For many Americans, obtaining high-interest loans has become a necessary evil — whether it’s for short-term survival or to pursue a small part of the American dream. And it’s a practice that puts them at the mercy of predatory lenders. Spoiler alert: predatory lenders show no mercy.

Despite this dangerous landscape, young people are rarely taught about compound interest with any angle towards how it can be manipulated or deceitful. When they find themselves in need of a potential loan later in life, they fall easy prey to seemingly safe payment plans that end up sucking thousands of dollars and years of productivity from them.

Shady Sam puts students in the shoes of an 8-bit sleazy loan shark. So, instead of teaching them from the borrower’s side of the table, the game shows firsthand the deceptive tactics used by lenders of all kinds, and just how much money lenders make off of borrowers.

Shady Sam, your boss, throughout the game pressures you to maximize profits, regardless of who comes in the door. Desperate mom who can’t pay her son’s medical bills? Hit her with an insane interest rate. Guy making an impulsive car buy? Crank up his term. Thus, creating an ethical conundrum for players. You can show mercy, but know that Shady Sam won’t be pleased. He’ll probably withhold your reward – a tchotchke for your desk.

Knowing that students would be wary of any “edutainment,” we geared our efforts towards engaging mechanics that would make the student want to learn more on their own. Designed as merely an introduction to a true lesson plan, Shady Sam was shaped into a 10-minute intro exercise that would explore a few typical types of loans and give them a brief overview of their impact. Our main goal was to wake students up and help them realize that seemingly simple loans could blow up into massive expenses. By embracing the 8-bit style and somewhat silly premise, we could get kids to lower their anti-learning defenses and play around with these math mechanics a bit more. Once we woke them up, we could hand them over to teachers to unpack even more of the math behind these techniques.

Shady Sam is a free HTML5 game built for desktop and mobile web. Players enter the grimy, 8-bit stylized world behind a loan office desk to hear requests from potential customers. They are then able to select between 3 types of loans and after choosing, see the long-term profit generated by their choice. Loan principles are introduced slowly before mixing up the parameters (term length, interest rates) and providing more challenge to the student. The late-stage game introduces other loan vehicles including payday, student loans, and mortgages with fixed or variable rates.

Occasionally their boss will chime in with praise or admonishment (depending on how ruthless they have been) and provide simple tchotchkes to decorate their desk and distract from their evil deeds. By the end, players will see how often they chose the most profitable loan and receive links to lesson plans, guides, and loan calculators to learn more.

Teachers and students have loved Shady Sam and the paired lesson plans. In the first 3 months, we’ve engaged more than 35,000 students with an 80% completion rate and over 13 minutes of average play time. Students often return multiple times to see if they can beat their previous score by choosing the most effective loans in the game. In this short time, we’ve generated 34,427,786 PR impressions. All with zero paid media.

Through press circulation and a Creativity Editor’s Pick, Shady Sam has quickly found a home as part of the client’s financial education toolset.