Project Details

Financial literacy is a major issue in Kenya. Krazy Kiosk is a game that challenges players (aged 11-15) to succeed in a fantasy job as the owner of a new and upcoming kiosk. Balancing issues like saving money, time limitations, and environmental tips forces players to become wiser business owners. Krazy Kiosk teaches players to keep track of their profits and loses (a useful skill for any future entrepreneur) in a fun and innovative way that could later be applied in real world situations.

Financial Decisions: Deciding on when to upgrade

Deciding when to upgrade is one of the more challenging aspects of Krazy Kiosk. Once the player has made a large profit they will be faced with the challenge of spending their money or staying the same. Spending money might cause the player to miss their deadline, yet not purchasing an upgrade may cause the player to lose profit. If the player makes profit, the upgrade store opens up and becomes more appealing and valuable to the players. As the kiosks are upgraded, the more attractive they become, thus luring in more customers.
Real World Application

Krazy Kiosk is teaching the player how to maintain their business and earn a profit. One of the skills Krazy Kiosk introduces to the player is double book accounting. Double book accounting is essentially a virtual aid that shows the player their gains and losses. It will present the name of the fruit, the quantity of the produce the player has bought, how much the produce is being sold for, and how much profit the player made that day. Double book accounting is a skill that can be used not only in Krazy Kiosk but in real life entrepreneur jobs. `

Krazy Kiosk also applies real world tools. Cell phones are one of the most valuable pieces of technology in our day and age. Many real life businesses in Kenya use cell phones to find out current prices of produce in general and prices of neighboring vendors. In Krazy Kiosk a cell phone is given to the player. The player receives daily updates about the weather and information about nearby vendors. The game teaches the player all the valuable tools they need to become a successful entrepreneur on and off the tablet.

Deciding when to upgrade is one of the more challenging aspects of Krazy Kiosk. Once the player has made a large profit they will be faced with the challenge of spending their money or staying the same. Spending money might cause the player to miss their deadline, yet not purchasing an upgrade may cause the player to lose profit. If the player makes profit, the upgrade store opens up and becomes more appealing and valuable to the players. As the kiosks are upgraded, the more attractive they become, thus luring in more customers. If a player has made it this far, there is a strong chance they will win and succeed in sending their child to college.

Technical Requirements

Krazy Kiosk will be developed as a downloadable app for Android tablets. The game requires the following technical aspects as part of development:

    Currency and kiosk space dynamically update as the player purchases produce.
    Player customization: players name their kiosk and see the name on screen later in the game
    Randomized tips appearing once per level.
    At the end of each level the double book accounting screen shows profit updates.

Visual Design

Krazy Kiosk has a friendly feel to it, and yet the real and delicious-looking fruit and produce images maintain an element of realism. Krazy Kiosk simultaneously maintains a cartoonish look-and-feel through the clip-art words, buttons, and other assets.

Click on the PDF to go through a 1 "game day" demo of Krazy Kiosk

Our main goal for the game is to teach Kenyan and Indian children simple and easy financial techniques that they can apply to their own lives. The concepts we are presenting virtually force children to learn how to earn a profit, save money efficiently, and record their data in order to grow as an entrepreneur in a fun and creative way. The player’s goal is to evolve their “kiosk” into a powerful money-making resource. In order to win, players must learn how to budget and spend money wisely based on market value and customer demand.

Starting the game was somewhat difficult for our group. We brainstormed a lot of different ideas but all of them did not seem fun. We played the lemonade stand game and ideas sparked. We wanted to have a market type thing where the player could choose the price to sell their produce at and choose which produce to sell. Krazy Kiosk essentially was very similar to the Lemonade Stand game. Lemonade Stand game followed a person for one week who's selling lemonade at a homemade stand. The game presents the player with charts of their gains and losses. The one goal of the game: make a profit. That is what we wanted our game to be most like, though we didn't want the one goal to be: make a profit. So, as a result, we decided the players goal will be to send their children to college, but behind the scenes, their real goal is to, well, make a profit. 

We started off by creating many sketches of what our game would look like. We reasearched which foods were typical for either Kenya or Inida. We looked up prices that would be considered reasonable in these countries. We looked up what kind of delicasesy the have in their countries that could be sold for more. Our group drew out different types of Kiosks for each of the countries. For example, in Kenya the kiosk started off more as a small cart but in India it started off as a rug on the floor. Our group had to go through many cirtical decsion making like how much money would the player have at the start of the game, how many produce can they purchase, is there a limit to how much they can sell the produce for. All of these decsions had to be made before we started creating our demo. 

Balsamaq and Photoshop were our main two resources throughout the demo making process. While both are extremely frustrating, we managed to get the job done. Balsamaq is the software we used to physically create the game demo, while Photoshop was used to create all of the graphic designs. We stuggled with the issues of sending our work to one another over Balsamaq because of resourse folders. All of these programs were new to use so creating these games was not our only issue. The 4-week process of this game was more than frustrating to say the least, but the three of us remained calm and worked together which was a key component to getting our game demo done.