An earlier version of this blog post promised a tutor session with the devs, which Mikkel was silly and promised before he knew for sure whether the devs had time for that. Instead, the winner will be able to choose either additional merch OR a mediocre MS Paint drawing of their winning in-game shop done by Mikkel.
We apologize for the inconvenience.
It’s been roughly two months since we added the Shops Pack to the editor, and roughly one month since we added the Creator Program to CREY Games. In honor of that, the builder challenge for April is the Build a Shop challenge!
In this challenge, you must build a purely visual shop – no actual shop functionality is needed, just the visuals.
Our game dev and community judges (Joakim, William & Mikkel) have been practicing their shopping in preparation for judging your in-game shops!
HOW TO ENTER
The “Build a Shop” Jam starts on April 17 and ends on April 26.
Once the deadline has been reached, our judges will deliberate and then reveal the winner before the end of the month!
Here are the rules to participating in the “Build a Shop”‘ Jam:
Create a new game that consists only of an in-game shop (and a character so we can walk around the shop)
Publish your game and add ”Build a Shop 23” in the description of the game
Post your published game in #BuildAShopJam channel on our CREY Games Discord
The winning entry in this game jam will win a custom made thumbnail for one of your games AND get your in-game shop added to the editor library as a Plug and Play asset! This means that your winning entry will be available for use by all CREY Games’ builders, with your name credited in the description of the item, of course!
The winner will be contacted via the email associated with their CREY account (we’ll try to get a hold of you by other means if we don’t hear back from you via email, but please make sure your email is valid – that makes the whole process a lot easier).
Eligibility for participating in the CREY Build-a-Shop Jam:
It’s finally (kinda-sorta) spring, and what better way to celebrate that, than to have a game jam based on sports? It’s time to for the…
✨Spring “Sports” Jam!✨
Our game dev and community judges (Joakim, William & Mikkel) are pumped to apply the science of their individual fields to judging your games!
HOW TO ENTER
The “Sports” Jam starts on the 20th of March and ends on the 29th of March. We will arrange a Q&A session with the game devs William / Joakim on March 22 between 13-17 CET (Copenhagen Time) to give you some early feedback or tips to use in your “Sports” Jam submissions. Come prepared with your ideas and questions!
Once the deadline has been reached, our judges will deliberate and then reveal the winner before the end of the month!
Here are the rules to participating in the Spring ”Sports” Jam:
Create an original game that is in some way based on sports (Anything can be turned into a sport right?)
Publish your game and add ”Spring Sports Jam 23” in the description of the game
Post your published game in #SpringSportsJam channel on our CREY Games Discord
You can win a tutor session with the devs, a custom made thumbnail for one of your games as well as CREY Games branded merch of your choice. The winner will be contacted via the email associated with their CREY Games account (we’ll try to get a hold of you by other means if we don’t hear back from you via email, but please make sure your email is valid – that makes the whole process a lot easier).
Eligibility for participating in the CREY Games Spring ”Sports” Jam:
We’re doing a “fun” challenge for our builders this October. This is your chance to exact revenge on us in the worst way possible!
We have assembled a crack team of judges, and the challenge is to scare the pants off of them.
The three winning finalists will each be rewarded with a written review about how much your game scared them — not to mention $100 in prize money!
How to enter
Your goal is simple. You have two weeks to create a scary game. Read further down to see what exactly scares our judges — the more you play to their fears, the better chance you have of being a finalist!
The challenge starts Monday, Oct. 10, 2022 @ 12:00 pm CEST and ends Monday, Oct. 24, 2022 @ 12:00 pm CEST.
In that time, you must create an original game — in any style you want, no restrictions — as long as it’s scary as all hell.
Publish your game with the hashtag #FrightJam2022 in the game description! That’s it!
Who are the judges (and, more importantly, their fears)
The judges for this competition are:
Zoltan Dosa (CREY Workspace Admin) Greatest fear: “The feeling of something is close.“
Jason Gill (CREY QC) Greatest fear: “Pursuit while under pressure.”
Kenneth Burns (CREY Business Development) Greatest fear: “Creepy jump scares.”
Karbonium (CREY Master Builder) Greatest fear: “Being chased by something lurking in the dark.”
Q&A (because there’s always a question)
Q: How does this challenge work?
A: Start building your game at the kick-off on Oct. 10, 2022. Please do not start building before that (we have ways of checking).
At the end of the jam (Oct. 24, 2022), our community manager (Frost) will play every single game submitted with the hashtag #FrightJam2022 in the description.
He will select three finalists from these submissions that will go on to the judge’s round.
The judges will then play all the three finalist games. They will write up a short review of each game.
They will also pick their favorite game based on these criteria:
Best visuals
Best audio
Best gameplay
Best story/premise
Best scare / frightening moment
These reviews and rankings will be published on our blog and linked on our social medias and Discord.
Q: How do you determine a “winner”?
A: The three finalists are all winners. They will all be rewarded with a written review and a $100 prize.
Q: How do I receive my prize money?
We will reach out to each of the three finalists using the email addresses they have connected to their CREY account. (If we can’t reach you with that email, we will try to reach out to you via other means, but please make sure your CREY account email is valid. That makes our lives a lot easier.)
When we reach out to you, please provide us with a valid PayPal account for us to transfer your winnings to.
Please note that your PayPal must be set up correctly. If your PayPal is not set up to receive money, or is invalid for other reasons, that’s out of our hands. If that’s the case, we will try to work out alternate solutions with you directly.
Q: Can I use a game I’ve already created?
A: No. Your game must be created in the time-frame of the game jam. You can use an existing CREY template to build your game if you wish, but you cannot recycle an old game you’ve already made.
Q: Do I have to cater to the fears of the judges?
A: Not necessarily. But you’ll stand a greater chance of being one of the three finalists if you do.
Q: What are the other requirements for entering the player challenges?
A: It’s (relatively) simple:
You must be 15 years or older to enter the competition. Them’s the laws.
We will request that you provide verification of identification because, well, them’s also the laws.
All territories embargoed by European Union are excluded from the prizes.
All tax is responsibility of the recipient. CREY does not take responsibility over prizes taxation.
Our first Builder Challenge in our new game jam format is here! (If you’re wondering what that format is, please see our blog post from yesterday.)
The premise is simple: Build a game that takes place on a beach.
It can be any type of game you want. Platformer, shooter, walking simulator, scavenger hunt… anything goes. As long as the environment it takes place in is a beach.
Why a beach? Well, it’s summer. The weather is warm (at least here on the northern hemisphere). And we can’t think of many games that take place on a beach, unless you count the many games depicting the Normandy landings, and they didn’t exactly seem dressed for a relaxing day in the sun.
How long do I have to make a game?
The jam runs for two weeks starting today. So that means it begins August 24 and ends on September 7.
We will then have a week of playing all submitted games and pick three “finalists.” Those finalists will have their games played by a judge’s panel who will rank their favorites in five categories: best visuals, best audio, best gameplay, best premise, and overall best game. The finalists and their rankings will be publicized in a blog post between September 8 and 14, just in time for the next jam to start.
Can I submit a game I’ve already made?
No. The only rule for this challenge is: Your game must be made in the two weeks of the game jam. You can’t start from a template, and you can’t use an old existing game you’ve already made. We have ways of checking. 😏
What’s the prize?
There’s no prize, other than having your game played and reviewed. This is a creative exercise. It’s for the love of building. And, of course, the constructive feedback from the judges, should your game make it into the pool of finalists.
Who are the judges?
The people on the judge’s panel will be announced in the coming days.
It will be a combination of people from CREY, people from the community, and hopefully one or two “guest judges” from outside the CREY bubble that will be playing and reviewing your games.
Terms of participation
As always, we are obligated to tell you that you must be 13 years or older to participate in the challenge, and you must have read and accepted our Terms & Conditions. In addition, if you are an employee at CREY (Discord mods and guides excluded), you can’t participate.
We’re bringing the builder challenges back! We’ve missed them. We’re sure some of you (most of you, hopefully?) have, too.
We’re doing a bit of a new format, though. We’re turning them into sort of a “game jam” type thing.
You’ll have 2 full weeks to make a game or creation, and you’ll have a lot of freedom. No more “pre-baked templates” to work from. Just an outline of an idea, or a gameplay mechanic, or something. For instance, the first challenge will simply be a summer challenge — make a game that’s set on a beach — that’s it, go.
After the 2 weeks are up, we’ll have 1 week’s pause where I’ll play all the games submitted and choose 3 “finalists.” Those 3 finalists will have their games played and judged by a panel of respected judges who will pick their favorites in five categories:
Best Gameplay
Best Visuals
Best Audio
Best Story/Premise
Overall favorite
The first jam starts tomorrow — Wednesday (Aug. 24) and ends September 27. Don’t worry, you’ll have full details tomorrow.
If you want to be on the judge’s panel – please DM Frost on Discord! We’d love for the judges to not just be us at CREY, but people from the community as well. But please note, if you want to be on the judge’s panel, you can’t enter a game into the jam. That’s only fair, right?
Hope you’re as excited about this as we are! And, yes, we’re also bringing back more player challenges, community showcase livestreams, dev-streams, and more goodness in the very near future. Stay tuned for all that.
The Builder Challenge for March is simple: Build a great 2D platformer… but, oh, you can only use the Terrain Tool to build the platforms.
The premise
We’ve all played 2D platformers, right? You can only move sideways, and you can jump. That’s it. Not much to it.
The trick is, of course, to design a platforming section that’s tough but also satisfying. One that lets you feel like a bad-ass when you make the tricky jump. One that doesn’t cheap-shot you with leaps of faith or jank.
But there’s a catch. You can only use the Terrain Tool to build the actual platforms. That’s right; you can’t use any assets from the Library to build places for the player to stand on.
Sure, you can add environment dangers – even enemies, if you feel like it – that use the Library assets. But anything the player stands on has to be Terrain made.
How to get started
As always, we’ve put together a simple template for you to get crackin’. It’s already got a locked off camera that follows the player from a distance. It’s also got the controls locked off so the player can only move sideways and jump.
You’re free, of course, to change the speed, momentum, double-jumping abilities, etc. of the player – even mess with the gravity, if you feel like it. Go nuts. Surprise us.
We’ve built three small platforms for you to get started, and the rest is just a blank canvas.
Over in the distance is the goal.
Now, the camera might bug some people, so I’ll briefly tell you how to mess with it to suit your needs.
Over to the right of the player start is a “Seeker” that follows the player. The camera is glued to it, so the camera follows along with it.
At the moment, the camera will also bob up and down whenever the player jumps, because that’s just how it works. If you want to stop that from happening, check the option that says “Disable Y.”
But that means that the camera will stay at the height it’s at and not follow the player down or up. So if you plan to build a level that has a bit of verticality to it, you might want to leave this off.
The distance from the player is directly related to the position of the Seeker. If you want the camera closer to the player, move the Seeker closer to the player.
Don’t uncheck the “Disable X” value, ‘cos then the camera will just smack up against the player’s head and the game will become nearly unplayable.
Why didn’t we just set the camera to “Follow,” which is a built-in camera option that follows the player along in a side-scrolling manner? Well, because the Follow mode has a set distance from the player, and I felt that distance was too short for what we’re trying to do here. You’re free, of course, to get rid of the Seeker altogether and just use the built-in camera mode if you like.
What’s the prize?
As with last month’s challenge, the prize for 1st place is 1,000 DKK (approx. $150 USD).
We’re not doing 2nd and 3rd place this month. Instead, there’s a Player Challenge award where your creation could become next month’s Player Challenge – which also has a cash prize reward of 500 DKK (approx. $75 USD).
Note: You must provide valid bank account information to receive your reward. We cannot accept PayPal or wire transfers. For non-Danish participants, we need your bank’s name, your own full name and address, IBAN no., and SWIFT code.
Criteria
Like last mont, the winners will be judged on the following criteria:
Ingenuity – how clever we think your creation is
Presentation – how good it looks
Gameplay – how fun it is to play
Wow-factor – how overall wow’ed we are
We’ll score each category from 1 to 5.
Deadline
The challenge starts Friday, March 4th and ends Monday, March 21st. That’s a little over two solid weeks to build yourself a smashing platformer.
Please submit your creation to the #challenges channel on the CREY Discord no later than March 21st at 4:00 PM CET.
If you’re not on Discord and still want to enter, you can also email a link to your creation to tp@creygames.com
On Friday, March 25th, Frost will play all the submissions on a livestream and declare a winner, as well as announce next month’s Builder Challenge and Player Challenge.
FAQ
Q: Can I collab with another creator?
A: Yes, but you’ll have to split the prize if you win.
Q: Can it be a multiplayer “level/game/creation”?
A: Wouldn’t recommend it. The “End Game” prop doesn’t affect multiplayer games, so there would be no way of winning your game.
Q: Who can participate?
A: The challenge is open worldwide to anyone aged 13 years or older who are registered with an account at CREY. Eligible minors must have permission from a parent or legal guardian in order to participate in the Contest. Employees of CREY, its affiliates, contest supervisors and members of their immediate families, are not eligible to participate or win.
Q: Do you have a terrifying barrage of lawyer-speak I can peruse?
The trouble is, her new job is all the way across the chasm…
… and her car is snowed in.
She’s gonna have to run to get there. But the way is perilous, and she’s running out of time…
The challenge
We have two terrain platforms on either side of the map. The goal is to get Sophie from one platform (her house) to the other (the town).
When you pass the flags at this bridge, a timer starts.
Builders must construct an interesting and challenging time trial for Sophie. It could be an obstacle course, a brainteaser puzzle, a dizzying array of teleporters, or whatever you like.
The only rule is, whatever you build must be solvable in the allotted time.
You are free to:
Deform the terrain any way you like.
Place any assets or props you like.
Change world settings like gravity, physics type, etc.
Change the amount of time Sophie has.
We have, of course, created a handy template so you can jump right in and start building:
The winners will be judged on the following criteria:
Ingenuity – how clever we think your creation is
Presentation – how good it looks
Gameplay – how fun it is to play
Wow-factor – how overall wow’ed we are
We’ll score each category from 1 to 5.
We’ve learned from our Christmas challenge that simply declaring one winner is not good enough. So this time we will not only have a 1st place, but also a 2nd and 3rd.
Ok, ok, but what is the prize?
The prize for 1st place is 1,000 DKK.
The prize for 2nd and 3rd place is 500 DKK.
Note: You must provide valid bank account information to receive your reward. We cannot accept PayPal or wire transfers. For non-Danish participants, we need your bank’s name, your own full name and address, IBAN no., and SWIFT code.
Deadline
We got a bit of a late start on this challenge, so we’re going to extend the deadline all the way to Feb. 28.
Please submit your creation to the #challenges channel on the CREY Discordno later than Feb. 28 at 4:00 PM CET.
If you’re not on Discord and still want to enter, you can also email a link to your creation to tp@creygames.com
FAQ
Q: Can I collab with another creator? A: Yes, but you’ll have to split the prize if you win.
Q: Can it be a multiplayer “level/game/creation”? A: Sure. As long as the “time trial” aspect is still in, have at it.
Q: Who can participate? A: The challenge is open worldwide to anyone aged 13 years or older who are registered with an account at CREY. Eligible minors must have permission from a parent or legal guardian in order to participate in the Contest. Employees of CREY, its affiliates, contest supervisors and members of their immediate families, are not eligible to participate or win.
Create the most unnecessarily complicated contraption for distributing presents.
This is a chance to stretch your creativity to the extremes (and extreme ridiculousness).
Imagine if Santa had lost his marbles and decided to automate the whole present-distribution apparatus. The elves have all been fired. It’s time to put the new Santa-o-Matic 3000 to work!
Unfortunately, Santa hasn’t vetted his contractor, so what he got was an unruly, bulky piece of garbage that barely does the job.
It’s up to you to design that bulky piece of garbage!
It doesn’t have to be perfect. In fact, it’s better if it’s utterly imperfect. It just has to be automated, over-the-top, and completely ridiculous.
The winner is the person who makes us laugh the most. 😊
How to
We have created a very basic template for you: It has a model of a house with a chimney and a Christmas present. Feel free to add more to the template in whatever manner you choose. The goal is to get the present (or multiple presents, if you feel ambitious) into the house’s chimney (or any other means of access – again, feel free to be creative about it).
Here’s Frost taking you through the template in all its splendor:
Basically, the more absurd and funny way you can deliver a present to the house – or even a street full of houses, go nuts – the better shot you have at winning.
Note: Because the challenge relies on physics, your contraption needs to be a single player experience. Multiplayer physics don’t sync properly between players, so do yourself a favor, save yourself a massive headache, and just do this as a single player thing.
Challenge duration
The challenge will begin on Wednesday, Dec. 1, 2021.
The challenge will end on Tuesday, Dec. 21, 2021.
That means you have 3 weeks (minus a day) to construct your contraption. You must publish your contraption on CREY by the end of Tuesday, Dec. 21 at 23:00 CET.
How do we pick a winner
The challenge winner will be determined during a live stream on CREY’s Twitch channel on Wednesday, Dec. 22, 2021.
The live stream will feature a judging panel comprised of eminently qualified CREY employees (just kidding, it’s really just whoever shows up). We will take a look at your creations one by one, and the one that makes us laugh the hardest wins.
Come on, come on, what’s the prize?
The prize is that we’ll pay for one of your Christmas presents. Buy your friends or loved ones something extra special (at a maximum of 1,000 DKK – don’t get insane). Or, if you’re one of those people, just get yourself something nice. Honestly, who are we to judge. It’s Christmas. Do what you like.
On top of that, we’ll also donate 1,000 DKK in your name to Julemærkefonden – a Danish charity that helps children overcome loneliness and bullying.
FAQ
Q: What’s the bare minimum requirement to be in this competition? A: Present goes in house. As long as that happens, you’re in.
Q: Can I collab with another creator? A: Yes, but you’ll have to split the prize if you win.
Q: Can it be a multiplayer “level/game/creation”? A: We don’t recommend it. Physics in multiplayer don’t sync properly, so every time you affect a physics object, the outcome will be different for each player. Do yourself a favor, save yourself a headache, and just make this a single player experience.
Q: Who can participate? A: The Contest is open worldwide to anyone aged 13 years or older who are registered with an account at CREY. Eligible minors must have permission from a parent or legal guardian in order to participate in the Contest. Employees of CREY, its affiliates, contest supervisors and members of their immediate families, are not eligible to participate or win. (That means you, Baloo!)
