Clonk
By: Guest Reviewer
On: June 23rd, 2008
[Guest review by MisterX]
Has Clonk really never been featured on TIGSource? It’s a German indie game series (with English language support) that’s probably a lot less known worldwide than it is here, in Germany. But I’m not exaggerating when I say that they’re some of the very best games I know – and I’m not only talking about indie games. It’s quite a long-running series, with the first Clonk being released in 1994. Nine titles onwards there is “Clonk Rage”, the latest game. Following its release, the largely identical predecessor, Clonk Endeavour, has been released for free, though its online component has been stripped from it.
So if it really is unknown around here, I’ll try to summarize the game a bit. Basically, Clonk is an extensive 2D action-adventure-strategy platformer. Usually you control a group of the Clonks, using them to build up a settlement. For the building process you need resources, which you can get by digging into the ground. There you can dig for coal, pump up oil, or blow up veins of ore and gold. While gold is the common currency in the game, you also need energy – coal is used to fire up furnaces, which melt ore to metal. And windmills are used to power elevators which will let you mine more professionally.
At least, that’s the most common scenario. Actually that’s just a tiny bit of what Clonk offers in terms of variety, but summing it all up is practically impossible. Other popular scenarios are the middle age, where huge castles are built and knights fight hand-to-hand or on horseback, and the Western, where small towns are built and cowboys shoot each other. There are also several flavors of foreign worlds, like the arctic, a deep jungle… you name it.
There’s an uncountable amount of more stuff due to Clonk’s modability. For at least 10 years now there’s been a huge community of people who have created all sorts of stuff. It ranges from level mods that use pre-made content, or scripted adventures (for example, there is a neat Diablo-esque level that includes questing and leveling up), to completely original scenarios, like a cool sci-fi pack that includes armored troops with machine guns, hoverbikes, and huge complexes full of alien scum. I hope that helps explain why it’s so hard to just define Clonk.
Technically, the series has come quite far. While it featured cute, but crude, hand-drawn 2D pixel art in the past, the game now features a 3D look that isn’t any less charming. Probably most interesting though is the destructibility of the terrain, which reminds of Cortex Command, and the “fluid” physics. The water in the game is pretty dynamic, making rain a lethal foe as it loves to flood your mine shafts. The only thing that hasn’t really changed is the quite archaic midi music. For me that’s simply added nostalgia, but it might be annoying for new players (F1 disables music!).
And to briefly cover one of Clonk’s most important aspects: there is multiplayer. All kinds of it. You can play in split-screen with up to 4 players sharing a keyboard, but you can also plug in as many gamepads as you’d like. There’s also internet-play, which works mighty fine without especially much lag. And how you play is entirely up to you: You may want to play a small “Melee”, which is a kind of deathmatch, or you may build up huge colonies with walls and other defenses to have really big battles. Or you can just play a level cooperatively to build up a huge colony with a friend… or twelve.
Ouf, that’s become quite a wall of text already and yet it’s lacking any kind of structure and completeness. And let me make this clear: Clonk is not an especially complex game that takes years to get into or anything. Over the years it has become very accessible, most notably offering various control schemes.
Like I said, Clonk Endeavour, the second-to-last game in the series, is freeware and very similiar to the most recent release. Clonk Rage, the latest title, is shareware and can be bought for roughly 23$ (or, more precisely, 15€).
Hit the jump for a trailer of Clonk Rage!
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Robert Jones
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