FrightJam 2022: Scare the crap out of us!

FrightJam 2022

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.
  • Please read our Terms & Conditions before entering.

Introducing our new Player Challenge concept

New Player Challenges

You didn’t think we’d forgotten about you players, did you? Of course we didn’t!

We’ve been thinking long and hard about how to make our player challenges more sustainable and more in tune with how player challenges and speedruns work out there in the real world.

And we think we’ve come up with a fairly ingenious solution, if we do say ourselves! (Please let us know if we’re wrong.)

Introducing the “Player Pool”

Instead of doing a weekly game with a new challenge each week, we’ve decided to level the playing field.

We’ll have a group of games — collectively known as the “Player Pool” — and they are all challenge games.

You can play each of them for as long as you want. There is no time limit. All you have to do is beat the high score.

At the end of each month (on the last Monday of the month @ 3pm Danish time), we’ll look at each of the leaderboards of the Player Pool. If someone has taken the lead, then that person is rewarded with a prize of $100 USD (750 DKK).

If no one has gotten a new high score since last month, then… guess what? Everything stays the same.

What games are in the “Player Pool”?

We’ve divided the games into sub-categories. We will be adding more games in the coming weeks, but for now, these are the games we’ll be keeping an eye on:

Shooter games

Platformer games

Endurance games

Casual games

Q&A (because there’s always a question)

Q: What if I had a first place during the month, but someone else took the top place?

A: Doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is who is at the top at the end of the month. We only look at the leaderboards on the last Monday of every month. If the person at the top isn’t the same as last month, then the new person gets rewarded.

Q: How do I claim my prize?

A: We will check the leaderboard status of each of the games in the Player Pool on the last Monday of every month @ 3pm (Danish time). We will reach out to you via the email you provided when you signed up with CREY. Please make sure the email you use with CREY is valid and can receive emails! If that email is invalid, we will try reaching out to you in other ways (e.g. on our Discord).

Q: What are you doing to curtail cheaters?

A: It’s no secret we’ve had trouble with people getting frankly unrealistic high scores in the past. We’ve done our best to stress-test the Player Pool games to make sure cheating is not possible. However, as with any other game in existence, there is likely to be any number of glitches and exploits that speedrunners will find to improve their times and scores.

To be absolutely clear: Glitches and exploits are acceptable. For example, “wall climbing” in Super Mario Kart 64 is an exploit, and if you find a similar time-saving exploit in our games, that’s totally fair.

What’s not fair is hacking or using third-party tools to cheat. We expect players to at least put in some effort to achieve their times! If you suspect someone is using illicit tools to worm their way into the top spot, please DM a mod or @Frost on the CREY Discord.

Q: What if I find a really fun glitch/exploit? Should I keep it to myself?

You can, if you want to. But we do encourage you to share it with the community!

It’s not just about bug-fixing. It’s also to inspire a sense of achievement and camaraderie with your fellow players. I mean, you already got the high score and the reward! What’s the worst that can happen from sharing your secrets after that? 🙂

We promise you, if a glitch/exploit is particularly entertaining or hard-to-accomplish, skillwise, we will leave it in the game.

Q: What info do you need to send me my reward?

A: Rejoice! We are now able to transfer your winnings via PayPal. 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: 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.
  • Please read our Terms & Conditions before entering.

Major update to Time Travelin’ Zombies!

Time Travelin' Zombies

We’ve just released a major update to our Time Travelin’ Zombies co-op multiplayer game!

  • New killstreak system giving you heavy weaponry for a short time.
  • New banging soundtrack playing when the killstreak is active.
  • Faster gameplay loop! The boss is now on the 4th round.
  • Never go back! After defeating the boss round you can buy weapons and cosmetics in the arena instead of going back.
  • Smaller arenas! The biggest arenas have been reduced to keep the fighting closer and faster.
Killstreak means more power and a sparkly gun!

Get in and start blastin’! And don’t forget to invite your friends. It’s a co-op shooter, after all! Splattin’ zombie hordes is much more fun with a buddy.

CREYJam: A nice day at the beach

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.

New builder challenge starts tomorrow

Game jams coming back

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.

Do three laps for glory and win $1000!

Nurburgring

Play the game

Play Nurburgring: The Green Hell – Challenge Edition now!

The premise

We haven’t done a racing challenge yet, have we? Maybe we should do something about that.

Based on the magnificent — and feared — real-life racing circuit, the Nurburgring, this game will have you doing tight corners, weaving and dodging to avoid smashing into the sides, and trying to make up for lost time by putting the pedal to the floor and hoping for the best.

How do I win?

The race is three laps. The five people with the fastest total times will enter a random draw to win $1000.

The challenge will run from Monday, July 11, 2022 @ 2:00 pm CEST to Monday, July 18, 2022 @ 12:00 pm CEST.

What about glitches/bugs/cheats?

If you use cheats (e.g. third-party intervention), or if we just see a very suspicious-looking high score, then we’re not going to count your score. It’s our discretion whether to disqualify you or not. Them’s the breaks.

Credit where credit is due

This game is a copy of Nurburgring – The Green Hell by chasfallon. Play the original here!

Boring rules

To participate in this challenge, you must:

a) Be 13 years or older.

b) Have read and agreed to the nearly illegible spew of word salad we call Terms & Conditions.

c) Not be employed at CREY. (Volunteer mods and helpers can still participate, though!)

It’s Shoothouse again — but this time, it’s Classic Mode!

Shoothouse Challenge

Play the game

Click here to play Shoothouse Challenge Classic!

Wait, haven’t we already done this before?

We’re doing something a little different this week. And by different, we mean the same.

We’re bringing back one of the most popular games we’ve had in these challenges, Shoothouse by LittleLie. It’s a tremendously fun game.

In fact, it’s fun enough on its own without us adding stuff flying out of the sky to it. So that’s why, this week, we’re doing a Shoothouse Classic challenge.

No falling bombs. No beach balls. Just plain, straight-forward “shoot the targets and run” fun.

So, how do I win $1000?

You all know the drill by now, I take it? 🙂 Get a top 5 placement on the leaderboard. The top 5 contestants enter a random draw to win $1000.

The challenge will run from Monday, July 4, 2022 @ 4:00 pm CEST to Monday, July 11, 2022 @ 12:00 pm CEST.

At the stroke of 12 noon on July 11th, the game will be unpublished — meaning no additional scores can be recorded — and the 5 top placements on the leaderboard will enter the random draw. Join the CREY Discord to watch this take place live in our #playpen channel.

What about glitches/bugs/cheats?

If you use cheats (e.g. third-party intervention), or if we just see a very suspicious-looking high score, then we’re not going to count your score. It’s our discretion whether to disqualify you or not. Them’s the breaks.

Credit where credit is due

This game is a copy of Shoothouse Time Trial by LittleLie. You can play the original here.

Boring rules

To participate in this challenge, you must:

a) Be 13 years or older.

b) Have read and agreed to the nearly illegible spew of word salad we call Terms & Conditions.

c) Not be employed at CREY. (Volunteer mods and helpers can still participate, t

Go on an infinite treasure hunt and win $1000!

It's Raining Cars challenge

Play the game

Play It’s Raining Cars!!!… And Also Gems now!

The story…

Meet Wendy.

Hullo.

Wendy recently moved into a nice neighborhood in a quiet valley.

Pictured: A nice neighborhood in a quiet valley.

Not only is it a nice neighborhood, but it’s also full of priceless gemstones. And what’s more is that they seem to magically replenish themselves — in fact, they conveniently seem to drop from the sky every three seconds.

Unfortunately, so do a number of large vehicles.

“I need to have a chat with my real estate agent.”

But, in Wendy’s mind, the risk assessment that goes “accumulating untold wealth by collecting large amounts of priceless gems” versus “being flattened by an armored truck doing a nosedive at terminal velocity” is a simple one: Get all the gems!

How do I win this challenge?

Very simple. Run around, dodge the falling cars, and collect as many gems as possible.

The top 5 people on the leaderboard with the most gems collected will go on to a lucky random draw to win $1000 USD.

The gems and cars spawn infinitely. The gems spawn every 3 seconds. The cars spawn every 0.3 seconds, because bouncing cars are funnier than bouncing gems.

There are also a number of gems placed strategically around the map in caves and indents, but they are only accessible by jumping onto buildings and precarious platforms… and those can also be destroyed by the falling cars, so you have to move quickly.

You’ll notice there’s also a timer running in the top corner. This timer has no bearing on your high score. It’s just there for extra kicks. The only thing that matters is gems! ALL THE GEMS!

You only get one life, and you will be required to record your score at the end of each game (to prevent leaderboard sniping). You are of course free to play the game as many times as you want.

The challenge will run from Monday, June 27, 2022 @ 12.00pm CEST to Monday, July 4, 2022 @ 12pm CEST.

At the stroke of 12 noon on July 4th, the five top leaderboard holders will enter a random draw to win $1000. Join the CREY Discord to watch this take place live in our #playpen channel.

What about glitches/bugs/cheats?

If you use cheats (e.g. third-party intervention), or if we just see a very suspicious-looking high score, then we’re not going to count your score. It’s our discretion whether to disqualify you or not. Them’s the breaks.

Credit where credit is due

This game is based on It’s Raining Cars!!! by TornadoGamer. You can play the original here.

Massive thanks to our challenge testers JonasBocek and ManEd2047 for their help making this as fun (and hopefully bug-free) as possible!

Boring rules

To participate in this challenge, you must:

a) Be 13 years or older.

b) Have read and agreed to the nearly illegible spew of word salad we call Terms & Conditions.

c) Not be employed at CREY. (Volunteer mods and helpers can still participate, though!)

Shoot gems and win $1000

Gems Challenge

Play the game!

Play Gems – Apocalyptic Challenge Edition here!

The story…

Meet Phil.

Phil is vacationing near scenic Líqí Lake, famous for its picturesque beauty, its tranquil environment, and — most importantly for Phil — its vast resource depository of gems and valuable stones.

Unfortunately, he picked a hell of a time to vacation, because the apocalypse is happening and nature itself is in an uproar.

So Phil did the only thing he could think of. He brought a gun.

And highly inappropriate vacationing wardrobe.

Convinced that the apocalypse is happening because of the overabundance of precious gemstones (Phil is a very confused man), and accompanied by his trusted companion, his bulldog Poodles (told you he was very confused), Phil sets out to destroy as many valuables as possible.

It won’t be easy, though. As the levels progress, things only get more difficult, and nature itself begins to fight back.

How do I play/win the $1000 prize?

The game is divided into rounds. Each round has a set goal. You must shoot the amount of gems specified in the goal to advance to the next round.

The goal of how many gems to shoot keeps increasing as the rounds go on.

Don’t let the gems fall into the water again! If you miss, you risk failing the round. You get three “grace shots” — i.e. you can miss three times — but after that, the round is over. Your progress is saved, though, so you can just try the round again.

There are an infinite number of rounds.

As the rounds progress, you will encounter an increasingly bizarre amount of environment dangers to disrupt your aim and generally drive you a bit insane. You can shoot some of them — at no penalty — but they do not count towards your score. Only gems do.

To make matters worse, your dog Poodles decided to go for a swim. If you should be so unlucky as to accidentally pop a cap in Poodle’s adorable face, the round ends instantly. Don’t shoot the dog.

Resist temptation.

Challenge rules

The top five people with the highest scores on the leaderboard will be in a random draw to win $1000.

The challenge will run from Monday, June 20, 2022 @ 12.00pm CEST to Monday, June 27, 2022 @ 12pm CEST.

At the stroke of 12 noon on June 27th, the five top leaderboard holders will enter a random draw to win $1000. Join the CREY Discord to watch this take place live in our #playpen channel.

What about glitches/bugs/cheats?

If you use cheats (e.g. third-party intervention), or if we just see a very suspicious-looking high score, then we’re not going to count your score. It’s our discretion whether to disqualify you or not. Them’s the breaks.

Credit where credit is due

This game is based on Gems by Scuden. You can play the original here.

Massive thanks to our challenge testers JonasBocek and ManEd2047 for their help making this as fun (and hopefully bug-free) as possible!

Boring rules

To participate in this challenge, you must:

a) Be 13 years or older.

b) Have read and agreed to the nearly illegible spew of word salad we call Terms & Conditions.

c) Not be employed at CREY. (Volunteer mods and helpers can still participate, though!)

Player Spotlight: MadMadju

Builder Spotlight: MadMadju

Since we’ve been doing weekly player challenges, some truly excellent players have come out of the woodwork and really gotten into it.

One of these dedicated players is Matthew from the Czech Republic, a.k.a. MadMadju, who takes challenges and competition very seriously — but also likes to mess around with games and find ways to break them.

Case in point, when we had our Escape! challenge, he found a hilarious glitch where he could get safely to the end of the game by getting on top of one of the killer robots and just surfing all the way to the exit:

“I discovered that all of the enemies have hitboxes,” he explains. “Then I found a shortcut which helped me get above the robots. I also realized that the robots were following me, so I decided to jump on its head. To get him to move, I walked forward a bit to make him think that I was further away and trick him into ‘following’ me.”

I wasn’t competing with anyone. I was just trying to beat my personal best score.

MadMadju

Matthew has been a competitive player all his life. “I’ve played games since I was 4, and I’ve been speedrunning since I started playing games,” he says. “I am a really competitive person, so when I play games where there’s a timer, I always want to finish the game as fast as I can. I used to play a lot of games with timers, like Jazz Jackrabbit 2. I wasn’t competing with anyone — I was just trying to beat my personal best score.”

Matthew only joined the CREY community this year at the recommendation of a friend, but he’s enjoying the challenges. His name is usually found in the top 5 leaderboard positions of every challenge, and he has taken home the $1,000 USD reward on several occasions.

“I love competing with others and trying to beat them,” he says, “and the $1,000 USD prizes makes it way more intense.”