Run a credit card through twelve months: charge the statement, weigh the mailbox offers, pay the bill, and protect the score that everything hinges on.
Each month you charge the month's statement to the card, then handle the mailbox, accept a credit offer or decline them all. Some offers are fair; others hide predatory terms in the fine print that bleed your score every month. Finally, pay the bill: at least the minimum to stay on time, more to cut interest and utilization. Finish the year with the highest credit score you can.
Credit Lines covers the economics of consumer credit, utilization, interest and on-time payments, and how they shape a credit score.
Charging a statement each month and then choosing among credit offers, some fair and some not, is consumer credit with predatory lending mixed into the mailbox.
Hiding the bad terms inside plausible offers is the original test.
Predatory terms are rarely hidden in the sense of being absent — they are disclosed and structured to be skipped. Teaser rates that expire, fees that capitalise, and minimum payments that barely touch principal are all legal and all in the document nobody reads.
Credit Lines is an original free browser game about the economics of consumer credit, utilization, interest, on-time payment and predatory lending, distilled into a year-long management sim. Made in-house for PlayPendium.