Avatars

Below is a list of avatars that a user with a Nitrome account is given and can earn. Avatars allow a user to customize his/her profile.

Overview
With the announcing of Accounts, Nitrome planned on having an avatar based system. This system allows for the user of an account to use an image of a Nitrome character as their avatar, but does not allow them to use an image they created him/herself, likely because how this type of user generated content is mostly offensive, as was the case with Hot Air Balloon Maker custom balloons.

To get around this, pre-made avatars were created. The user of an account is given a set amount of avatars upon creating their account, and can get more by performing finding hidden presents around Nitrome's site, and in their games.

Pink presents with gold ribbons were hidden around Nitrome's site, and in their games. Players could obtain them by clicking on them or touching them with their game character. When a present was taken, a message saying "New avatar unlocked!" would appear at the top of the site's screen. The present would then appear in its spot on the user's avatar page. The user could then go to their avatar page and click on the present to open it, revealing the newly-unlocked avatar.

During the month of December 2013, Nitrome had a special avatar event. This event lasted from the first of December to the twenty-fifth, Christmas. Every day, a new avatar challenge was shown on the special Christmas avatars page. If the player then unlocked the avatar and went to the avatar page, a chocolate engraved with a present would be shown over the avatar unlocked. Once clicked, an eating animation would be shown, uncovering the unlocked avatar by eating away at the chocolate.

Free avatars
Following avatars are given when a user registers a Nitrome account.

Unlockable avatars
Some avatars are given after the player has completed a certain task. If the avatar is not unlocked, then a hint will show on the locked avatar for the player to figure it out.

Unreleased avatars
These avatars have currently not been released and are completely unobtainable as usable avatars. The only proof the avatars exist is that they have been uploaded to Nitrome.com, and as such, are only viewable only when the avatar's image URL is gone to.

Unused avatars
Avatars in this section were uploaded to Nitrome.com with the intent of being used, but at a certain point, Nitrome decided not to use them.

Cuboy avatar
This avatar was uploaded on July 12th 2013 with the first batch of avatars, and was also present in an image advertising accounts. It was never made accessible as a usable avatar, however, as two other avatars uploaded at the same time and not used yet, it was assumed these avatars would eventually be used.

On December 1st 2013, Nitrome stated that this Cuboy avatar would never be used as it was decided that Cuboy would represent Nitrome.

Christmas 2013
Nitrome first hinted at the Christmas Avatar event on November 22nd, referring to it as a "We have a few other top secret things ... the first one should be revealed on the 1st of December!" It was later mentioned again on November 29th when Nitrome made a blog post about the upcoming event, and released a blurry picture of it. On December 30th, Nitrome released the Christmas Advent Calendar, along with a blog post about it.

The Christmas Avatar Calendar is a virtual Advent Calendar that allows players to hunt for a new avatar that is released each day. The calendar (like all advent calendars) went from the first of December to the 25th (Christmas), and on each of those days a new avatar and clue would be released. Each square on the avatar calendar had the number of the day on it. Once the day came, the square would change to an image of a lock, and hovering the mouse over the image would show the hint to finding the avatar. Once the avatar was found and obtained, the locked square changes to a chocolate with a present on it. Clicking on this chocolate will cause an animation to play of it being eaten away, revealing the avatar.

After the first week of the calendar took place, Nitrome created a blog post about how pleased they were the outcome of the event so far.

July 12th 2013
Avatars 1-40 were released.

September 11th 2013
On September 6th 2013, Nitrome announced in their Nitrome update that they would soon be releasing new avatars to find and collect the coming week (September 9th-September 13th being the week they would be released). Avatars 41-48 were released on September 11th 2013.

October 16th 2013
Avatars 49-57 are released to accompany the release of Test Subject Arena 2.

December 1st 2013
Started on December first up until December twenty-fifth (Christmas), Nitrome provided a new avatar challenge every day.

December 5th 2013
5 Avatars were released to accompany the release of Cheese Dreams: New Moon.

Reverting back to no avatar
When changing an avatar, the user of the account clicks a URL to change their avatar to another one, this URL being http://www.nitrome.com/profile/avatar/index.php?a_id=, with after the "=" sign being a two digit number.

Placing after this equal sign in the address any letters, symbols, the numbers one, three, eight, thirteen, or any number above 54, then going to this URL twice, will cause the player's profile avatar to become completely white, their avatar when looking at their profile page to be the avatar that they get when they have just created their account, and all the comments they have made on the comment sections of game pages, these comment will disappear.

Going back to a regular avatar will cause their comments to reappear.

Unreleased obtain methods
During the time of the Christmas advent calendar, some methods of obtaining an avatar were publicly made available before the respective avatar was made available.

Hot Air Jr
The cat and owl avatar was unlockable before it was released, to pre-unlock it, the player had to push Hot Air Jr into the gap in the ceiling at the end of level 11. Once this was done, a notification would pop up saying that the player has unlocked an avatar, despite the fact there is nothing there. When the avatar was released, it would already be in the player's inventory.

Bad Ice Cream 2
There is a glitch where the player can find, but not obtain, an avatar gift from level 13, even though the avatar has not been released yet. It is not known if this avatar will be released in the future.

Lockehorn
The avatar of day 15 was unlockable before it was released. It could be found from any multiplayer stage by moving ice blocks and making them to collide into walls. The present should drop down from the sky. If players collected the present, they do not need to do a task for day 15.