Kongregate - Savvy Twist on Online Games

Casual games make up a large part of the games played on the Internet nowadays. One of the more recent and more popular game portals puts a fresh twist on existing game portals with their excellent use of competition and collaboration incentives built into their portal. I want to share with you in this article the features that make Kongregate stand out as one of the best game portals out there.

Achievements and Challenges

Through the use of achievements or "badges" players are encouraged to complete challenges based on the free games available on the website. There are numerous badges and it is a point of honor for users to collect as many as possible. Also to interest returning visitors, Kongregate holds weekly challenges where prizes, points and raffle entries can be won. On top of the achievement badges you can win, you can also collect game cards which can be used in their built in game called Kongai. As with most standard game portals there is also a leader board where the highest scores are posted.

Game Categories

The popular game categories featured on Kongregate are range from traditional Tower Defense games, first person shooters, RPG's to a wide variety of puzzle games online. Beside each game title you can see not only the developer information but how many plays it has received and the overall rating aggregation.

Chat, Community, Compete

While offering some of the most popular online web games for free, Kongregate also puts every player in a chat room with other people from all over the world playing the same game regardless of it's a single player or multi-player game. This is a very interesting and unique feature that I have not seen on many other game websites which holds a dual purpose. Firstly it expands a largely single player experience in a sense of a community, hence the name Kongregate. Secondly, this acts as an informal help desk for any players suffering any sort of game play or technical issues. Wisely, they also display high scores in the chat room which build on a sense of competition which is another important driving force in any game.

Building an Developer Base

Independent game developers are encouraged to submit their games to Kongregate which can be entered in a contest in which the best voted games win cash prizes. First prize for winning the monthly challenges could win a developer 1500 dollars. I applaud Kongregate for encouraging independent small game developers a way to be rewarded for their hard work. In addition, there is also a developer "Tip Jar" which people can actually donate money to the developers themselves.

Kongregate has used some very savvy and sophisticated approaches to hosting online casual games and is a shining example of what can be done to stand out in a very crowded field of competition.