeps tracks of the player's expenditures, earnings, and days passed. It introduces a simplified version of taxation to educate young users about how governments collect funds periodically and make use of them for various purposes beneficial to the public. The game also incorporates the concept of money management through a deposit/bank system, allowing players to deposit funds and learn about both the benefits and the consequences of this. For example, the deposited money is returned with an added bonus after a period of time. However, the downside of locking money away for a period is also a crucial risk and consequence that more people should be aware of. A 'Tax Facts' book lies in the game and explains these concepts in an enjoyable and straightforward manner, emphasizing how taxes help make the cat world a better place for everyone, and the deposit system lets you earn a bit extra on your savings if you're willing to wait a bit. Players are also encouraged to manage their money well as they are given decisions to make regarding personalizing their experience by purchasing items to decorate their home or cat avatar.

Rules:

  • If a player chooses to make a deposit to the bank, half of their chipis is taken for safekeeping. After 7 days, those chipis are returned to the player's balance along with a 20% bonus :D
  • Taxing season occurs every two weeks. That is, 200 chipis will be taken from the balance and will not be returned. If at any moment in the game the player has less than 200 chipis during taxing season, game over! That is why money meownagement is important.

How we built it

Tax Cats was developed using Processing and Java, combining the functionalities of both platforms to create an engaging and educational gaming experience.

Challenges we ran into

Challenges faced include coming up with a creative idea related to one of the four themes. Additionally, most of the teammates had limited experience with Java but were determined to learn the language. Overcoming the obstacle of integrating our Python knowledge into Processing as Java code proved to be a great barrier, but one that we successfully overcame.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We made an aesthetically pleasing and educational game with functioning buttons and actions. The game is engaging as players are actually able to 'go to work' as a barista cat, a 'cateasta', and play minigames which results in them earning money, called 'chipis' in cat currency. Players are also able to 'shop' and spend their money on various items to customize their experience. Finally, the taxing and depositing system is effectively implemented and designed to drive players to learn about why their chipis are being dealt with in this way, teaching them through the Tax Facts book.

What we learned

As first years with DeerHacks as their first hackathon, this was an amazing experience. Actually turning an idea into a useable software was enlightening. We learned a lot about how to work as a team, planning and distributing tasks. We also learnt about a completely new software for most of us called Processing, and implemented code with Java. Working as team on frontend and backend, everyone had a great experience writing functional code and drawing cute sprites for the cat game. Thank you DeerHacks!

What's next for Tax Cats

Our current version of Tax Cats has the main functionality we initially planned, but we were unable to include a lot of cool features that would enhance the user's experience due to time constraints. For example, we hoped to have the user also be able to make decisions regarding how they spent their time with eating and sleeping. We hoped to have a health bar that forced the player to need to buy groceries in order to survive, adding a layer into the money management needed. Although we were able to implement a solid inventory system, there were several items we missed out on including that we would've had, e.g. the customization and permanent storing of items. We also really wanted to have a gacha system that brought in an element of chance and allowed users to decide if they'd like to spend their money on a gamble for 'rarer' cats that had access to better wages. This was intended to teach them about the consequences of how they dealt with their money as taxing season rolls around. There are many more things that would need to be added to make the game feel more full-fledged, 'ready for release' and complete from a customer's perspective, such as music and sounds.

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