Sybo’s Craft-a-Character competition is making a return to celebrate the 12th anniversary of Subway Surfers, the endless runner that has proven its popularity time and again over the years and become one of the most successful mobile games ever.
Subway Surfers capitalises on players’ interest in street culture and has even introduced AR elements to merge fantasy with reality, empowering players to superimpose characters onto real landscapes.
Characterising a celebration
Jake is, of course, the face of Subway Surfers but there are plenty of other characters too, and the Craft-a-Character competition will see one more added to the bunch: a brand-new addition based on the contest's winning design.
Fans the world over are able to participate in the competition, running from today, January 10 through until January 29. Designs can be submitted via Instagram with the theme being "Gaming Geeks", meaning they should be inspired by video games or gaming culture and history.
The winning design will land in front of as many as 150 million pairs of eyes, and will be implemented into Subway Surfers in May, with the 24th marking 12 years since release.
"The opportunity for 150 million monthly players to have access to a character you created is pretty extraordinary and our community loves these contests," said Sybo chief marketing officer Philip Hickey. "We had to bring back a fan-favorite event for Subway Surfers’ 12th birthday and we’ve got a special update in the works for this character to explore. We can’t wait to see what the fans create."
Subsequent Craft-a-Character competitions are expected later in 2024 with other "fresh themes" for fans to try their hand at, meaning a whole host of new characters should be added over the course of the year.
A similar competition took place around Subway Surfer’s 10th anniversary in 2022, bringing Fernando to the game as a gamified interpretation of the winning fan himself. Meanwhile, current fan-made characters include Tankbot, Koral, Bob the Blob, and Spraybot.
Last summer, Sybo partnered with impact platform Milkywire to help drive donations to environmental projects.
