Lots of classic games where released in 2006, lets start the year with some outstanding games that where released at the beginning of 2006....
Mina of the Pirates...
First
in january came the shocking
news that the highly awaited game "Mina of the Pirates" was never to
be released. Creator ZeroTau moved on to new projects. He let me know of
the reasons: "It was a combination of having
worked on it too long knowing I could make something so much better after
those years, not being satisfied with the lack of variety and realizing
I am not capable of something so large on my own. But most of all, MMF
refused to ever work well if I even tried to put together half of the 300+
frames into one application. Any action took a 
few
seconds, and saving and opening the file took more than 2 minutes, sometimes
5.
In the end, some of the applications with scattered frames in them don't
even work anymore. I think it is related to the music."
ZeroTau would then go on and create Noitu
Love and the Army of Grinning Darns Earning itself 98
tumbs up and lots of praise. Dc User Odin
wrote the following glowing review about the game: In
my opinion, this is a shining example of not just the Klik community, but
indie gaming in general. While the lack of levels and repetitiveness does
this game no favors, the way the pieces fit together creating something
purely beautiful. Not since Eternal Daughter have we seen an indie game
so complete. 9/10..
Lyle in Cube Sector
Bogo47
brought us another outstanding game back in january called
Lyle in Cube Sector. Another classic game and people loved it.
Del
Duio wrote the following about the game in his review: Lyle
in Cube Sector is a fantastic NES-style game that capitalizes on FUN, FUN,
FUN! I seriously doubt anyone from The Daily Click wouldn't be able to
get past it's retro look and give this game the respect it deserves. For
this classic to get anything less than a 9 or 10 would be an insult.
I'm Ok!
Derek Yu released I'm Ok back in February. For Jack Thompsons Penny
Arcade Challenge. Where he would pay $10,000 to a charity if someone would
make a game where you would kill game developer companies - After the game
was released Thompson has told that the press that the challenge was meant
for a commercial game company. Not only did "Im Ok" win GOTW
for that week it got lots of press to.
The New SatanSam
Jay
White also released the new SatanSam
game. It was a huge success and got many highly praised comments and reviews.
Here is a piece from a review Dogzer
wrote: You have to play this game. If you are collecting all the good
daily click games, put this with the others because it's worth the disk
space. It's not perfect, so when you play it don't espect to be floored
with it's awesomeness, but if you play it expecting it to be like most
games you see here, you are in for a surprise!
The Community
on Teletext
March saw the community spilling over into the TV in the U.K where some of the games where displayed on TeleText. Dc's own admin Circy wrote it and posted it on the front page including pictures! Also the Daily click was mentioned. For anyone wondering what the heck a teletext is our very own Phredreeke wrote the answer: For the Americans, Teletext is a series of text based pages transmitted on an unused portion of an analog tv signal, or alongside a digital tv signal. You enter a page number between 100-899 on your remote, and then the tv waits for the chosen page to be broadcast, and then it's shown. Depending on the amount of pages broadcast, speed varies.
The Return of the Total Klik
We also saw the Total
Klik returning at the beginning of 2006 under the helm of Podunkian, he
managed to keep the site going into 2007. Podunkian also interviewed Hamish
when they first opened up. Hamish moved from clicking into the real shareware
gaming industry. Its still well worth a read and can be found
right
here.
The Return
of the Click-Zine (version 1)
April saw the return of the Click-zine. It would turn out that there would only be 1 update for a while there. Clickzine was created by Flava and he and the members that contributed did a fantastic job on the first issue. The team on the first issue included: Flava, Johan Hargne, Chris Street, and Lazarus. However since the current setup was not really update friendly so it was put on hold and Flava went back into background hard at work what soon would be the final "blog type" version of the clickzine but more news on that later. The first issue however (featuring an interview yours truly can still be found here.
ClickWiki
April also saw
the beginning of the ClickWiki
site. A Wiki that users could update with info on clickteam
products. According to the clickWiki team: "The
ClickWiki covers basically anything and everything a Clicker could want
to know about Clicking. The ClickWiki is independent of Clickteam, however
its ideas and articles come from you and various forums related to Clickteam
products."The ClickWiki is still being updated and also comes in
a French
and Polish version
Cave Jumper, Swarm Of Smiths finds & A Deep Forest find audience.
Something
interesting happened with the game Cave
Jumper created by Knpmaster. It actually found a publisher
after the freeware version was released. While this upset some people we
here at the dc where still happy for knpmaster for having his outstanding
game for sale.
And also lets not
forget Within
a Deep Forest created by Nicklas_N
At the time the game got reviewed by: Renkin.
He had the following to say about Within a deep forest: Simply put,
a piece of great gaming art. Not without room for improvement, but still
about as perfect as anything else I've seen here. When
the final is over (which is maybe the coolest part of the game, in almost
every aspect), it leaves you wanting more. Within a Deep Forest is easily
on my "top-ten-or-around-there" list of favorite klik games ever, along
with Lyle in Cube Sector, Eternal Daughter and a few more.
Honorable mention goes to the "Swarm Of Smiths" game released in April and created by JustinC, it was a fast quick paced action game that managed to get itself lots of downloads and positive comments.
The Summer of MMF 2!!
Ohhh what a great
summer it was. The first news of a possible mmf 2 released came in back
in June where we posted the following
news item for a possible release of mmf 2. Possible mmf 1 customers
where told not to order version 1 anymore but to hold on for version 2.
A
couple of days later we got the official word that mmf 2 would
be released on June 30th. Then of course it snowballed and the whole site
was getting hyper actively excited about mmf 2. I interviewed
Jeff Vance from clickteam for a very nice interview where he
talked about the background of clickteam.
And then on June 30th yes MMF 2 was released! Clickteams website was transformed and the mmf 2 demo was up for download. Of course we posted a huge front page news item about it. We declared June 30th MMf 2 day. Some people might even remember the huge clock we uploaded to the front page for the release of mmf 2. The picture later got changed but the big news item can still be found here. This news item got one of the most comments we got for a front page news item i can tell ya:)
26 min DC Game Making Compo! & Kings Quest Remake
While the dust
started to settle after mmf 2's big release, game making continued including
a very fun DC 26 minute compo, where some people decided how a game would
turn out if they only had 26 minuets to make it. The compilation even managed
to snag a gotw! You can still download them right
here. The Description followed: Cook a pizza. Complete
a frame of snooker with a friend. Have a shower. Watch an episode of the
Simpsons. Make four astoundingly good games... What do these all have in
common? Well all of them take 26 minutes to complete. That's right, folkles,
the boys on the #TDC channel bring you the "#TDC 26 Minutes Compo Compilation".
Also a big mention goes to the Kings Quest Remake created by Broomy in june. It won gotw and got lots of great comments and hey you got to love adventure games! And who could forget the big game Paul Jeffries was working on called Zoom Man Unfortunately his laptop got stolen and the game got lost forever.
Making a great video game huge articles!
July saw the release
of a bunch of very detailed and very well written articles on how to make
a great video game. After all was said and done 6 huge articles where written.
Going into great details of most aspects of game making. The articles where
written by: highlyflammable
Here is the introduction part of the article for your reading enjoyment: Geniuses like Shigeru Miyamoto seem to be few and far between as games are developed by people who can create massive 3D models that come out of the TV and dance in your living room – but fail to understand what makes a video game fun. I have broken this article into pieces for two reasons: One is that you don’t have to read an extensive piece all in the one hit. The second is it gives you time to digest the information and appreciate it. Some sections will overlap because often one leads to another. So in no particular order – here is the first 4 things you need to consider when making a great video game!
2 deaths in the community
Near the end of july we also learned that Darran Baker A.K.A Death Reaper X died at 22. The community was in shock since he was a popular clicker in the community and most of us knew him well. Near the end of the year we also learned that Ryan Mercer (aka Novasoft) died in November.
Time for a new Admin
In august began
the search for a new admin! Exciting
time indeed since this does not happen often around the daily
click. Folks where able to send there application on why they should be
the next new Admin. After lots and lots of applications there it was narrowed
down to only a few. Then all the admins voted and decided that Flava should
be our new
Admin. We wrote: "He has a great community spirit, from
creating the new clickzine, to working on the dc online game, writing excellent
articles and having experience in running sites he is now our new admin!
Please give him some congrats here in the comments section." His first
introduction news post soon followed.
Admin says goodbye
September was the
month where 1 of our fellow admins said goodbye. Pete Nattress said goodbye.
This is what he wrote: "Hello folks, I've been pretty busy recently
and to be honest I've just drifted away from both clicking and this site.
Which is a shame I guess, but the time to move on must come eventually,
and I had a few fun years here learning a lot both about programming and
dealing with online communities. I apologize for not logging in before
now to tell you all, but I don't think I shall be coming back in the foreseeable
future. Thanks to all you guys for running this great site; I know you
all put in more effort than I ever did and it shows in the quality of this
place. I wish you all every success in the future. So long and thanks for
all the fish! Pete " Pete we still miss ya, if you ever read this drop
us a line will ya?:) Click
here to read Pete's very first News Post on the tdc!
MMF 2 gets competition
Also in september news
got to us that Dc visitor Tigerworks had created his own company.
They where working on a new piece of software that could rival Clickteam's
MMF. Many replied to the news, but we will have to patiently wait and see
how it will turn out.
Gwerdy chat for Clickteam wins gotw!
Andrew created a
new chat client in september that was integrated with the clickteam
forums and worked perfectly, it was so good that it even won gotw!
Chris Davis releases: Spuds Quest
After many
years, months and weeks, Chris Davis finally released his classic game:Spuds
Quest Dc
visitor Pulsecode had the following to say about the game: Better
late than never! What a game! I always loved this style of game, and this
in my opinion improves in every way! Little things like getting stunned
by falling too far or being able to grab and pull up on slightly higher
platforms to the wonderful music mixing between areas really add to it!
Well, for me anyway! :^D It's like a proper updated Dizzy!! Wonders
will never cease! Chris D, you are a saint (or at the very least some form
of god ;^p )
The Clickzine is back!
At the beginning
of November and after lots of work Flava announced
the return of the ClickZine. This time in blog format featuring reviews
and previews. And you know what? It worked out perfectly. And is still
up and running today at clickzine.net
Teh Forum Game
November was
also the month that brought us Teh
Forum game created by Jonathan Smeby. Jonathan always famous
for his unique style got lots of positive comments on this one. Jonathan
was quoted saying: "Yeh I sorta wanted it to be
not hard, cause mainly I wanted people to see this idea of making levels
based on forums and everyone's different levels. Some were harder before
but usually frustratingly hard."
TDC Christmas Compo 2006!
Indeed it was the time for celibrations and The Christmas Compo 2006! setup this year by Admin Shab. The compo got its own page on the site and very cool prices where to be won. At the time of writing the winner was still unknown.
Klik-Me: Last Admin say's goodbye
If you have
been following the timeline or if you just remember Klik-Me has been a
community site that's been around for a while unfortunately 2006 year was
the year where its last updating member Jimbob said goodbye. His last news
post contained the following words: " I really
don't have time for this. It's not really helping anybody, it's not really
going anywhere, and time is just being wasted when I could be doing better
things. I'm going to be traveling for the next three months with variable
online time so I guess there's no point dragging it on any further. I'm
not leaving the community, in fact, if you want to chat just add me on
MSN (jimbobriley) and I probably will (again, if I'm actually online).
I'm still making and designing games and playing them and probably won't
ever stop. Hope you've at least found any of the news articles useful or
interesting as at least I know some of you bothered enough to comment.
Well cheers."
AGwaK2: Darkside Adventures
In november the
first mmf 2 games started to come in and Bernie exploded his game on the
community with AGwaK2:
Darkside Adventures a new platform game in the style of the mario
games. A real winner of a game and made with mmf 2. Fellow classic game
creator ZeroTau replied to: "The game is great.
A masterpiece from a klik-perspective. And wasting stars isn't actually
a problem, because whenever you NEED stars you can always get them. And
Bernie, don't tone down any language, it's what gives the game its feel!
Leave everything as-is, shnook-ums."
And
on december first the polish click e-zine called slimaczek,
turned 1 year old, they are now up to number 9. Not only is it just a polish
news site they even have downloads and a forum. Pretty good for the polish
click community there, hopefully they will have many more issues to come.
Also not to forgot another international community website called ClickMag
If you know the French language its well worth checking out.
And that concludes our TimeLine for 2006. I hope you enjoyed it,
what a great year it has been. With so many news events and classic games
being released i wonder if 2007 could ever top it, we will find out next
year.. Until Then.. Happy New Year!