Fntastic, the developer behind last year's widely derided zombie shooter The Day Before (after being embroiled in controversy over its use of hundreds of unpaid volunteers) is now asking community members to design maps to include them in his next game as part of a new announced “contest”, but will not pay the winners for their work.
Fntastic's erratic history goes back quite some time, but the studio is perhaps best known for the debacle surrounding last year's The Day Before. Fntastic's open-world zombie MMO first made headlines with a surprising reveal trailer in 2021, catapulting the game to the top of Steam's most desired titles, but its shine soon began to fade amid repeat ( and sometimes strange) delays, along with frequent accusations. It was a scam.
While Fntastic repeatedly denied those claims, the eventual early access release of The Day Before last December did little to allay players' concerns. The game that was released bore little resemblance to Fntastic's initial trailer, and with Steam reviews soon becoming overwhelmingly negative, Fntastic suddenly announced it would be closing just four days later, saying it had “failed financially.”
To view this content, please enable targeting cookies.
But, surprisingly, that was not the end of the entire saga. In January, Fntastic resurfaced, blaming The Day Before's failure on a “hate campaign,” and February brought news of toxic management practices at the studio. But despite all this, Fntastic returned in September to announce a “2.0” release promising more “honesty,” “transparency” and “professionalism,” along with a Kickstarter campaign for a physics-based multiplayer game called Escape Factory. . A month later, Kickstarter was dead due to lack of interest, but Fntastic wasn't done yet and immediately announced a new “action-horror props hunt” game called Items.
And all that long preamble finally brings us to the present, where Fntastic, not for the first time, has decided that it wants other people to help it develop its game for free. Although, unlike its previous flirtation with “unpaid volunteers,” the studio is disguising this particular opportunity as a competition. “We are excited to announce our first contest,” the developer wrote on their Discord (as spotted by The Gamer), “Design a map for ITEMS!”
“This contest is a chance for you to unleash your creativity,” he continued, “by designing a map card that, if won, will be added to the game in future updates.”
Fntastic says it is happy to accept entries such as 2D drawing, 3D model or “any other style”, but more entrants are expected to do so. Submissions should include images or artwork, the name and description of the map, its theme, layout, and even balance considerations. Despite that short list of requirements, Fntastic will not pay anyone for their work, but it will pay the winners. willpower see your map “fully designed and playable in-game”, with your name displayed on it “somewhere” and, assuming it ever materializes, a free copy of the items.
Just over 24 hours after announcing the contest, four applications have been submitted.