Kongregate News

It's hard to make a game. Game design, programming, art and music all have to come together in a great game, and it's pretty rare for anybody to be good at all of those.

Last October we partnered with Scion to create the labs section and the Shootorials to help new developers get started. Today we're proud to announce the launch of Collabs, a new section of the site dedicated to bringing artists, musicians, and developers together by allowing them to show off their best work.

To kick things off Scion is sponsoring a contest with weekly cash prizes for the top-rated submissions, and two grand prizes of design studios worth nearly $5000!

Check out Collabs now! >>

Heavy Weapons was the winner of last week's contest on Kongregate for $250. The runners-up were Raider: Episode 1 and You are a... for $150 each.

Learn To Fly was the winner of last week's contest on Kongregate for $250. The runners-up were Morningstar and SHIFT 4 for $150 each.

A new update to Kongregate has been released! We now have a chat AFK feature and some cool new ways to see how rare the badges you've collected really are. Read all about it, and tell us what you think, in this thread!

GemCraft Chapter 0 was the winner of last week's contest on Kongregate for $250. The runners-up were A Small Favor and minim for $150 each.

Endless Zombie Rampage 2 was the winner of last week's contest on Kongregate for $250. The runners-up were Protector III and Crush the Castle for $150 each.

It was a close race, but Desktop TD Pro was the winner of last week's contest on Kongregate for $250. The runners-up were Sonny 2 and Bang! Heroes for $150 each.

Here are the monthly contest winners for April! 1st. Sonny 2 2nd. Desktop TD Pro 3rd. Bunny Invasion: Easter Special 4th. Hero's Arms 5th. The Great War of Prefectures 6th. The Great Siege 7th. Frontline Defense First Assault 8th. Civiballs 9th. Robot Dinosaurs That Shoot Beams When They Roar 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.

Excitement! We've just released a set of lag fixes tested that we're comfortable will improve performance substantially. Normally we would wait until late in the evening to deploy so as to minimize the number of people affected by the downtime but we didn't want to delay this any more than needed so we did it midday.

So this won't fix all lag and connection issues, but should make a substantial difference. We're going to continue to work on optimization and will release those as they are ready. Thanks for your patience!

Check out this thread in the forums for details on the changes

The Great War of Prefectures was the winner of last week's contest on Kongregate for $250. The runners-up were Tainted Kingdom and Red Moon for $150 each.

We just released some changes to the site that we believe should fix most of the connection problems Firefox users have been having, plus a fix for special characters in private messages and several other smaller bugs.

We are still working on the lag fixes but are making good progress and expect to release some fixes for that at and some additional bugs on Monday or Tuesday.

If you are still experiencing disconnection issues please help us further diagnose by filling out this quick survey. Thanks for your patience!

There is some good news and some bad news. The good news is that we've figured out how to fix the connection issues. The bad news is that it's a complicated fix that has the potential to break a lot of other things, so it's going to take us few days to fix it and test it thoroughly to ensure we don't create more problems by fixing this one.

In the meantime we suggest using either the Chrome browser on Windows or the Safari browser on Mac if you're having troubles, as they do not appear to be suffering from either disconnection problems or lag.

Our deepest apologies for the trouble this is causing people. We're working very hard to get it fixed in Firefox and Internet Explorer, and will get those fixes up as soon as we safely can.

Most of you have probably noticed by now that we recently launched a redesign of the chat area and game page. We've rebuilt chat from the ground up to reduce lag and load times, so it's not just a shiny coat of paint. You can read about the new features here. Unfortunately with this large a change there have also been some bugs. In particular many users have been reporting difficulty connecting to the new chat, especially those using Firefox 3.09. We're working hard to fix that and hope to release a fix soon. Many Internet Explorer users have reported a large increase in lag, which we're also working to figure out. Based on feedback we'll also be making a few tweaks to the design, including adding achievements back in below the gamepage. For more info on all of this click here!

Frontline Defense First Assault was the winner of last week's contest on Kongregate for $250. The runners-up were Planet Basher and Collider for $150 each.

Bunny Invasion: Easter Special was the winner of last week's contest on Kongregate for $250. The runners-up were Hero's Arms and The Great Siege for $150 each.

Civiballs was the winner of last week's contest on Kongregate for $250. The runners-up were Death Vegas and Space Mutants FROM SPACE! for $150 each.

Here are the monthly contest winners for March! 1st. Music Catch 2 2nd. Death vs. Monstars 3rd. Thing-Thing Arena 3 4th. Bloody Fun Day 5th. Frontline Defense Beta 2 6th. Exploit 7th. Bowja 3 - Ninja Kami 8th. Don't Look Back 9th. Colourshift 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.

Check out the job posting for a customer support specialist in our San Francisco office here.

We're looking for a smart self-starter with excellent written communication and interpersonal skills to help answer email and handle abuse reports. Must be US citizen or permanent resident 18 years or older.

Penguinz was the winner of last week's contest on Kongregate for $250. The runners-up were Colourshift and Open Doors 2 for $150 each.

Frontline Defense Beta 2 was the winner of last week's contest on Kongregate for $250. The runners-up were GlueFO 2.0 and Days 2 Die for $150 each.