Kongregate News

Behold, the winners from January's monthly contest!

1st. Fancy Pants World 2
2nd. Filler
3rd. Stormwinds 1.5
4th. Submachine 5: The Root
5th. Defender
6th. Free Rider 2
7th. Paladin: The Game
8th. The Unfair Platformer
9th. Spin the Black Circle

That's $1500 for first, $1000 for second, $700 for third, $500 for fourth, and $250 for everyone else. As usual, implementing our API for challenges/achievements is a requirement for claiming monthly prizes.

Last week, Submachine 5 was the winner for $250, while Defender and Zunderfury were the two runners-up for $150 each.

Free Rider 2 was the weekly winner last week for $250, followed by Dupligon and Darkness Episode 2 for $150 each. Be sure to check out the rest of the Darkness series in Lutgames' profile!

Last week, Fancy Pants World 2 was FINALLY released, and no one was shocked when it claimed a weekly contest win for $250. Stormwinds 1.5 took a $150 runner-up prize along with the Kongregate-sponsored Bounce.

Two weeks ago, the Kongregate-sponsored Filler was the weekly winner for $250. Achilles and Vector were the two runners-up for $150 each.

Kongregate's card game is coming soon! As amazingly awesome as it is, though, it's still full of bugs — not unlike a delicious cheese danish left just a little too close to an anthill.

So if you're the type of person who doesn't mind picking out a few cockroaches to enjoy a gourmet homestyle pizza, apply to be a beta tester today!

Last night we did a site update with a couple of new features. First, search is totally rewritten. Second, you can now find your friends by importing your webmail contacts. What do you think? Let us know in the forums.

Lots of contest winners to announce. Here are the ones from December:

1st. Monsters' Den
2nd. Mutually Assured Destruction
3rd. Mardek RPG Chapter 2
4th. Mardek RPG Chapter 1
5th. Areas
6th. Raft Wars
7th. Zwingo
8th. Tarnation
9th. Button Hunt 2

That's $1500 for first, $1000 for second, $700 for third, $500 for fourth and $250 for everyone else. Implementation of our statistics API is a requirement for claiming contest winnings in the monthly competition.

Last week, Paladin The Game was the $250 winner, while Super Saimon Deluxe and Starcraft FA 5 were the two runners-up for $150 each.

Two weeks ago, Amoeba was the weekly winner for $250, while Key to Adventure Episode 1 and Idle 2 were the two runners-up for $150 each. Yes, Idle 2 won $150. No offense to Nabb, but it was a bit of a slow week.

It's a brand new year, which means it's back to our old boring red header! In case you missed the awesome holiday ones, you can see Felix's here and Mario's here (the bottom blue one). Thanks a ton, guys!

Tarnation was the winner last week for $250, while Timebot v1.1 and Blocky were the two $150 runners-up.

We've been nominated for Best Time Sink Site in the Crunchies awards. Vote early and often! Up to once per day between now and January 10th.

Monsters' Den was last week's $250 contest winner, and it also found its way onto Digg last night. This week's challenge and one of Kongregate's latest sponsored games, Mutually Assured Destruction was also a runner-up last week for $150. The other runner-up was Mardek RPG Chapter 2. The first chapter also scored extremely well, and we can't resist Areas as another honorable mention.

Two weeks ago, Zwingo was the $250 contest winner. Raft Wars and Button Hunt 2 were the two $150 runners-up.

Blame API bureaucracy or just plain laziness, but we finally have October's monthly winners ready to be announced. And here they are:

1st: Portal: The Flash Version
2nd: Bloons Tower Defense 2
3rd: Starfighter: Disputed Galaxy
4th: 5 Differences
5th: Papa's Pizzeria
6th: Treasure of Cutlass Reef
7th: Telepath RPG Chapter 2
8th: Dark Cut 2
9th: Max Mesiria Chapter 2 RPG

The usual breakdown applies: $1500 for first, $1000 for second, $700 for third, $500 for fourth and $250 for everyone else. Implementation of our statistics API was also a requirement.

We also have winners from November as well! And here they are:

1st: Dolphin Olympics 2
2nd: 3D Logic 2: Stronghold of Sage
3rd: Indestruct2Tank
4th: Momentum Missile Mayhem 2
5th: Campaign Game
6th: Anika's Odyssey
7th: Factory Balls
8th: Hero RPG
9th: Sola Rola - The Gravity Maze

The same breakdown and API rule as mentioned above applies here as well.

Last week, Bubbles 2 was the $250 winner, while Brain Bones and Evenator were the two $150 runners-up.

But wait! There's more! Two weeks ago, Anika's Odyssey was the $250 winner, while Lt. Fly vs the Spiders from Above and Ragdoll Laser Dodge were the two $150 runners-up.

Last night, Kongregate saw a lot of fresh new updates. Most awesomely, our APIs now support AS3 and Flash 9! What does this mean? Well, expect to see a good increase in the number of achievements over the next month or so (hopefully).

Also incredibly awesome is the fact that we are now accepting applications for our card game's closed beta! Be sure to check out our cards page for more information.

We also have email notifications available for when users receive shouts in their profile, and users can leave private shouts (whispers) as well.

The badges page also received pagination for increased performance, but we're far from finished with fully fleshing it out.

Also, major props to COCAK for making an official news update regarding these changes before Kongregate's own lazy community manager could get around to it.

The democratic process on Kongregate elected Campaign Game as last week's $250 winner. Rhythm Fireworks 2 and Book of Mages: The Chaotic Period were the two $150 runners-up.

Most competitive week ever. Indestruct2Tank was last week's $250 winner, and it also happens to be the featured game of the month over on COCAK. Momentum Missile Mayhem 2 and Hero RPG were the two runners-up for $150 each. But there are a bunch of games that were certainly deserving of a prize, if not for the ultra-competitive timing. Factory Balls, Sola Rola, N3wton, Colordefense, Towtown Tower Defense and Ether Cannon are all well worth checking out.

We've posted an update on the progress of our premium web games, and you can check it out on our forums here.

Facebook rolled out a new feature today, and we at Kongregate were very pleased to be invited as part of the launch. Kongregate and Facebook profiles are now tied together even more closely than ever before, starting at 10 p.m. tonight, PST. If you have a Facebook profile and you've set it to automatically remember your login information, Kongregate will submit a little bit of information about the games you're playing to your Facebook news feed. Specifically, once per session on Kongregate, any game that you've played for at least 3 minutes with at least a 3-star rating will show up directly on your Facebook profile's feed.

The rest of the site got a few new features as well. Two new game categories have been added: multiplayer and strategy/defense. Users can leave shouts in their own profiles now, and games classified as multiplayer now have their own chat rooms.

Regarding contest winners, last week's big winner was 3D Logic 2 for $250, with Dolphin Olympics 2 and TBA as $150 runners-up.

The week of twos was upon us! Telepath RPG Chapter 2 was last week's $250 contest winner, while Dark Cut 2 and Covert Front 2 were the two $150 runners-up.

Halloween is the best day ever! No other holiday so playfully blends together the concepts of food and rotting human corpses.

To celebrate the real most wonderful time of the year, we asked the members of Kongregate's community to design a seasonal banner. We got a lot of great submissions, but after a fierce internal debate that left two programmers dead, we picked Jindo's submission, plus a bit of modification on our end.

We have some honorable mentions, though. KapKyle, the mastermind behind Kongregate for Girls, made us laugh with a truly terrifying Newgrounds-themed header. We'd love to use it, but Tom Fulp's profile picture leads us to believe that he'd probably have an easy time kicking our asses if we dared.

We liked Ninjacow's for its simplicity and style, and we were impressed by the amount of effort that went into crazycruiser's entry.

Mario's entry was probably the strongest contender for for us, and it made the final decision especially difficult.

To thank everyone for their involvement in this event, everyone who submitted an entry will be awarded 25 points. For their especially solid entries, Mario and crazycruiser will get 50. For his winning entry, Jindo will receive 100. And for being the magical touch-up artist, our UI designer, Theresa, will receive 5 extra minutes in the yard today during her break.

Thanks again to all who contributed!

Portal: The Flash Version was last week's contest winner for the $250 prize. Bloons Tower Defense 2 and Fold were the two $150 runners-up.