Kongregate announces achievements and microtransactions for online Flash games
by John Bardinelli 
{ Mar 23rd 2007 at 12:22PM }
Flash gaming community Kongregate recently announced a few Xbox Live-ish upgrades to be rolled out over the next few months. Starting today, time-limited achievements will be available for select games. The current challenge for The Fancy Pants Adventure requires you to collect five trophies within the game and rewards you with a collectible Rumiko card. Gather cards to participate in the site-wide multiplayer game Kongregate will unveil in a few weeks.And coming this summer: microtransactions! Developers are working with Kongregate to weave this into their titles to allow in-game purchases. One use for this system will be unlocking extended versions of games for just a few pennies per level. Most of the microtransaction earnings are paid to the game's programmer, adding incentive for developers to hop on the unlockable-content bandwagon.
Kongregate is setting itself up to be the most developer-friendly Flash community on the web. It's an easy hook for developers, but will the casual gamer get pulled in by microtransactions and collecting achievements?
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Jake @ Mar 23rd 2007 12:32PM
Copying MS is so trendy.
sheppy @ Mar 23rd 2007 12:41PM
I'm just glad to see Mr. Fancy Pants mentioned on this website....
eight @ Mar 23rd 2007 1:28PM
I played Fancy Pants Adventure.. well the forst world, because thats all that exists... but anyway, it was good, but i have a problem playing games on my keayboard, and on my computer in general. These are the types of things that would be fantastic on the Marketplace for 400 points.
AssemblyLineHuman @ Mar 23rd 2007 5:42PM
Heh...apparently, you chose the same day as Fox News to report on this site. Just when I was enjoying myself, Fox has to go and ruin it. Typical.
Just kidding. Kongregate is an excellent site from what I've seen so far, so the Fox coverage is good for them, I suppose.
t_m @ Mar 24th 2007 7:36AM
FPA was sweet.. i enjoyed what i played a lot more than many commercial games.
Two things about flash games annoy me though:
1 - No way to save. Is this correct or did i just miss it?
2 - No gamepad support.. FPA would be sweet on my (£2) gamepad.. but i don't know if flash can support gamepads.
Jim Greer @ Mar 24th 2007 3:10PM
t_m -
It is possible to save data locally in Flash 8 and higher - many game developers don't do it though. For instance, Bowmaster Prelude on Kongregate saves your progress.
One of the APIs we're working on is a save game API that saves to our db, so you can play from any browser.