After completing the Shift 3 challenge I found myself tearing up at the sight of my profile, particularly my cards. Ambrosia Thorn, The Blood Worshiper (R2) marks my one hundredth Kongai playing card. I have earned the third digit.

I have been a Kong addict since before the dawn of card challenges. I earned the first card, Rumiko the Ninja. I earned the special Halloween one day offer card, what the card was I know longer remember. I earned the April Fools one day offer; a lovely reinforced breast plate embellished with Rick Astley’s shades. I even earned the special edition PAX ’07 card promo. The challenges I have missed are few to none, and the fruit of my labor has ripened.

If you too have earned 100 cards, post a screenshot and join the unofficial league of merry gentlethings in the 100 club.

Perhaps my views are a bit biased, but I think the game has beauty in a particular aspect that Greg and the K-Admins have seen. It isn’t perfect (nowhere near), it didn’t make a million dollars (actually only $50 since it was entered into a contest), and it wasn’t made by a professional.

Summer of 2006 and young sixteen year old DingoEatingFuzz, fresh out of his sophomore year of high school, hears about the Armor Games Contest #4. Lots of money to be made, and even more skills to be learned. DingoEatingFuzz had an idea for a game. What if the common phrase Dog Eat Dog was taken literally? He wasn’t a talented developer, but he had a vision and an understanding of Flash. The game was eventually put together, and he was proud of his work. It didn’t do well in the contest, but to friends and to the developer himself, it was a gem. A load of fun to play and surreal to think that he, DingoEatingFuzz (who does have a real name, mind you) had made it. More so to Dingo, it was a milestone. A game had set sail, he was known on the Internet for better or worse. He had a name.

Two years later, its the Summer of 2008. Greg informs Dingo that it is hidden treasure week on Kong! With a conspicuous salutation, suspense was satisfied with a link. It wasn’t hard to figure out where it went since Dog-Eat-Dog was in the URL. Dingo played the game he had played so many times before, that he had made two years before, that was crafted before any courses in graphic design, before he was an active member of the Flash community. Smiles is the one word definition of the evolved experience. The welcoming ‘ruff’ of the preloader dog and its gelatinous body mass poorly drawn with the line tool, the simple 6 second menu track made in a trial version of Fruity Loops (the project file couldn’t even be saved because it was a trial), and of course the game play. The game play is a web of very simple code placed all over the symbols. The collision detection is as simple as it gets: nothing more than a bounding box hit test between two movie clips. Dingo didn’t even use a much preferred shape flag method that uses pixel precision. There is no looping used for multiple collisions points (which is grotesquely required for the biggest dog with the pointed nose). Moving on to design, the hud is absolutely flat and blissfully frolics blindly past every principle of design. The grass background is a picture Google gave him, and drawing the dogs was difficult and a slight miss even with the simple design. The game over took in no feedback, was not analyzed, and it shows. But. Beyond all scuffs there is a but. But. The game was finished, the game was started, constructed, and finished. Then, the child was let go into the vast tubes of the blagosphere.

And I smile. Through the shouts, the emails, the comments, the chat, the frustration, I still smile. Two years, have I improved? Yes. But there is one thing I already knew. History is there to learn from. It is there to review and grow upon. If you neglect the past, the future will be a living reminder. I remember the past, and I remember making this game. It was the best I could do, I now respect its defects, and I respect your frustration or dare I say hatred?

How could I hate this game? It is a child. It is more than a child, it is a part of my childhood. It is a waddling baby caught on camera, and when the baby falls, it is cute and I laugh. This is what makes it a treasure. View it as the purest of indie games. It isn’t a challenge, it is an opportunity to see beyond the serious gaming scene that .swf files are quickly becoming. For a change, look into the eyes of the developer.

I acknowledge all of your abilities to see problems, but do one more. Ask yourself why. Why is this a problem? Then ask yourself how. How is this a problem. Insight and empathy will nourish your gaming and make every key pressed one of joy, not of chore.

The Wii wins simply because of the price, the originality, and the party games such as Wii Sports, Super Smash Bros. Brawl once it comes out, and Mario Party 8. The 360 has live arcade and has the computer compatibility expected from a Microsoft console which puts it in second. The PS3 is lame, more power than a developer needs, a price tag no one wants to look at, and ugly controllers. The only reason why it is still surviving in my opinion is because of MGS 4 and Final Fantasy.

Luminara no death challenge really isn’t hard. I got the 16x multiplier, 500k points, no deaths, and game completion all in one round. Granted I had played the game before, but still. Just make sure to stay in the corners and kill the fast enemies and the annoying line connecting enemies first.

For The Last Stand, the ammo already listed makes the game incredibly easy, and I suggest using the hunting rifle not the Barrett. The hunting rifle shoots faster and also doesn’t go through bodies as easily so you can ensure head shots. If you don’t want to glitch the game then limit the amount of survivors you have so they won’t steal all your kills.

I set Sledder! up with four highscore boards all max, and for the different difficulties. I uploaded the newer swf file, but I can’t access the highscores. When I set a high score it isnt showing up in the chat and there is no high score button on the game page itself. I’m not entirely sure if it is an error on my part or if its a kongregate error.

I just set up Kong Ball with the high score stat, but how do I view the high scores of everyone? The statistics page has the HighScore statistic and the information of when it was made, but there are no scores to be seen, and I know there should at least be one. Is there a link I’m looking over?

Owning rooms is a good idea, and handing out points for those who want to do it is also sweet motivation. My only concern is with the foreign language rooms; I’m not sure if Kong will get people who are willing to lead, can be trusted to lead, and also speak the needed language.

I found this site through the newgrounds forums. I think TrueDarkness was the fellow who posted it. And well, I really liked the site! The close community, the great games, the great contests, the entire infrastructure even. Maybe soon I will have a good game to upload.

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