Hero Wars: Alliance is a top-10 mobile RPG of the years 2022 and onwards, attracting multiple millions of monthly active users. In Q2 2025, I decided to make the release of the latest new character, Guus, a little more memorable by organizing a contest.
A little bit of context about the community and Guus:
- The game is ‘midcore’ (tailored to a wide audience), and the community is primarily men from the USA.
- The community did not have a lot of activity around creative contests in the past.
- The new character, Guus, is a master of geese. As suggested by his name and feature graphic.
The goose with the knife became the primary source of inspiration. My action plan was pretty straightforward:
- Plan out the Photobomb contest: rules, timelines, rewards, artwork.
- To participate, community members need to take our goose cutouts and photoshop them onto their photos.
- These photos need to be posted in the comments under the contest’s announcement.
- Announce on all platforms and give 8 days to participate.
- Tally up all 650+ submissions, pick out the best contenders, and select 5-10 winners!
All of the submissions were recorded here. As for the winners:
Images sourced from https://nexters.app.box.com/s/kh0dj74mzc4kk4sux9frozldxjka4z6o/folder/328246598343
Want to elevate your community? Let’s work together!