Welcome to Alpha Challenge 2015, the biggest community event of Cogmind Alpha Access!
You can go straight to the
main event page to read about the rules, rewards, leaderboards, and dozens of achievements, but here's an introduction and summary of what all this is about.
While top scorers will naturally receive more recognition and prizes, this is also meant to be an event fun for all, and in that spirit simply by participating you might win something substantial (Cogmind gift keys!). You can even get your name in Cogmind's ASCII art gallery! (the item attribution reward)
There are quite a number of achievements--58 and counting--providing recognition for many unique styles of play and giving even those less familiar with the game a chance to put their name on the leaderboard. The achievements are "secret," however, so initially you can't aim for them; just play games and the event algorithm will parse and analyze all the uploaded score sheets to determine who currently holds the best ratings in each category.
Note that
score is not everything when it comes to placing high on the Best Escapes list--a fast stealth build has as good a chance of topping the list as a high-scoring blast-em-all-to-hell combat build.
During (and especially after) the event, I'll be sharing interesting composite data and graphs so we can see collectively how everyone is faring. (Those will appear here and at
/r/Cogmind.)
Feel free to use this thread for discussion about the event, or your experiences while participating, similar to our weekly seeds. (Seeds will be temporarily suspended during the event since manually seeded games are barred from participation in the Alpha Challenge, and we want to encourage as much participation as possible!)
Good luck! (And as always, have fun!)
Update: The Challenge is now complete! See the final results here, and prize list here.
