On November 28, 2021, Cinder was announced in Feral’s official Discord server, sparking outrage across Feralians. Many of them grew up playing Animal Jam, which involved protecting the environment. Cinder, on the other hand, requires an NFT avatar to play, and NFTs are harmful to the environment.
There was even more controversy when Cinder was released. On February 18, 2022, when Cinder released, Feral was suddenly shut down and replaced with Cinder. Someone pointed out this was against WildWorks’ TOS, so WildWorks briefly reopened Feral on March 27 to give them one more day to say goodbye… except they only gave the players 3 hours and turned off the chat.
On February 8, 2023, Cinder’s servers and website suddenly shut down with no warning or announcement, Cinder Studios was unexpectedly disbanded, and the official Discord server was later set to read-only.
Examples:
- Allegedly Free Game: Inverted. Cinder required players to have an NFT avatar to play, which usually costed money, but multiple players got avatars for free via giveaways.
- Amazing Technicolor Wildlife: The Cinder Fae and Imps come in various different colour schemes.
- The Artifact: Cinder reused many assets from Feral. For example, the first avatar available was the Fae, the last avatar in Feral, and the first location in Cinder was Trader’s Port, which was Feral’s Shattered Bay, which used to be called Trader’s Port.
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Broken Aesop: Animal Jam’s Jamaa Journal included the fact that cryptocurrency uses up a lot of energy and therefore generates massive amounts of pollution. Then WildWorks went and made this cryptocurrency game. - Fauns and Satyrs: Fauns were planned to be added to the game.
- Mythology Gag: The city of Trader's Port is a ported-over version of Shattered Bay from Feral. "Trader's Port" is actually the original name of Shattered Bay, and was changed early in beta testing for Fer.al
- Palmtree Panic: The first available location is the beachside city Trader’s Port, a Port Town with crystal-clear water surrounded by rocky cliffs.
