UAT professors fight off evil AI
Three University of Advancing Technology (UAT) students accepted Professor Hue Henry’s a Game-A-Week challenge and really delivered, creating a UAT themed game—UAT Invasion—for their GAM170 course. Morgan Soetaert, Christelle Cyprien and Anthony Marquez rose to the challenge and had a great time doing it!
UAT’s Provost, Dr. Dave Bolman was highly entertained and impressed by their creativity. “They have this board game that pits UAT faculty against evil AI. Along the way, they have to complete puzzle pieces that form their diploma. Faculty have special powers. Like Professor Peters has the ability to subtract an opponent’s power.” Dr. Bolman adds, “A fun fact about the prototype is that to create a fast version of the second story of UAT, Christelle removed the hinges from her art tool kit to create the levers lifting up the second story.”
To come up with this idea for a game, they brainstormed possible things they had in common at the time. Originally, they were leaning towards a spaced themed game because they were all in class with Professor Nathan Glover. Expanding on the idea of one class, the idea grew into an overall UAT themed game. Alas, UAT Invasion was born!
What Is UAT Invasion?
UAT Invasion, a game based on the university, is a multiplayer board game in which two players compete in order to control the most rooms and territories on the board. One player takes the role of UAT professors and the other takes the role of an evil form of AI—whose main goal is to hack and take over the school. Most of the mechanics of the game are implemented by the usage of movement cards and dice rolls. There are also added bonuses—including puzzles, blocking and special abilities—to help each player advance against the other.
How Do You Play?
Here are the basic rules of the game:
- The characters start at their respective spots and move around the board by drawing movement cards.
- Players start off with four movement cards and have a limit holding seven cards in their hand. Each player will draw another card at the start of their next turn.
- The players choose three characters to place on the board and will use them to move across the grid.
- One player controls the cyber AI characters and the other player controls the professors.
- All rooms and forms of technology start by being neutral. Both sides are trying to overtake each room. The professors are trying to keep the school safe and the cyber AI robots are trying to corrupt UAT.
- The game players will have to move to a room to try and capture it. They will roll a die, when
captured they will place a player marker to signal that room is theirs. The other player can steal a room by rolling that number or higher. If stolen, the player who stole it will place their marker instead. - There are special cards that are shuffled into a deck with the movement cards called blocking cards. These cards make it possible for a player to block one of the other player’s characters for one turn.
- Players can land on any of the puzzle spaces as long as it matches their character. They can then try and solve a puzzle by putting together the puzzle pieces within the time limit of 2 minutes. If they are successful then they will earn a special one use ability that is determined by what character they are using.
From the Creators—Their Favorite Part of the Project
Morgan Soetaert: “What I loved about working with Christelle and Anthony is that no idea was immediately thrown out. We would talk about it together and decide if it worked or not as a team.”
Christelle Cyprien: “My favorite things about the game are the fact that players can play all three figures at a time & the block cards because although one of their figures might be blocked; they still have the opportunity to make good decisions with the other figures. I also love the die mechanic/chance aspect because players are excited/nervous to find out whether or not they will own/ capture a room.”
Anthony Marquez: “My favorite part of creating this game was the creation of the the board for the game. It started out as a regular grid with a bunch of marker lines and the final product shows how much time we part into making the board like nice.”
Considering a career in gaming? Check out the following for more information about UAT gaming degrees.