Clonk Endeavour

[Drasir-Vel]

If you know Clonk Planet, you sort of know Clonk Endeavour. It was formerly the version you had to pay for, but now that the new newest - Clonk Rage is fully developed, they have released Clonk Endeavour as freeware also.

A thing i see as a significant improvement, is that if you fall in the water you're not as completely stuck as in previus version. Just double tap the up key to jump from the water.

I particularly like the freedom in this game. You have the possibility to dig caves, and tunnels underground, as much as you want.

Clonk site: Clonk
Clonk Endeavour site: Clonk Endeavour

[Chroelle]

This plays a lot like Clonk Planet unsurprising, but although it has many more options and more freedom it still falls into the same pits, and lacks any improvement in pathfinding. The clonks couldn't figure out how to get over a boulder if it wasn't for your clicking every 3 seconds to set them on track. If this was made better I was going way higher in my oppinion on it.

[Drasir-Vel]

That's the reason i don't use the mouse on difficult places, but the keyboard. Heck, that's the reason i always use the keyboard.

[eMTe]

My first impression with tutorial is that controls are not the strongest point of Clonk. "Not the strongest" is euphemistic. Looks like we agree on this, guys.

[Drasir-Vel]

The controls are rather unintuitive and something you have to get used to. So the learning curve is steep. But when you've learned it, it is possible to have great fun with this game because of the many possibilities. I've had many enjoyable hours because of the freedom in it, in building up an underground base, and work to improve your situation and such. It's a bit like Stranded 2 in 2D. And when you've learned the controls, it's not necessary to use the mouse at all.
But i can understand why some don't like it. mainly because of the controls. I've bought Clonk Rage, and there you have the possibility to use classical "jump 'n' run" controls, e.g you move only when the key is pressed down and so on.

[eMTe]

Ive been playing Clonk extensively for 2 days and my objection is not unituitiveness of controls or their complexity - anyway, it's an issue of every management game: you must learn controls. Clonk's two problems are (1) character movement which is horrible and you hardly can control how he behaves (2) getting stuck in most unexpected time and place. This game has lots of possibilities and can be fun at times, but no matter whether you play it for half an hour or a week you still fight with controls, not with scenario challenges.

[Drasir-Vel]

Yeah, that about getting stuck, i know all too well. For example when mining granite, and it gets brittled so there are some particles left you can hardly see, if you jump on it, you can risk being left hanging somewhere in the air. And when you want to get out of the water, you can't because the ground is too high.

[eMTe]

Actually I plan to make a list of situations when you can get stuck in Clonk. You can dig hole too deep to get out, you can dig it in such a way that you wont get out, because trying to jump out youll be banging the ceiling with your head, with flint you can break the ground under elevator so that youll be stuck under it, you can park your balloon hitched to the side of floating island so that you wont be able to jump into it and fall to death, you can park it on an object next to edge of the screen and since balloons fly only in one direction and you cannot move one when its on the edge the object under it will be stuck forever. Probably good number of possibilities still ahead me. I got used to controls already and started to handle clonks intuitively, but after a couple of minutes of fun I get stuck again. I can live with it on no-enemies maps, but when things get hot its hard to navigate clonks with pixel accuracy.

[Drasir-Vel]

I also have these problems from time to time. But after playing for some time, you learn how to avoid them (mostly). But sometimes something happens you couldn't foresee. Then it's a good idea to save often.
It's not a very user friendly game. Most new players exit the level after a few minutes because they ended up having digged down to to a place where they couldn't get up (i, for one, did when i started).

[eMTe]

Good that I MUST have a little patience.