About UCICKI Remix
Inspiration
“UCICKI Remix” is a game collection inspired by the show “Genius Junior” and the related video game “WarioWare”. Towards the end of my time with Circle K at UC Irvine, I was compelled to celebrate the success of interactive features on the club website by creating a game that encompasses all games currently featured on it. Personally, I also thought it would also be a great coding challenge to adapt existing games into a mini-game format.
What it does
UCICKI Remix is the ultimate game collection combining every game from the UCI Circle K website into one game. Players play from a selection of 18 minigames in rapid-fire succession for the highest score to be the ultimate UCICKI gaming champion.
Players set the length of the session and the minigames they want to play, and then they play through the minigames at random. Each game has a win condition that rewards points the faster they are completed. It is currently the most recent game posted on the Circle K at UCI website.
Development Process
This is still a work in progress! Check back soon!
Concept
This game takes inspiration from Genius Junior and WarioWare. It was decided that the game would adapt Genius Junior’s rapid-fire questions and time mechanic in the Cortex while introducting mini-games as the puzzles the player would solve.
In total, there were 8 games on the UCICKI website that needed to be ported to this game using the GameMaker: Studio engine. The reason why this engine was used is because most of the games to be ported were made in GM:S and it also allows for touch-screen interactions for mobile devices. The game would then be playable on any device that supports a web browser.
The remaining 10 games are original games, some inspired from the Cortex and some inspired by other aspects related to the Circle K at UCI activities.
Porting The Games to the GM:S Engine
8 games needed to be ported. Some were easy to port (since they used the same game engine), while others had to be reconstructed from scratch or forked from other open-source projects.
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Colleen Clicker: This game is a simple clicking game where players click on the cookies with Colleen’s face on it. It is a direct port of the same game that used to be on the Circle K website, except the game ends when you click on enough Colleen cookies or on Colleen’s meme.
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Petey Jump: This game references a “Magikarp Jump” clone created for the club where the player must raise their “Petey” plushie to be the best jumper in the world. The minigame featured here is based off a WarioWare game “Skating Board” where the player jumps over obstacles. To win, the player needs to survive until they gain 500 points. The longer they survive, the more points they gain. To avoid losing, they must jump over emblems representing the sub-groups in the club.
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Induction Night: This game involves the player looking for their mentors based on a given clue. It is a port of the same game on the Circle K website, except the map is shrunk such that all the options are available. The clue and the figures on the screen have a correlation. Once the player figures out this correlation, they tap and hold on the desired option and wait for the player figure to walk there. Then, they press “Interact” to see if they’re right or not.
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Byron Clicker: This game references the cookie clicker game on the Circle K website that is a fork of the popular Cookie Clicker web game. The player simply needs to click the cookie a shown number of times to win this game.
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“Flappy Board”: This game is a forked port of a template created in GameMaker: Studio by OvernightGamemaker, replacing the bird with a significant figure in Circle K. Thanks to the template, the only modifications I had to make was add a win condition: varying the amount of points needed to win, and expanding the viewport such that it is widescreen. The reason why a template was used is because the “Flappy Baord” game on the Circle K website was not created in GameMaker: Studio; thus, I had to make a decision whether to remake this game from scratch or not.
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“CKI Invaders”: This game is based off the same game on the Circle K website, which is based off the retro game Space Invaders. To win, the player simply needs to destroy the enemy “ships”, represented as emblems. The player ship itself is a reference to another significant figure in the club.
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Millionaire: This game refers to “Millionaire: CKI Edition” which is talked about here. Players are given a trivia question and must answer it correctly to gain points. To help them, there are three lifelines: Ask the Audience, Phone-a-friend, and Jump the Question. The lifelines do not regenerate for the entire play session, so players should be wary if they use all their lifelines!
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8192: This game refers to the UCICKI game “4096”, which was based off the popular puzzle game “2048”. Because the swiping motion could not be easily replicated in the GM:S engine, I decided to only keep the powers of 2 theme and create this minigame on that theme, where the player must solve for x in the formula “2 to the power of x equals a number”.
Original Games
In addition to the 8 ported games, 10 additional games were created, some original and some based on other games.
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Unscramble: This game asks players to unscramble a board member’s name. They gain points if they’re correct.
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Math Flash: Two numbers flash on the screen, alongside a “+” or “-“ operator. The players gain points if they answer the math question correctly.
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Memorize The Icons: A set of four emblems appear on the screen. When they disappear, the player must figure out which icon the prompt is referring to by typing the name of the emblem. They gain points by answering correctly.
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Chair-an-Event: A simulation of the Circle K website appears, and players gain points if they follow the process of chairing an event by clicking on the corresponding buttons.
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Super Smash Anglers: This game is based off a project I made for a class featuring members of the Angler family. Players click in a direction from the player’s anglerfish to flop towards that direction, and they gain points if they knock off the opposing anglerfish.
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Grid Search: This game shows two grids that look similar, but one of the emblems are different. The player gains points by picking the emblem that is different across both grids.
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Spirit Social Says: This game is a simple recreation of a flag raising game where the player simply needs to copy the sequence of flags being raised by the spirit social leader to gain points.
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Dancing Banana: This is literally a dancing banana, and the win condition of waiting out the banana gif gives the player no points.
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HOE on the Go: The cooking event of the same name has an IRL food delivery service. This theme was realized into this game, where the player needs to select the correct location to deliver the food.
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The Attack: This is based off of “Jack Attack”, a popular segment of the game “You Don’t Know Jack” where the player taps on the screen if the hint and the answer are related in some way. In this case, the player gains points if the hint, a name of a person in the sub-group, matches the name of the sub-group. The player loses points otherwise but the game does not end, meaning the player could lose many points for guessing.
Accomplishments
I think the biggest accomplishment of this project was that I was able to combine so many games into one package. It really brought closure to all the projects I made for this organization, and it was also a pivotable point for me as the game engine I was using became obsolete during development. It started my transition to Unity soon after.
What’s next
“UCICKI Remix” was the swan song for me creating games for the Circle K at UCI organization. It remains to be seen if I will make another game for them, but this was a great way to go out with a bang: a combination of all the games on the website, most which I had worked on in some capacity.
Some Additional Information
Games (c) 2014-19 Circle K International at UC Irvine, (c) 2015-16 Just the TIP, (c) 2016-17 TIP Donuts, (c) 2017-18 RamenTIP.
More in “About” page in-game.
