Finance 1.0 Sparks and In-game purchases

Dear Community,
My name is Hippolyte, I am the Economy designer at CREY Games.
Today marks a new chapter in our vision to democratize game creation by making it accessible, easy to use and fun. Until today, we have been focusing on two essential pillars: Game creation and providing a fun play experience. We would like to introduce a new pillar which we hope will support this vision: Finance.

Making amazing games can be hard and time consuming. While we are focusing daily to making our building tools better, more intuitive and easier to use, we also believe that the creators out there should be supported in their effort to bring amazing games to the world.
Finance englobes a variety of features which will go towards financially supporting builders in their game creation. We believe that with the proper support, the sky becomes the limit in terms of what creators will surprise us with, as they have done so already on many occasions.
Having said that, we plan on releasing finance features incrementally, taking your feedback along the way on our Discord channel. At the end of the day, we will always ensure that privacy, security, and protection of creativity remain as our highest priorities.

Finance 1.0 update

We are pleased to announce that we are unveiling some exciting new features that will help support the creators out there.
We are rolling out the first version of what in-game purchases will look like in CREY Games. This is big news as it means that soon, builders will be able to earn real money from making games on CREY Games!
The team has been actively listening to the community and working hard to deliver the best possible experience for creators and players alike. Here’s why we will be rolling out the full feature incrementally, taking your feedback every step of the way through the discord channel.

New features

New currency: We are proud to unveil our new platform wide currency: Sparks. Sparks are CREY Game’s virtual currency. They can be used to purchase a variety of items which can enhance your gaming experience and support game creators! In our next updates, Creators who earn Sparks in their games will be able to exchange them for real world money.

Sparks can be obtained by clicking on you account balance, found at the top right in playcrey.com

Using Sparks, you can purchase in-game currencies which will allow you to unlock two types of items: permanent items (Cosmetics, upgrades etc.) and repeatable items (Extra lives, boosts etc.)

For more detailed information about Sparks, please refer to our dedicated help page.

In game: We have added in game shops in the following fan favourite games: Time Travelling Zombies, Lava legends and Mega Obby. We have selected these games because they are loved by our community and believe it is the best way to put our new features to trial.

Note:

These new features represent the first part of what we plan on delivering and are being thoroughly tested inside the games mentioned above by players. Once we feel these are ready, we will release the full in-game features to all the creators out there who wish to start making a buck out of their imagination.
In the meantime, feel free to share any feedback on our Discord channel!

What’s coming

In game shops for builders to use inside all their creations, which will be fully linked to Sparks meaning that players will be able to spend Sparks in them if they wish to.
New customisation tools for builders to create meaningful and player friendly shopping experiences
The ability for builders to request an exchange of their earned Sparks for real world money. We will share more on that soon!

We are at an era where creators can now earn a living from making amazing things from their imagination, whether it’s games, music, art and more. It is our belief that such creators should be empowered to do so, and we intend to uphold the highest standards of fairness, respect, and user experience. Stay tuned for more and reach out on Discord!

Get more visibility for your games with the CREY Outreach Program

Today we’re launching our new CREY Outreach Program as part of our effort to spread the word about CREY and help our creators get more players in to play their games.

How this works

We know we have a community of skilled builders who create awesome stuff. We want you to share that awesome stuff with the world, not just our own community.

Posting outside the CREY bubble

We want you to spread the word outside the CREY bubble. There are a ton of communities on Reddit about gaming and game development, and the stuff you guys are making in CREY deserves to be seen and heard there as well.

And not just Reddit, of course. If any of you are still using Facebook, there are a lot of great Facebook groups where you can share your creations. And I’m sure some of you belong to a variety of other communities, like forums, other Discords, etc.

When you share your game to the outside world, post a link to it in our new #crey-outreach channel.

We will then be doing a monthly raffle where the most upvoted/liked post wins a prize. If you get a viral hit that generates 5,000 likes or upvotes on your post, then we’ll reward you with $500 USD as a special “hooray.”

Where can I post my game?

We’ve come up with some suggestions for places to post links to your CREY games. You can probably think of more yourselves, and we are certainly not going to limit you to these. They are just to help you get started.

Facebook

Things to remember

Please note that you must share your link in the #crey-outreach channel. We’re not going to scour the internet ourselves looking for your posts. If you want to be eligible for the raffle, you have to share your link on our Discord.

Not on our Discord? No problem. You can join here.

If you share your game on a site that doesn’t have an “upvote” or “like” system – like, say, a forum – you’re still eligible for entering. If we can see that your post generates a lot of interest and comments, we’ll make a special case for it.

Oh, and of course, you have to be 13 years or older to be eligible. Please see our Terms & Conditions here.

Coming soon: Time Travelling Zombies

We’re very excited to announce our new in-house developed game, Time Travelling Zombies!

It is a multiplayer shooting game where you work together with your fellow players to defend the Earth from a zombie outbreak.

Players will be fighting these moaning monstrosities in a variety of arenas, and eventually face off against the big hulking boss monster zombie.

Along the way, you can upgrade your weapons and your outfits using in-game currency that you accumulate by defeating zombies. The rounds get progressively more difficult, but the longer you can last, the more bad-ass you’ll feel!

The story

In an alternative dimension humankind have invented time travel. Unfortunately, they did so right as a Zombie Apocalypse broke out. The research facility that contained the time machine was overrun and now zombies are appearing all over the timeline in different eras.

In a last attempt to save the timeline and ultimately all of humankind (both past and present) humanity created the temporal space station. From here, you, the player, embark on dangerous missions into the past and future to cleanse the zombie infestation.

Features

What can you do in the game?

Jump through the portal at the temporal space station and experience a specific location in time. Maybe it’s the Viking era, feudal Japan, or the Middle Ages.
Defeat as many zombies as you can and do your best to survive.
Defeating zombies earns you currency that you may spend at the space station.
Purchase new weapons that enables new playstyles.
Fight against epic bosses that will truly challenge your zombie killing abilities.
Go through as many rounds as you can with your team. Each round will be more difficult.

The game also features a new shop mechanic that heralds a new age of in-game customizations and how transactions work in CREY. We think our builder community will be very excited to hear that these features will soon be rolled out to everyone so they can start implementing them in their own games.

What does the future hold for TTZ?

TTZ is a living game and will be updated continuously. The release is just the first iteration. New and exciting features will be coming to the game periodically.

While not an exhaustive list, and certainly not anything we want to promise 100%, these are the thoughts the team have for future iterations of the game:

More bosses!
More arenas!
More weapons!
Character customization!
Community events and challenges!
New mechanics and systems that are chosen for development together with the community.

Let us know what you think

What are your thoughts about this new game? We’re really interested in hearing from you!

Join the CREY Discord and chat about the game in our new #time-travelling-zombies channel.

You can also go to our subreddit, r/crey, and talk about the game. We’ll be posting new features and announcements there as well!