Thanks for your patience while we stopped progress on Kongai in order to work on the performance problems on the main Kongregate site. We moved to new servers last week, and now we've finally gotten a chance to release a fresh build of Kongai. What's new: * Levels * A 2% chance to win a card with every win * Improved animations * Music & sound effects (plus a mute button) * Lots of small interface improvements (instantly updating health and energy bars, same speed attack animations play at the same time, cards added to a deck in the deck builder are now flippable, attack type icons on attack buttons, etc.) * Interface bug fixes * Quick tips in-game for new players What's coming soon: * Fixes for most of the game logic bugs * Skill rankings and ranked matches * Improved AI for single-player/practice mode
Good news! We're finally ready to move to the new servers we've been talking about for a while. We should have more capacity immediately, and also be in a position to restructure some code to get even bigger improvements over the next few months. Hopefully chat lag and slow page loads will be a thing of the past. The corresponding bad news: the site will be down starting at 10pm Pacific Time Sunday, May 4th (early May 5th for most of you) for many hours. Our current expectation is that the transition will take about 6 hours, but with technology things can always go wrong.
Doeo was the winner last week for $250. Doodle Defender and Abstracta were the two runners-up for $150 each. Also, give Postal Panic a try. It's worthy of an honorable mention.
What a week! Super Crazy Guitar Maniac Deluxe 3 was the winner last week for $250. Shift 2 and Super Energy Apocalypse were the two runners-up for $150 each.
I’m sorry to announce this, but we’ve decided to stop letting people into the beta for the next couple of weeks. I expect you’ve all noticed that we’ve been having more frequent server problems/slowness in the last week after another spurt of traffic growth. We’re very close to moving to new servers with more capacity, and we’re all concentrating on getting everything working there and testing to make sure it’s as efficient as possible. In the meantime unfortunately Kongai is experiencing intermittent lag, which makes it less fun to play, and we haven’t yet put in the bug fixes and new features that we’re planning to add. So we’re going to put a hold on new players in the beta until we are in a better situation server-wise and can start updating Kongai again. Thanks for your patience!
Sonny was the winner of last week's contest on Kongregate for $250. The runners-up were Tank 2008 and Jack the Fugitive for $150 each.
Here are the winners from March!
1st. Boxhead: Zombie Wars
2nd. Shift
3rd. Drunken Masters
4th. Synapsis
5th. Drone Wars
6th. Boomstick
7th. Amberial: Nebulosa Realms
8th. DropSum v1.3
9th. Talesworth Arena
That's $1500 for first, $1000 for second, $700 for third, $500 for
fourth, and $250 for all the others. As usual, implementing our stats API is a requirement for winners to claim their prize.
And last week, Warlords: Call to Arms was the winner for $250. Synapsis and Whiteboardwar were the two runners-up for $150 each. Technically our Kongai Launch didn't let people down for the second-highest rating, but it was disqualified on account of being too awesome.
The web-sensation Boomstick was the winner last week on Kongregate for $250. The long-awaited, Kongregate-sponsored sequel to Amberial was a runner-up last week for $150, along with Duels Defense.
Dinowaurs, one of Kongregate's premium web games, is now being shown to a few lucky alpha testers. Read more about it here
Kongregate is pleased to announce that we're moving forward with a deal involving both Kongregate.com and Newgrounds.com. The deal will place both sites in a future merger, likely with Newgrounds as the primary shareholder.
In light of this partnership, we're stepping back a bit to re-evaluate the priorities on Kongregate. Due to lack of player enthusiasm over challenges and achievements, we've started phasing these systems out. Expect to see the final challenge released at the end of this month, with the final achievements likely being released a bit sooner.
We've confident, however, that the popularity of Kongregate's upcoming features will far surpass those we've left behind. Expect to see a major expansion of game categories on the site, including an entire menu bar dedicated to Pokemon hentai quizzes, as we strive toward becoming the #1 online destination for the 13- to 14-year-old male demographic.
April 02 Update:
After receiving way more email than we expected objecting to the above news, we've decided to reconsider our plan to remove badges from the site. Especially in light of our Newgrounds merger, it's difficult to imagine playing Pokemon hentai quizzes without achievements.
We would like to extend our thanks to the hordes of borderline illiterate children who filled our inboxes with objections. For once, you've made a difference.
3D in Flash! It must be that time of the year again when someone manages to pull it off. Super Space 3D was the winner last week on Kongregate for $250. ROBOT and The Last Canopy were the two runners-up for $150 each.
So last night we released a pretty big update to Kongai, which now includes starter cards, match chat, single-player, plus some bug fixes, animation improvements, and some sounds. Much more of the last 3 to come. I’ve just given access to level 23 & 24 beta requesters, with more to be invited once we’re sure of the stability of some lobby changes. Kongai is still a work in progress, and more fixes, features, and UI improvements to come based on your feedback over the next weeks. Thanks to all current beta testers for their help so far.
Games on Kongregate with fewer than 75 ratings are now "under judgment" until they pass this necessary threshold, at which point the average score will be visible. Please continue to rate games as normal, especially games that are still under judgment.
Shocking, right? The latest Boxhead was last week's winner for $250, while Shift and Drone Wars were the two runners-up for $150 each.
Last week was really great in general, though. Dropsum, Open Doors, and Contour are all very worthy honorable mentions. Be sure to check them out.
Due to technical difficulties, our weekly challenge will launch on Friday rather than Thursday. The current challenge has therefore been extended by 24 hours. We apologize for the delay.
Drunken Masters was last week's contest winner for $250. The sweet-it's-finally-on-Kongregate Drakojan Skies Acolytes and Insurgo were the runners-up for $150 each.
Happy Friday! Since the servers seemed to be handling things well we've expanded the Beta from 50 people to about 250 people in two rounds of invites. Currently the Beta includes players level 25 and up plus moderators level 18 and up.
February's monthly contest winners are official! And here they are:
1st. Protector
2nd. Pillage the Village
3rd. The Visitor
4th. Balloon Invasion
5th. Zunderfury
6th. Grid16
7th. Twothree
8th. Genghis Khan
9th. Treasure Seas Inc.
That's $1500 for first, $1000 for second, $700 for third, $500 for fourth and $250 each for all the others. Implementation of our API to be eligible for challenges/achievements is a requirement for winners to claim their prize.
The Visitor was the winner last week on Kongregate for $250. Balloon Invasion and Grid16 were the two runners-up for $150 each.
Holy crap, our card game is finally live on the site, for approximately .25% of those who requested invitations (sorry 99.75% of you!).
We're starting things off very small, so only 50 of the 20,000 requests were granted access. We'll gradually invite more and more people as the testing continues. For now, we granted access to the people who applied with the highest level on Kongregate (roughly, anyone around level 31 or higher).
We're working incredibly hard to get this thing out to everyone else, so bear with us for a bit!
