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Repurpose and Reuse V5RC and VIQRC Game Elements

By Aimee DeFoe Jul 2, 2025

If you are a V5RC or a VIQRC coach, you’ve been there. The excitement of next season’s game release has gripped your team and they are ready to get started engineering and coding, but you have a practical problem to solve - what can be done with all of last year’s game elements? Maybe you have a whole closet full of elements from previous competitions. In this article, I will share some easy and fun ways to reuse game elements from past games. Hopefully some of these ideas will allow your stash of older elements to continue to be useful, while freeing up some space so you can focus on the current game!

1. Pass on previous games to up and coming teams, or classroom robotics teachers.

  • Does your robotics program have multiple teams, or a feeder program? Giving younger or up and coming teams a previous game is a fantastic way to help build their skills. 
  • Many classroom robotics teachers would also love to have game elements to use for their classroom competitions. Don’t forget that those teaching with VEX IQ might love to have a V5RC game for students to try out, and those teaching with VEX GO would enjoy trying VIQRC games. Reach out to teachers in your area and you will certainly find your game elements a new home.

2. Donate them!

  • After school programs and community centers are great places to donate older game elements. They may be just getting started with robotics and want to give their kids a chance to experience a low-stakes competition before they invest their energy in an official VEX Competition. Consider donating all the elements needed for a single year’s competition, along with a game manual (or the link to access one), so they can get a feel for a competition. Your donation may be just the spark needed to fuel a new enthusiasm for competitive robotics!
  • Invite teachers from outside robotics classrooms to take them off your hands - they may have uses for them you haven’t considered, such as:
    • Art teachers could use them as a free source of found objects for sculpture creation.
    • Physical science teachers may be interested in including them in classroom explorations.
    • PE teachers might want elements such as the soft balls from VIQRC 2021-22 Pitching In or VIQRC 2024-25 Rapid Relay for active games.
    • High school theater tech programs might have imaginative ways to use elements as props or in other behind the scenes situations.

Three students from a VEX IQ Competition competing together with a referee scoring.

3. Create new robotics challenges!

Game elements can be used as the inspiration for creating new challenges for your team to practice with, or for classroom robotics.

  • Consider combining the interesting shapes and colors of multiple years’ game elements to create robot obstacle courses or mini challenges, or even a robot field day. You could even break out the hot glue gun to create new, intriguing elements!
  • Help build your students’ engineering skills by challenging them to create a manipulator that can move, stack or intake elements of various shapes and sizes.
  • Challenge your students to a contest to see how many elements they can pull or carry by modifying an IQ, EXP, or V5 robot. Classroom robots like the IQ or EXP Clawbot or BaseBot, or the V5 TrainingBot or Advanced TrainingBot would be great for this activity.
  • Why not share your newly created challenges with a team you are mentoring, or swap challenges with a friendly area team?

V5RC Competition with robots scoring on a field.

4. Invent a game!

Game elements can be used for making all kinds of games - they don’t have to be robotics-related! How about:

  • Creating a jenga-like stacking game with elements like those from VIQRC 2020-21 Rise Above or V5RC 2019-2020 Tower Takeover. Assign different point values to different color elements! 
  • Using an element such as the Targets and Switches from 2024-25 Rapid Relay as a ball toss game for a classroom activity or carnival. 
  • Know a math teacher? They might appreciate a math game created from game elements. For example, the blocks from VIQRC 2023-24 Full Volume could be used to create arrays for multiplication game. Or, each of the three sizes and colors of blocks could be assigned a value, such as using the Red Blocks as 100’s, Green Blocks as 10’s, and Purple Blocks as 1’s in a place value game.

VIQRC Elements on a field.

5. Use them to make something entirely new!

Any after school club or classroom teacher that incorporates making into their schedule could use game elements as inspiration for inventions!

  • Open-ended maker challenges of all kinds could use game elements in combination with other materials.
    • Challenge students to use a variety of previous years’ game elements, along with other art supplies and recycled materials, to create an animal, either real or fanciful! Combine them all to create a zoo.
    • Invite students to use old game elements to create something to store things in! Baskets from V5RC 2022-23 Spin Up and the Mobile Goals from V5RC 2021-22 Tipping Point stand out as good candidates for this challenge.

V5RC Competition team congratulating each other after a match.

  • Use game elements as the challenge - ask your future inventors to create something using a specific element or two! One idea is to create an LED lamp using the Stakes from 2024-25 High Stakes.

There are just a few of the fun ways elements from previous years’ games can be reused. With a little imagination, the possibilities for extending their usefulness are endless!

What ideas do you have for repurposing game elements? Share your ideas in the VEX PD+ Community. Want to discuss these ideas further? Schedule a 1-on-1 meeting with a VEX Expert!