In December, Sphere News partnered with Jinglecrafters – a charity campaign led by WraithStation in collaboration with a collective of event organisers, server owners, press sources and content creators, in order to raise money for Jingle Jam. With the event now over, we look back on the campaign, celebrate its triumphs, and reflect on the people who made it so special.
Fundraising
The campaign raised a total of £3,245 (equivalent to $4,113.57 USD)!
This was contributed by 87 donators. The top donor was ultimate_life, who contributed a whopping £1,018! Our other top supporters were Ziehgummi (£200) and Jam (£100).
You can find the full list of donors on the Jinglecrafters Tiltify. Thank you so much to everyone who donated towards this incredible cause!
Creator Events
There were lots of activities on for content creators to play:
Creator Carnage (Sun 1st Dec)
Creator Carnage kicked off Jinglecrafters with the first creator event! This minigame tournament tested players’ skills in a range of areas including PvP, parkour, PvE, and building, through a selection of minigames.
Overall it was an excellent show to get the campaign started, with the Green Golems – a team made of Scuffed_Sushi, ghosttauk, Onyxed_ and HiImCC – emerging victorious as the overall champions!
The Green Golems weren’t the only team to display an impressive performance. After the main event, all eight teams returned for a just-for-fun round of Mega Hot Potato (the usual finale round, but with everyone playing instead of just the top two teams). The Lemon Lizardfolk, a team made up of LynxyLiam, Falcaograve, Stehllar and vintageapples, came out on top!
Ice Boat Racing Invitational (Sat 7th Dec)
Next up was IBRI, the tournament ran by the Appleseed Boat Gang and Boatlabs, featuring a mixture of ice boat racing “professionals” as well as newer players.
The circuit being raced on was “Jingle Joyride”, featuring “treacherous turns over an icy lake, great views of multiple towns, and plenty of Christmas magic to accompany it all!”
The fastest individual players were Purplers in 1st place, Sloimay in 2nd, and Neocynical in 3rd.
Meanwhile, the top three teams were “Winner’s POV” in 1st (an accurate team name!), “NYOOOOOOOOOM” in 2nd, and “Red-Stoners 2.0” in 3rd.
Klyx Games (Sun 8th Dec)
There was plenty more excitement to come, with the next event being “Klyxmas” i.e. Klyx Games.
Having fought for it through a collection of minigames, taking home the crowns were the Cyan Carollers: BroWo9, ImElz, _Shibe_ and BubblestheFriend.
Biome Battle (Sun 8th Dec)
Biome Battle is a tournament where every minigame is affected by the seasons, with modifiers that dramatically change up how each game is played! For this special Jinglecrafters edition, all the games were played on “winter” mode.
The winners were the Green team: WadeBox, JackCas_, ItzIgglesPiggles, HiImCC and katevena.
Missed the event? Here’s HiImCC’s video!
Chrunchy Christmas (Fri 13th Dec / Sat 14th Dec)
Chrunchy Christmas returned for its second year, this time with two events with different rosters for double the fun! In this minigame tournament, all the creators played as elves, trying to prove themselves to Santa so that they would be chosen to help him deliver presents.
In total, 22 teams competed across the different minigames, taking on challenges including sled racing, rooftop parkour, and fireball Spleef. The event also brought brand new minigame “Mace Race”, with players blasting their way through the air as they made their way around the mountain circuit. “Don’t Wake Peepaw” was a firm returning favourite, with players sneaking through a sleeping mansion whilst trying not to wake up Peepaw or his rather large pet dogs.
The Friday winners were the Pink team: Pose1dan, Dwittyy and Melizsa. On Saturday it was the Crimson team that came out on top: CGQ, FunSquidTAG and abenzyy!
The events combined raised exactly £1000 for charity, being our highest donated creator event in the Jinglecrafters campaign.
JCGN NOVUS (Fri 13th Dec)
This proximity-chat minigame event brought lots of laughs, with the event being won by two teams: the Shamrock Sheep (a team of maskyzee, SandwichLord, lantastic, onyxed_ and WithMayX) and the Auburn Antelopes (Kelawesome, spacebr0wnies, Wolfeei, ImTwiggy and Rubyco_).
The Quiz LIVE (Sat 14th Dec)
Not only was this a Jinglecrafters special, this was also the season finale for The Quiz LIVE Season 4! Galaxushii, President Poundcake and Zombreyy competed in three rounds to test their Minecraft knowledge: 20 Question Trivia, Block Shop, and TNTrivia.
With Galaxushii’s knowledge of enchantments leading to President Poundcake’s demise, Xushii emerged as the victor!
Missed the show? You can watch the full episode below!
Community Events
Of course, the fun couldn’t just be left to the content creators, and there was also a selection of community activities to take part in!
Minearchy’s Elytra Challenge
Public server Minearchy hosted an elytra challenge over the two weeks of the campaign. Players could log in at any time and take part in this time trial – swooping through festively themed tunnels to attempt to reach the end in the fastest possible time. Even ignoring speed, the challenge proved to be tricky, with 17 players managing to come out the other end of the tunnel, with other players falling or crashing along the way.
The fastest time was by Evelyncarrot_, completing the course in an impressive time of 56 seconds and 400ms. Also claiming spots in the top 5 were Pose1dan in 2nd, Srifs_ in 3rd, Melizsa in 4th, and Quagz in 5th.
Congratulations to everyone who completed the course, and especially to Evelyncarrot_ for her incredibly nifty flying!
Jinglecraft SMP
The Jinglecraft SMP, a community server ran by WraithStation for the two weeks of the campaign, was popular – with many familiar faces returning day after day, and some very impressive bases built!
Alongside classic survival gameplay, and a range of shops and areas to explore in the Hub, the server also held a number of activities and competitions throughout its time online. Players got together to defeat the Ender Dragon in an End opening event, with JibbleJT claiming the final blow.
This wasn’t Jibble’s only victory, however, as he also won the Hide & Seek tag event. Players earned points for time spent hidden, with Hider and Seeker roles switching when anyone was successfully caught. In the hour-and-a-half-long event, Jibble remained a Hider for just under 81 minutes! There were some very impressive spots all around, with a particular highlight being multiple Seekers walking into Rudolph’s Ranch, an animal store, and walking straight out – having not spotted Xezb3th crouching behind a cow! Xezb3th came in 2nd place, hiding for just under 77 minutes in total, with third place going to JayDraws who hid for just under 72 mins.
The server had a Hall Of Fame to celebrate the achievements of players in various fields. The first and second were to do with trading – the players who earned the most Coins (with separate leaderboards for the current richest, as well as the highest earner overall ignoring any expenditure).
These podium spots were taken by the same players for both categories:
- JibbleJT with 332,635 Coins earned in total (287,820 remaining by the server end)
- ThatDarkPhoenix with 264,375 Coins total (251,365 remaining by the end)
- LordKaczuch111 with 123,830 Coins total (121,640 remaining by the end)
An additional podium was available for the players who travelled the furthest through any method. Players competing for this stat realised that they could rack up distance quickly through automated minecarts. The top podium spots were taken by:
- FunSquidTAG with 1,385 km travelled
- dolphinman_rl with 1,008 km travelled
- JibbleJT with 420 km travelled
The other Hall Of Fame podium was for the number of gingerbread eaten. Gingerbread could be purchased in a shop in the Hub, crafted using the same recipe as default Minecraft cookies, or won through the Daily Spin Wheel. The winners were:
- zerothehero5555 with 1,865 gingerbread eaten
- Sir_Stollenwyrm with 1,812 gingerbread eaten
- MinecrafterMan with 1,716 gingerbread eaten
For the first nine days of the server, some treasure hunt coords were posted on Jinglecrafters-partnered social media. Each set of coords lasted just 24 hours, with their destination being found on the daily seed – a world that changed every midnight GMT.
Unscrambling the capitalised letters reveals the word “Celebrate” – a puzzle solved by a small number of players, who each won an elytra and a shulker box full of goodies – a valuable prize, due to most of the End being inaccessible outside the world border. Well done to UnicornPonyFairy, Thewolfhearted, MinecrafterMan, SummerRejects, Bluekwyrm, Cdawg0012, FunSquidTAG, and JibbleJT, for successfully solving the puzzle!
Players also had fun trying to complete a set of missions at the Trading Post – a statue in the Hub at which spare resources could be sold. These missions included “hug a goat”, “stand on bedrock”, “play on the seesaw”, “stand on top of the Trading Post”, and “travel a marathon (42.195km) by any method”.
Whilst some challenges were easy, others required some out-of-the-box thinking. For example, to get on top of the statue, players could do the parkour – a test of communication and timing, requiring one player to activate buttons and pressure plates inside the statue, attached to pistons to reveal the parkour course on the outside of the statue for another player. Alternatively, players could use other solutions to skip the parkour altogether – with options including wind charges, elytras (for those who had won them in the treasure hunt), ender pearls, or honey lemonade (a potion purchasable in Beep’s Cafe that granted levitation)!
Another Trading Post mission that got talked about a lot was the Button Hunt. A button was hidden in the Hub, with many players spending hours searching for it. Clues were posted throughout the two weeks to help narrow down the search area:
- “I wood give you another clue, but I’m enjoying watching you all running around the Hub” (the misspelling of “wood” suggests the button is connected to trees or wood in some form)
- “What links a square, beer, or an origin… You can go back to yours.” (the solution to this riddle was “roots”)
- “You’ll find the button on the sunset side of the castle…” (i.e. west of the castle, removing around half the search area)
The button was hidden in a hole beneath a tree, just behind the Post Office. This could be reached using a trapdoor hidden amongst the tree roots. Well done to everyone who found it!
The King of Lunoria’s Festival on the Minuvix SMP
Players gathered on the modded server Minuvix SMP, to play a variety of minigames together!
Players battled it out in Snow Spleef, tried to catch reindeer in Reindeer Runaways, tried to make other players fall in Perilous Ice Skating, battled to stay at the top in King Of The Icicle, played Minigolf, duelled with crossbows in Santa’s Workshop Showdown, and raced around the track in Sleigh Race.
Press Coverage
There were two press partners covering Jingle Jam and the Jinglecrafters campaign.
Sphere News Magazine
We released a Jinglecrafters special edition of the magazine!
The articles featured in this issue were:
- Jinglecrafters: bringing the Minecraft space together to raise money for Jingle Jam
- A Festive Update for MCC Island
- Klyx: Past, Present & Future
- The Best Minigame Events: Reader’s Choice Awards
- The Rise Of Minearchy: a hidden gem in a sea of servers?
- Top 10 things to do on the Jinglecraft SMP
- Crossword Competition (now closed)
Congratulations to Happymanster for winning the crossword competition!
InsideMC’s Jingle Jam Podcast
In the InsideMC Christmas special, podcast host Orbitzz sat down with Ruthberry, a community leader for Jingle Jam. Discussion topics included Jingle Jam has changed throughout the years, how the Games Collection donation reward works, and different ways to fundraise.
Missed the show? You can listen to the podcast here!
Special Thanks
A few extra thank yous:
- To TinyCaity, for being an awesome Assistant Director and helping keep the campaign running smoothly
- To Falcaograve for making the Jinglecrafters and Jinglecraft SMP logos
CREATOR EVENT ORGANISERS
- To BitSquidd and the BB team for running Biome Battle
- To Zuite and the Chrunchy team for running Chrunchy Christmas
- To TheHappywheels1 and the TQL team for running The Quiz LIVE
- To MuddyPuddle and the Carnage team for running Creator Carnage
- To Jack Cas and the NOVUS team for running JCGN NOVUS
- To AlesandroDeMoor and the IBRI team for running IBRI
- To CreepyBrawler and the Klyx team for running Klyx Games
COMMUNITY EVENT ORGANISERS
- To Minuvix and the SMP team for running the Minuvix SMP festival
- To Jonaas13 and the Minearchy team for running the elytra challenge
- To BluSpring for being our resident tech wizard and helping fix any SMP issues that arose
- To BenTechMC, Pandastra and BluSpring for helping moderate the Jinglecraft SMP
- To TinyCaity, LeontineLacrima and Pandastra for their building work on the Jinglecraft SMP
- To VortexKingPun, Burrowbling, Futureazoo, ZIFIX, _Fulmine and moro2610 for allowing us to use their assets on the Jinglecraft SMP
PRESS PARTNERS
- To Bluekwyrm, jynxxin, LeontineLacrima and Nero Pop for their work on the Jinglecrafters Edition of the Sphere News magazine
- To insaneorbitzz and the InsideMC team for the InsideMC podcast
CREATOR PARTNERS
12 creators joined the campaign as Jinglecrafters partners. A massive thank you to the following creators for joining the fundraising efforts!
- Bubblebrooke (Twitch)
- Kelawesome (Twitch)
- Scuffed_Sushi (Twitch)
- JustDashYT (Twitch)
- Megiibyte (Twitch)
- LynxyLiam (Twitch)
- zombreyy (Twitch)
- Galaxushii (Twitch)
- ItzIgglesPiggles (Twitch)
- WithMayX (Twitch)
- thisislexy (Twitch)
- Legundo (Twitch / YouTube)
THE COMMUNITY
A massive thank you to everyone who participated in the campaign:
- to everyone who donated to the cause
- to everyone who spread the word through word of mouth, streams, videos, and socials media
- to everyone who watched the events across Twitch and YouTube
- to all the creators who played in our creator events
- to everyone who read, listened, and learnt about the campaign
- to everyone who joined and played in the community activities
This campaign wouldn’t have been possible without all of you so thank you for making Jinglecrafters as special as it has been!
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