Kongregate News

It's time for puzzles! And tanks! Submachine 4: The Lab was the winner of our $250 contest last week, while another excellent puzzle game, Escape #2: The Closet was a runner-up for $150. The other runner-up prize went to Tank 2007.

Today is a great day to have friends who hate zombies, as last week's $250 contest winner Boxhead: 2Play Rooms allows two players to team up against hordes of vile zombies and demons. At the time of this news post, three of the top four games in the monthly contest involve killing zombies, so finding a friend who shares your hatred for the undead shouldn't be too difficult.

LightSprites was a runner-up last week for $150. It's described by Hero Interactive as "kind of like the Disney World ride 'It's a Small World' combined with crack." LightSprites is also the unofficial winner of the "best game description ever" award.

Smithy's Quest — an RPG that's funnier than anyone over 11 would publicly admit — was the other runner-up for $150.

Grid Shift was extremely close to snatching up the second runner-up prize, but one too many fans of Smithy's Quest bumped it down to last week's honorable mention.

Kongregate is growing and we need more serverz! If you have serious experience working on big sites, and know some Rails, see our jobs page!

It might be halfway through May already, but we're finally ready to announce the official winners of April's game contest.

1st: Desktop Tower Defense
2nd: B29 Assault
3rd: More Bloons
4th: Understanding Games: Episode 4
5th: Punk-o-matic
6th: Particles
7th: Madness Reaction Time
8th: Line Game
9th: Rings

Who would've guessed that Desktop Tower Defense would win something? Aside from anyone who's played the game or sorted games on Kongregate by rating, I mean...

So that's $1500 for DTD, $1000 for B29 Assault, $700 for More Bloons, $500 for Understanding Games and $250 for everyone else. Note that only games that implemented our stats/challenges API were eligible for monthly prizes. This requirement applies to May's contest as well.

We also had winners from last week, as usual. jmtb02's awesome Luminara won the $250 prize. Weasel's Endless Zombie Rampage took a runner-up spot for $150 along with Free World Group's Puzzle Freak. After this week's contest, taking into account the Thing-Thing series and QWERTY Warriors, Weasel's total prize money from Kongregate has officially topped three billion dollars.

If you ask me, the only good zombie is a dead zombie! I mean, a re-dead zombie... whatever. The Last Stand was the winner of last week's $250 contest, and I'm sure Con Artists Productions will figure out something to do with all those undead presidents.

Kongregate Racing has also taken over the site lately. It seems like everyone is playing it — both on the site and in the office (right, Emily?). It was a runner-up for $150 along with Matrix Rampage (note that this is the only time a video game based on The Matrix has ever gotten high ratings).

Marvin Spectrum fell just short of the cut-off, and never before has there been such a deserving honorable mention. We're all looking forward to the promised Marvin Spectrum Turbo next week, so here's hoping that it wins something!

The official winners of last month's contest will also be announced very soon.

The pesky terrorist infestation will get out of control in the future, according to B29 Assault, in which the player must take back the world's major cities from terrorists with bombs, missiles, gunfire, lasers, aerial flame throwers and more bombs. It was the winner of last week's $250 contest, with $150 runner-up prizes going to Punk-o-Matic and Circlo. Play them all, or the terrorists win.

This week's current challenge in P.O.D. has been tweaked a bit. To earn the Andromeda card, players now only need to score 500,000 points within the game. It's no longer necessary to complete the game to earn the card. However, those who do complete the game will be awarded the 25 points that were once part of the original challenge (you will not earn 25 points on Kongregate for scoring 500,000 points in P.O.D. without completing the game).

Players who completed the challenge before this change will still have their card and points, even if the challenge box isn't checked off within the game.

The masochists were rating games in full force last week, as the even more difficult More Bloons was the winner of the $250 prize. IndieFlashArcade, a long-time Kongregate user/moderator/room owner, also released P.O.D. last week, which we at Kongregate were very pleased to sponsor. Along with Line Game, it was a runner up for $150.

TrueDarkness, Kongregate's highest-level user and the first person on the site to hit our level cap (back when it was a mere 20), is hereby declared the winner of our referral contest from March and April, making him one Nintendo Wii richer. Atomicnoodle was a runner-up for an iPod Nano, while jmtb02, Donutmaster and DingoEatingFuzz each won an iPod Shuffle.

Due to international contest laws, our referral contest was unfortunately restricted to U.S. residents, as stated on the contest page and in the official rules. However, in recognition of Eggy earning more points than anyone, he might be receiving a special gift from Kongregate.

Also note that aperk was disqualified for referral fraud.

Listening to cool music and trying to avoid death describes both the essence of human life and Particles, last week's $250 contest winner. The two $150 runners-up were Mad Virus and Madness Reaction Time.

First they go for our castles, our land, our homes... But now they seek to conquer the unthinkable: our desktops. Fight back in last week's $250 contest winner, Desktop Tower Defense. The two runners-up from last week were Bloons (equal parts addictive and evil) and Understanding Games Episode 4.

They're here! The official contest winners from March!

First place: The Fancy Pants Adventure: World 2 demo
2nd: Boomshine
3rd: Tactical Assassin
4th: The Missile Game 3D HS
5th: Understanding Games: Episode 2
6th: Bloons
7th: Red
8th: Bubble Tanks
9th: Bot Arena 3

That's $1500 for the world 2 demo, $1500 for Boomshine (see note below), $700 for Tactical Assassin, $500 for The Missile Game 3D HS, and $250 for all the others listed above.

And for last week, Bot Arena 3 was the winner for $250, with another $150 each for BamBoom and No Comment!.

Note: The above list of monthly winners has been modified since the original announcement. While our rules stated that we include ratings made through April 4th, a bug on our end reported what the winners would have been if the cutoff was on April 3rd instead. During this extra 24-hour period that we failed to take into account, the world 2 demo from Fancy Pants passed up Boomshine for the #1 spot. Boomshine was therefore declared the winner initially, even though the world 2 demo had a higher rating by the end of April 4th.

While we greatly apologize for this error, only the prize amount for Boomshine was affected, and both Boomshine and the world 2 demo will be awarded the $1500 top prize.

Nothing shines brighter than a contest victory! Or... something... but Boomshine was the winner of last week's $250 prize. The two $150 runner-up prizes went to Tactical Assassin and Red, two very popular games that we're glad to finally see on Kongregate.

We just put a fix in for the bug where people were completing the Fancy Pants challenge but not receiving either their points or card. If this happened to you, all you have to do is go play Fancy Pants for a few minutes and the card should automatically award. If the card doesn't award within a few minutes then clear your cache, restart your browser, and play Fancy Pants for a few minutes again. That should take care of it. We apologize for the inconvenience and frustration this bug has caused.

We're aware of a bug that's currently preventing some users from acquiring the Rumiko card. We're working to address this issue and make sure that everyone who has completed the challenge receives a card. If you've completed the challenge and have not received your card, please email us at feedback@kongregate.com to let us know and make sure that we straighten it out.

Kongregate is now in beta. What does that mean? Well, aside from redesigns of the home page and game pages, challenges are now live. The first challenge can be found in The Fancy Pants Adventures from now through Sunday. Find all trophies to win the first card in our upcoming CCG!

What a great week for games! We unfortunately only have three cash prizes to give out, but last week's $250 winner was the highly deserving Missile Game 3D HS. The half-game, half-lecture Understanding Games: Episode 2 was a runner up for $150, proving that Kongregate's users must be more scholarly than we could've imagined. The great puzzle game Age of Japan was the other $150 runner-up.

Some terrific honorable mentions for last week include Stunt Bike Island, Jeeves Volleyball, Frag Assault, Parassault, Bloody Blades, and the music rhythm games by Coolio Niato.

As of yesterday, ads are now live on Kongregate. Note that the revenue from our advertisements are shared with developers; you can read more about the system in our FAQ.

And for those who would like to link to us from your website (racking up friend referrals and extra ad revenue for developers), we also have a new buttons page!

To our great surprise, some sort of obscure Fancy Pants demo won our weekly contest for $250. We think that a few people enjoyed the demo, so maybe we'll check out this "fancy pants" if we ever get around to it. Maybe.

Cosmic Crush and Starfighter were unfortunate in being a bit overshadowed by the Fancy Pants demo, but still fortunate in each winning a $150 runner-up prize.

It's that time of the month for Kongregate to give away lots of money to developers who uploaded some of the best games on the site! And here they are, the 9 winning games of February:

1. Boxhead: More Rooms
2. Rings and Sticks
3. Four Second Firestorm
4. Dice Mogul
5. Hewitt
6. FruitFall
7. Four Second Frenzy
8. Alpha Force
9. Elite Base Jump

And weekly winners too! They still matter, even at the end of the monthly contest.

1. Rings and Sticks
2. Swords and Sandals 2
3. Elite Base Jump

So what do these crazy numeric rankings mean? Well, Boxhead: More Rooms is the winner of the $1500 grand prize, with $1000 for Rings and Sticks, $700 for Four Second Firestorm, $500 for Dice Mogul, and $250 for all the other runners-up. And in our weekly contest, Rings and Sticks won an additional $250, plus $150 for Swords and Sandals 2 and Elite Base Jump. Note that Swords and Sandals 2 pulled ahead of Elite Base Jump after the monthly rating cut-off, but before the weekly one.

Yes, the rankings really are that close. A single rating has decided winners on several occasions, so take advantage of our system as the only place in the entire world where your single vote actually counts!