Team:CIDEB-UANL Mexico/hp videogame

IGEM CIDEB 2014 decided to develop a videogame that represented this year’s project. In the game, our mascot, E.CARU, is being used in a biotechnology lab to remove sodium ions in three different mediums. Each medium has a different concentration of a saline solution; the objective of E.CARU is removing sodium ions without absorbing the chlorine ones.

By Capturing sodium ions and filling its respective tube, you pass to the next medium, or level, and a bonus function to eliminate all the chlorine ions from the medium (Carbonation-Calcination Reaction) becomes available. If any chlorine ions are captured by accident, nothing happens, because of the Resistance module; but if too much chlorine is captured, E.CARU can’t continue capturing sodium ions and the game is lost.

The game was programmed so that sodium and chlorine ions appear on the screen randomly. If you don’t capture sodium ions as they fall through the screen, they disappear; but all chlorine ions stay moving on your screen, unless you eliminate them using the CCR function or click and capture them.

Objective

IGEM CIDEB 2014 decided to develop a videogame that represented this year’s project, with the objective that people could learn about it in a fun and entertaining way.

When we started our project, we noticed that the students, teachers and administrative employees in our high school, were not involved in our project and in the iGEM competition as we wanted them to be. For this reason, we decided to make the iGEM “Explosion” to inform everyone in our high school about iGEM and stimulate their curiosity.

This game was developed using “Game Maker” which allows the programmer, to make his or her own game without using a specific programming language.

Link for downloading this game for Windows:

click here.

How to play

The instructions for playing the videogame are:

-Try catch the soduim ions.

-Avoid catching the chlorine ions.

-Try to catch as many sodium ions as you can to advance to the next level.

-Fill up your progress bar to activate CCR.

-Click the CCR button to eliminate chlorine ions in the medium.

-Advance as many levels as you can.

-You can pause the game whenever you want.