February 2019 Contest Winners

Each month, developers win cash prizes for having the highest-rated new games! Click here for official rules. Check out the official contest page here.

We reached out to the top 5 winners to ask about their inspirations and experiences developing last month's top games on Kongregate!

• First-Place Winner

VasantJ, developer of Medieval Cop 9 -Song & Silence- (Part 1): It has been three years since the first Medieval Cop episode was published on Kongregate and thanks to the awesome support of the fans of the series and the Kongregate team, the series has become popular and gained a following far beyond my expectations for the series. It has been over a year since I put up a Medieval Cop episode and that's because "Song and Silence" is a delicate story with both comedic and emotional moments and I didn't want to ruin the impact by rushing it. The hardest part of this episode is telling the story over several days in Dregg's Life and properly integrating Gameplay into it. Which is why I had to divide the episode so as to not cause confusion and strain for the person playing. Part 1 introduces all the main characters and gives us a small idea about everyone's personalities and roles in the episode. Part 2 is where the main story will start and we will learn about Dregg's past and along with it, the reason why he truly hates the Post Office while getting closer to the other characters in the game.

I again thank you all for the amazing support for the last three years and I hope you will continue to support the series in the future. Again, Special thanks to Kongregate for the amazing platform that has supported the series for the last three years. You guys have been amazing. :D

• Second-Place Winner

Beranek, developer of Tales of Nebezem: Elemental Link Part 1: Elemental Link was my first attempt at making a game in RPGMaker. I had originally wanted to make an RPG, but RPGMaker is not a great engine for RPGs, despite its name. Also, RPGs (with all their stats, equipment, skills, monsters...) require much more work than any other kind of game. But my main goal was to create a fantasy world and tell stories with the world's setting, so an adventure game actually suited my purpose even better. It took me over half a year to finish Elemental Link. If I had to do it all over again, it would probably take half as long and the result would be better, because I've learned a lot in the process.

• Third-Place Winner

Luts91, developer of Idle Dice: Idle dice was supposed to be a small game without much complexity. When I first showed it to a small group of people the feedback was very positive and everybody already loved it. That motivated me to create more content and with each new update I showed it to more people who quickly played through the content and wanted more. Since the first version the game changed a lot due to the amount of feedback I got. So last month I was finally confident enough to publish it to the biggest audience yet, Kongregate. I always love to see how people are trying to find the best strategy and giving each others tips. I will definitely keep working on Idle Dice but I also have many ideas for new games. I already started to work on one of them, so be excited.

• Fourth-Place Winner

RawEgg, developer of Aurie: Hey! Firstly, we'd like to thank each and every one who played Aurie, as it really means a lot you took some of your time to play our game.

We've been gamers for as long as we can remember, and we've been making games for about one year, but only now have we become one of Kongregate's developers (since January 2019). We're greatly honored to be featured on Kongregate's top monthly games and heartwarmed by the possibility of making a memorable experience for someone else, just like the experiences we've had on this website for many years now. So far, we've brought to Kongregate a platforming world of spooky spiders, an idling blob-made global warming nightmare and now, to smooth things out a bit (and once again change our game style), we made this relaxing and atmospheric puzzle game. We hope to make our games broader, weirder and more fun as we fill up our profile page. We read all of your comments and we're counting on you to keep telling us what you enjoy or not about our games, so we can actually improve and bring you a better game each month.

Thank you again for playing Aurie; you can definitely count on us for fresh content each month!

• Fifth-Place Winner

NoaDev, developer of Mini Switcher: Hi! For me, it's an honor to have this opportunity to talk about my projects in Kongregate's blog; I was not expecting this, but here we are. :)

After a lukewarm reception of my previous two games, I was a little depressed; it seems that living developing games was still a very distant dream even after years of attempts, but I knew that there was a lot that could be done better, so I started to study to improve some skills that I lacked, like art skills. But my studies were taking a lot of time, and with some financial needs knocking at my door (and preventing me from making games without worries) I decided to use some little tricks that I have learned and make a quick game, without big pretensions, aspiring to the final places of the contest at maximum. That was how Mini Switcher was born.

For a short and quick game I simplified all the user interactions in the simple gravity switch action; I was greatly inspired by one of my old games to make the enemies and level layouts, and I finished it with a minimalist pixel art style, which gave the game a simple but pleasant look. Without some inconveniences, I would say that the game took me around a week to finish. When I uploaded the game, the user reception... it blew my mind in so many ways that I found it hard to believe: an overwhelmingly positive reception in the comments, the game on the front page, around 30k views at the moment, and a big average rating that secures the game third place in the contest for a long time. I knew that I improved my skills in some ways since last time, but not even in my best dreams had I expected that result.

In the end, two big games appeared and took the first two places out of nowhere, but it's okay, it's hard to compete with those type of games; also, there is a lot of room for improvement taking into account the user feedback. But the important thing, in the end, is that this experience fully recharged my developer energies.

Thanks a lot to the ones who played Mini Switcher, also to the Kongregate staff for lending me your platforms. I hope you also enjoy my future games.

Congrats to the rest of the winners below!