FAQ

Why is this Page in English? Clonk is a German game!

Clonk has been a German shareware game and thus it's community has been mainly German. With the switch to the English language for the OpenClonk community, we intend to widen the community to an international level and make it possible for non-Germans to contribute to and participate in OpenClonk.

Of course, German, as well as other languages will continue to be supported in the game. Just the development and the community of OpenClonk will be in English.

Why do you start from scratch regarding the game content?

During Clonk development of the last 10 years, the game content stayed mainly about the same or was just extended by add-ons. We will now break with backward compatibility and the old game content to finally create something new. Actually, the doctrine to keep the backward compatibility was already a barrier for a very long time which simply blocked lots of good changes.

OpenClonk will be a different game than the old Clonk series, it won't be just a sequel in the fashion of previous Clonk development. The aim of OpenClonk is not to replace Clonk Rage by "making it better" while keeping everything as it was before. Our aim is to improve the real strengths of Clonk.

"You can't develop in a new direction without leaving the old ones. By just enhancing the game as it is, you will basically get the same game. You can never advance." - Clonkonaut

While improving the game we just don't want to artificially limit ourselves or our ideas by obligations of having to include certain objects. So, Clonk will still be Clonk, of course. The game was about mining, about production lines and economy, fast and fiddly melees, known for flexibility in scenario design and whatnot. In this project, we aim to improve these strengths by throwing overboard the old game content - creating space for new ideas, improving the gameplay, eliminating the 10-year-old game issues which we got all too used to, reconsider and plan production lines, ... all that stuff.

Clonk Rage on the other hand will continue to exist alongside OpenClonk as the last title of the shareware series and will continue to include all that classical and that the community has come to love. Also read this comment from MastroLindo