Clonk, fun and addictive

Quite a few years ago (I think 6 or so) I used to play a nice sort of strategy game called Clonk. I don’t know why I stopped playing it, but it just happened. I also forgot the name of the game… until I ran into it on a freeware site just a week ago!

New versions have been released since the time when I first played it, but the concept is still the same. The game is 2D and viewed from the side. The basic idea of the game is to build, mine and survive. As a player, you are in control of one or several small humanoid creatures… Clonks. They can dig, build, chop wood and do a whole range of other things. Mining is one of the most fun things (which is good, because it needs to be done often), because you get to dig a whole tunnel network underground. Survival is an important aspect of the game. The environment is never really friendly; it can rain, it can snow, it can freeze, there can be volcanic eruptions and so on. For example, while mining, you don’t want your mine to be flooded because of the rain.

Actually, you should see it for yourself. The old release is now free of charge (a registration key is provided). The new releases are shareware, but there are still many features available. You can use these versions on Windows. If you are using Linux, please read on.

Now on Linux!

The latest version of Clonk (currently a Beta release) has introduced a couple of gameplay improvements. The most significant improvement, however, has nothing to do with gameplay: the game is available for Linux!

I have just installed this release on my Ubuntu system and I must say that it works very well. It’s great to see that the developers of a less well-known game like Clonk are introducing their game to the Linux platform (they also ported it to Mac OS, by the way, great work!).

So, that is another addictive game to add to the Linux games list. How about getting it installed?

Basic installation guide (Linux)

Clonk is not completely open source (yet) and it has been released for Linux only recently. Obviously, it is probably not in your distribution’s package repository. Therefore we need to install it the unofficial way.

First of all, get the files for Clonk Rage.

Now make sure you have the following things installed on your system:

• SDL (Clonk requires SDL_mixer, you might have this installed already if you have more games on Linux)
• Timidity
• GTK+ >=2.8
• libstdc++6

If you don’t have these, the game might not work or just crash, so beware. You can probably find the packages you need by searching with your package manager.

Extract the contents of the previously downloaded archive to any folder you like (I just dumped everything in a folder in my home directory). You’ll probably want to make sure you have read and write permissions on whatever directory you choose, as to prevent privilege issues (if these might exist). Feel free to extract anywhere you like, though.

Now run the install.sh script which was included in the archive (run it from the directory where it was extracted). It creates a few files, including a (local) desktop entry. The Clonk Rage icon will now show up in your applications menu. I had a little problem with that, though, because it would not launch that way. I can start the game properly by executing the executable file from the installation directory, though.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy this game as much as I do. Consider buying the game if you play it often; it’s a nice reward for the developers who are spending time to port this great game.

By the way, I might try to make a Debian package for Clonk if some of you think this game is Linux-worthy.