Computer science engineering students take practical applications and put them work creating lots of fun.

The goal: save Cocoa the Cupcake’s wife from the evil Spork King. How? By reinstituting peace with the residents of the Marshmallow Meadow, the Gummy Bear Forest and the Chocolate Swamp.

Sounds more like a chocolate lover’s dream than an adventure video game.  But that’s exactly what four University of Florida students created when they designed, coded and produced “Sweet Revenge,” one of the video games demonstrated Monday afternoon at UF’s Computer Science Engineering building.

Students from the university’s “Artificial Intelligence for Computer Games” and “Theory and Practice of Multimedia Production” classes hosted the fourth annual Game Day open house from noon to 4 p.m. at the CSE and showed off the results of semester-long projects to passersby and classmates.

The demonstrations included games like “Iconoclast,” a tactics-style role-playing game featuring super villains as the main characters; “The Cottage,” a dark and mature-themed game that pays homage to the classic film and novel “A Clockwork Orange”; and “Latria,” a puzzle-adventure game resembling Nintendo’s iconic game, “The Legend of Zelda.”

Evan Subar, a senior majoring in computer engineering and one of the creators of “Latria,” said most times, video games are seen as detrimental and keep kids indoors, so he hopes games like “Latria” can prove that video games can sometimes be educational instead of harmful.

“We want the players to use their minds,” Subar said.

He and some of his teammates said they used movies like “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” and “The DaVinci Code,” online Flash games and other puzzles are inspiration for their own mini-games, including a tile game in which the main character needs to step on the correct tiles to get across the water.

The ladies of the class took a bit of a different route in their idea.

Jillian Cornette, a third-year digital arts and sciences major, said the women decided that they had to make a choice at the beginning of the semester: either go girlie with their concept or go the complete opposite of what the rest of the class would expect from a group of women.

“We decided to go super cute,” Cornette said.

And “Sweet Revenge” was born.

The game features a main plot of Cocoa the Cupcake trying to rescue his wife, but also features several mini-games, such as the Slushie gam, featuring a snowman, and Chip the Turtle’s game, in which the player helps to piece back the shell of the chocolate turtle.

Cornette said the game was difficult on all the students because so much time needs to be invested in the creation, but the women worked very well together and enjoyed the work.

“If you can’t have fun, you’re not going to make it ‘til the end,” she said.

Despite all the stress and work, she said she’s proud of the work the team accomplished.

“Hopefully we’ll hear more from Cocoa,” she said.

 

Other games featured were:

* At Worlds End (a turn-based combat game)

* Bermuda Temple (a puzzle game where you are lost on a island and

 must find items to get off)

* The Cottage (a dive into the minds of the insane becomes a battle of wits)

* Fat Boy (you must eat your way to save your grandfather)

* FreeJunk (an interactive fiction puzzle game)

* Iconoclast (a turn based tactics game involving super villains)

* Latria (a fantasy/role play game)

* Skrater (a scrabble/tetris style game)

* Speed Vision (Sam's visions of the future lead him on a quest to stop

 a terrorist plot)

 

* Zombie Breakout (night of the living dead style game)