Clans

Clans
N/A
Metacritic
57
Steam
38.273
xDR
Our rating is calculated based on the reviews and popularity of the game.
Price
$0.50
Release date
13 March 2014
Developers
Publishers
Steam reviews score
Total
57 (109 votes)

Destroy the Demon and locate the lost Crown of Peace!

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Clans system requirements

Minimum:

  • OS: Windows 95/98
  • Processor: Pentium 120
  • Memory: 32 MB RAM
  • Graphics: Direct compatible SVGA video card
  • DirectX: Version 6.0
  • Storage: 250 MB available space
  • Sound Card: Direct X compatible sound card

Recommended:

Recommended requirements are not yet specified.
Updated
App type
Steam APP ID
281430
Platforms
Windows PC
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GiantMech
GiantMech

Don't buy this if you are expecting a Diablo clone. Like some others have pointed out this is much more similar to a point and click puzzle game. The combat is entirely based on save scumming and there are no levels or XP. There is also really little gained from killing enemies aside from very rare loot drops. If you can accept that then i'ts worth the few dollars they are charging.

IsaacAsimov
IsaacAsimov

Extremely dated RPG that is closer to a point and click puzzle game than it is to a Diablo-clone. The disorienting map created by linking together small screens is frustratingly old. Interesting choice to not fix the music as part of the re-release...

Rycharde
Rycharde

First, I worked for Origin, developer of Ultima and Wing Commander series, plus more, in the early to mid-90's. Love old-school games, so the age of this game, 1999, is not relevent. :f2_happy:

I was a beta-tester on several old-school games, having an eye for such games. I also did tech and hint support. With the responsibilities of hint support, I played many of the earlier, early to mid-80's, games which most, if not all, other fellow employees had no experience. Some of those earlier games kinda bit it as far as being good games.

I have played MANY games from other companies. Many were good to great, quite a few were awful. I have played some of those not-so-good games seeing that they were just that after playing for a short span of time. Continuing to play some of those, I backed up my initial impressions.

As far as what I had seen of this game was extreme small grids for the character to traverse. There are limited number of grids to a location, and approx 1/2 in a "random" pattern giving the impression of a large area.

And, using the age of this game, 1999, this is pitiful when compared to other games definitely from that time period and earlier. Just to put a comple games up for inspection: Ultima VI (1990), VII (1992-3), and VIII (1994) -- each with completely separate game-engines; Baldur Gate I (1998) and II (2000) -- same game-engine; the two Crusader non-FPS shooter-games (1995-6) -- same engine; more I could look up if I was so inclined.

The games listed above were either top-down (U6) or isometric (the remainder) game-engines. None of these games relied on grids similar to what Clans used. Yes, Baldur Gate games used seperate areas but in a more playable format.

Combat is OKAAAY, but should be better, again looking at the age of the game. One problem with combat, the availability of health potions.

If you want further reasons why I dislike this game for your edification, ask. :happycthulhu:

kaay
kaay

Very dated but surprisingly good.
Dont be fooled by the description, this game has nothing in common with Diablo.
You move by mouse clicking. The map is divided in small isometric areas (rooms) and you move from one to another by clicking on the red arrows at the edge of each area.
The rooms/areas can contain enemy mobs, treasure, npcs...or nothing at all.
These areas form a sort of maze that you have to explore in order to find treasure, key items....or a fast death.
There are puzzles that have to be solved in order to advance, and these puzzles are quite nice, a little bit in the style of point and click adventures.
Surprisingly the graphics look nice because of the decent filter (scanlines), something that is rare nowadays when it comes to re-releases of old games.
The game is very tough at least in the begining, but you can save anytime.
It was an odd game when it was released 15 years ago and its an odd one now, you have to burn the music from the game folder on a CD and have that CD inserted for the game to use the music. Quite a pain by today's standards, but the neat gadget is that you can use any music Cd and the game will use the music from it.
This game is not bad at all especially for the price. If you can look past the antiquated controls and interface and past the harsh difficulty level, you have a nice old-style rpg with a rather unique concept.
Matter of taste of course, but i was pleasantly surprised by this title.

Crabby Appleton
Crabby Appleton

Based on what I've played so far, I can honestly say that this game is NOTHING like Diablo. It IS a clunky old hack and slash with a VERY HEAVY dose of "logic" puzzles. Diablo was neither clunky nor Old (for it's time) and had very little to do with puzzles.
This has TONS of little zones many of which are empty and whose only purpose seems to be to confuse you about where you are. (The "map" feature solves that.) Some things are EASY to figure out (like crossing the stream) others (like opening the gate with barrels) are a PIA.
If you LIKE puzzles, get it. If you don't... don't waste your money because you WILL have to solve some tough ones to move on. There are NO "work-arounds.". (Thankfully it is VERY cheap, so it is only a minor rip-off if you don't.)

Kris
Kris

A fun little diversion. It's more reminiscent of 8-bit era maze games than diablo really, with no XPs and nearly no equipment upgrades. Don't buy it if you have no patience for distinctly old-fashioned game design though!

Tonkinese
Tonkinese

It is a nice but not too long of a game. In the style of "Druids". Make sure you save often and remember you have a finite inventory selection. There are plenty of fun puzzles and some good action and lots of reloading.

Good Luck destroying the demon best use the +5 Axe it is the best.

MrPenfold666
MrPenfold666

Clans is an old school hack and slash action game similar to Diablo. After playing for a while i managed to complie a list of good and bad points which i shall list, i shall point out the flaws and leave the good bits to the end to leave this review on a happier note;

Their doesn't seem to be any stratergy involved. There are three warrior classes and the "elf" class which is the wizard. and while i enjoy the idea of different fighting styles, there is the Warrior, the Barbarian and the dwarf, which is less cliche more boring when selecting a character, people who prefere long range only have one class and that is the elf class.

The lack of items. The game seems to try and make it out that there is challenge when really its just unfair, you get two lives and they go quickly as you get surrounded by more and more enemies, i got down to about half health when i encontered a mini boss. I thought he was some form of boss as he was hiding behind the statue so he got the first hit, and he did the most damage out of all the other monsters I fought, this lead to my death and i respawned and killed him, this rbought be down to four hit points left and he dropped a potion which brought me up to 11, i was thent asked to clear out a cottage (so my first real quest) where i found myself swarmed with no healing of any kind and i died again losing my last life and going back to the main menu.

The controls. The controls for moving are straight forward but attacking is the right mouse button which is odd and i was not told this so i had taken a few hits before i figured it out, there are interactable items within the game but there is little to no clue apart from a slight light up of the item. weapons do not have any sort of indication as to whats better or what it requires, there is an axe for example which requires two hands, i didnt know this untill i saw that i didn't have my sheild equipped anymore. There are also items in the game world that dont seem to have any use, left clicking (which is used for moving and item management) does nothing and the right mouse button swings your weapon.

the writing: this is a minor point but the spelling and wording could use some work it isnt bad but it doesnt scream "in your face bioware"

Now onto the good points which im pleased to say, what this game does well it does -very- well so lets get started:

Sound. The music and sound effects are brilliant and you get the right atmosphere that some games simply cannot achieve.

Introduction. the opening introduction is fully voiced (and voiced quite well i will add) and gives a very retro feel which made me feel quite excited to play this game.

Function. The game downlaoded quickly, had no problems getting it to run, and it ran smoothly with no obvious bugs or glitches, it seems this was a main focus of their time and it shows.

so i have listed three bad points (not counting the spelling and writing becuase what do you expect from a hack and slash diablo clone?") and three good points so its time to give my final verdict.....

I would -not- recommend this game on its own merits.

ers :D
ers :D

Its an ok game for its time. Its playable, but it is fairly creepy. Normally I would not buy something like this, but heck. It was 44 cents.

Vi
Vi

"You enter a new kind of hell."

Clans is a slightly bland name, isn’t it? Maybe that’s why it was called Satanica in Germany. Satanica, that’s more like it.
It came out during a time where everyone was waiting for Diablo II and every game that shared similar traits was quickly dismissed as a clone. Clans got slaughtered by the press, they hated the non-scrolling, square rooms with clearly marked exits and the static, pre-rendered graphics.

Well. I love them to death. All these wonderful shades of brown, grey and black. Almost every room/bit uniquely rendered. A sense of total bleakness without bragging about it. And then puzzles, like, proper puzzles that you would find in classic point-and-click adventure games. Kicking a door in with an axe, setting spellbooks on fire in a chimney to destroy them.
I'm playing the game with some kind of weak elf character, something I normally don’t do, as I prefer babarians or warriors, as they don’t die so easily.
I really recommend the elf class, it ramps up the difficulty and changes the gameplay, because you really don’t have a lot of HP, and potions are rare, so suddenly every health point counts.
Well, you quicksave, enter a new room and a bunch of enemies start to attack you, which often means instant death or unacceptable HP loss - so you quickly reload, which only takes a fraction of seconds and try again, which creates nice “I can do this better!”-loops reminding me of Hotline Miami.
In Diablo II, when I lost HP, I never really knew why, and it didn’t matter, as you could heal yourself without problems.

Next thing: Clans doesn’t give you experience points for killing enemies. I partly think this is because the developer didn’t have the funds to properly balance and test an EXP system. But on the other hand, it is SO bold to take away from players what they desire the most: watching numbers grow.
Instead, you level up by finding items, and avoiding fights (via teleporters) is often encouraged. Also, enemies often start fighting each other, which always gives games a sense of realism…

(All of this makes me also want to play the next game they did, it’s called Dragonfire - The Well of Souls and contains the playable character class DUCK. Also, you set out to fight an evil princess. What’s not to love? Needless to say, that one got killed by the gaming press, too.)

Never3ndr
Never3ndr

This game appears to be a Diablo clone...it is more like a Diablo joke...

Except you won't be the one laughing.

BrokenMonkey
BrokenMonkey

Awful purchase at .74 cents. Unless you have an old computer with windows 95/98, then there's no reason to ever fool around with it because it will not run at all. Minimum requirements my ass. I spent way too much time trying to configure this game to run but nothing worked. Don't even bother scouring the discussions around getting this game to work, because even if you do get it to work, I hear it's nothing but buggy. Save those three quarters for a nice piece of gum.

Monsieur-Owly
Monsieur-Owly

If Diablo had STD it would turn out as Clans, a disease that no experienced player can beat

Rating:
3.0

Len
Len

It's a mediocre Diablo clone. The combat isn't very fun and there is literally no music.

I bought two copies when it was 19 cents so I gave one to my friend as a joke. He never played it.

monky
monky

This game is immensely charming, it definitely isn't the most immersive RPG out there. There isn't much variety in loot, if you happen to get loot, and there is no experience or leveling up system. You go room to room, facing a few monsters every couple of rooms. This might sound terrible, but to me, it's actually great. It simplifies the gameplay to a more casual level, one where you don't have to spend 30 minutes picking weapons or armor and can immediately explore. The graphics can be a bit bleak or bland, but every room is uniquely rendered which can make you really appreciate the work that was put in. The monsters can definitely be challenging at times, but the dialogue and general gameplay is awesome in my opinion. In a half-serious way, atleast. If you're looking for a serious game where you can dive into a deep and intense storyline, look elsewhere. But if a fun little hack-n-slash with cheesy dialogue that can be played for 15 minutes at a time sounds like your cup of tea, then I suggest investing in the game. 6/10

0xBADC0FFEE
0xBADC0FFEE

Ok, let's start with the answer you are probably searching for: It's nothing like Diablo, the most similar game I can think of is the good old "The Immortal" on MS-Dos\NES\Megadrive or maybe Cadaver by The Bitmap Brothers.
Forget big randomly generated dungeons, you have predesigned places that are smaller but definitely less grindy than your average hack'n'slash.
So if you take that in consideration, Clans is actually pretty good! A nice dungeon crawler with pre-rendere graphics and divided in rooms.
Every item in the levels is placed there by design, every room is unique, puzzles aren't difficult but some are not obvious either, it plays more like a combat heavy adventure game.
Characters have a lot of funny one-liners, there are many puzzles even if at the moment are all really simple to solve and... *drumrolls*
You can play it in co-op and it works flawlessy!

One player needs to host, the others can join via ip. The lan option doesn't seem to work but you can play locally if you choose "internet" and use your lan ip address. You can chat with T key or give orders like "go north" etc using the cursor keys.
There is also a pdf manual included with the game (from your steam library page select Clans then click "manual"), read it for some useful hints and funny bits.

Combat is quite bad, playing with the elf you'll find yourself to spam magic and then run the f*ck away from enemies while mana recharges, going in silly circles around them. But I really cannot say i'm not having fun, it's just very old school. Would have been a very great game with a more elaborated combat system.

PS The forest at the beginning is enchanted, that's why the map doesn't work there, it repeats endlessy if you don't take the right path, it's not a bug ;)

superzombieplaytupus
superzombieplaytupus

So what is there to say about "Clans"?

Pretty good, aged like cheese, but still minorly playable, i haven'nt beat this game yet, but i've played it more than any Assassian Creed games, and I do plan on some night, cracking open a beer and raging hard through this game. There are some things I like, 1, its an almost isometric game, which is something I love, thanks fallout. Also this game falls under that, "so bad its good". The combat is very simple, pick fighter everytime, the voice acting is laughable, actually this game made me laugh quite a bit, defenitly one of the best games i bought for less than 30 cents. If you want some real fun, try and convince a friend to purchase this game, and play it multiplayer. Im not gonna rate it, cause it isn't one of those games.

Nodachi
Nodachi

This game has no Options menu, no real story, bad graphics and overall appalling visual Design. But when on a sale its good for a laugh.

Check out my Look at the game on youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4ihVEoDBNY

Ttam Noslot
Ttam Noslot

Kind of hard to review when I could not get the game to finish launching. It started with the Audio prompt which I said cancel to and then CRASH!

Oh well, one less game for me to try and play.

Vorshin
Vorshin

Does not run, Black Screen at start-up, sound in background. Got in touch with support, asked me to send a DXdiag report, heard nothing since.
Am not the only person havign this issue. Cannot recommend a broken game on current computer systems or even computers systems that are upto 2yrs old (like mine is). Game probably runs on systems older like 3yrs or more but not on systems that are around thesedays.

m0zone
m0zone

its old school point click rpg . i had lots of fun playing daughter has it on her account also.
if your computer wont do 640x480 it wont run for you this isnt call of duty lol

NoSlipRubberGrip
NoSlipRubberGrip

this game is boring. theres not much to it. dont buy it and get hyped about it. its just a game you spend you last little bit of steam credti on because it seemed good.

crashpoum
crashpoum

Game is bad. Bad written gameplay with poor story! Got bored of it on the first 6 minutes. Totally not recommended! 1/10

ionpies
ionpies

My monitor resolution was too high to run it.

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Kingaroo
Kingaroo

I know that its stupid to play less than half an hour of a game and then write a review saying it sucks, but this game sucks

Skull Lady Malady
Skull Lady Malady

This game is...kinda awful. I feel I gave it a fair shot - some old games take some getting used to - but it just didn't grow on me.

When you start the game, there's a message that asks you to put in the game CD. Seeing as how this is a digital copy, that is not possible to do, so you're just kind've left without music. While it doesn't bother me personally as the music is probably awful, this may be a major turn-off for other players and doesn't start the "epic adventure" out very well.

The enviroment is made up of static rooms - large red arrows indicate where the next rooms are. You can activate a map to see all of the rooms and areas you may not have explored yet, but it pretty much covers the screen, and I didn't find any way to change the opacity, size or location of the map. While I'm fine with doing things the old fashioned way and just remembering what rooms are important, it's really inconvenient, and other games in the genre have executed a simple map function much better than this.

The art isn't bad, but it is extremely similar to....well, Diablo. It's mediocre, doesn't stand out in the genre.

The one-liners....mein gott. They're cheesey and annoying. The story is thin, unimaginative.

The loot is what I'd call few and far between. You can walk into a room, fight 5 skeletons guarding a chest, and open the chest to find nothing inside. You sometimes run into an old woman that gives you mana/health pots and a wizard (who you save at the very beginning) that hands you some special item once in a blue moon.

There's no skill set or any real system for character progression. You can rarely get better armor, weapons, and some consumables that give you stats. Because this system is rather insufficient, repeatedly getting empty rooms full of enemies doesn't get easier. I'm not saying we should get rid of challenging fights, but the difficulty curve is a little steep.

If they intended this to be a semi-successful knock-off to fill in the space between Diablo and Diablo II, it failed. There are other games in this genre that have aged better - don't spend your money on this one.

HexeR
HexeR

This game...This "thing" is something that boggles my mind. Is it a rogue-like? Is it a turn-based strategy game? Is it an RPG? What the hell is it trying to do? The gameplay is diablo-esque but less fun and the graphics are....strange, to say the least.

This is a game from an era that belongs in the era it was made in.

OVERALL SCORE

Not recommended

REPLAY VALUE

Above-average

Wungle
Wungle

I didn't get very far because my windows 10 couldn't translate everything completely. I could move around, but the map wouldn't load and it was hit or miss whether a click would work the way it was supposed to.

However I played enough to get the feeling that this game has a heart. A good game in its time (1999 - Strategy First Inc.) -- Diabloesque/RPG/real time combat Baldur Gate, but probably with only one person in your party. At some point I might try tweaking things to make it translate better.

Strange Payne
Strange Payne

Clans Review - Raymond KT

Clans is a Diablo style dungeon crawling hack and slash game. The game was originally released in 1999 and it has actually gotten worse since then. The game starts with an error message about needing to insert an imaginary game CD and if you don't put a music CD in, the game will have no background music of any kind. Based on what I've played so far, I can honestly say that this game is NOTHING like Diablo. It IS a clunky old hack and slash with a VERY HEAVY dose of "logic" puzzles. Diablo was neither clunky nor Old (for its time) and had very little to do with puzzles.

2nd Class Janitor - Wilco
2nd Class Jani…

Tags: 3PHS - Third Person Hack & Slash
Additional Tags: Delete Local Content & Remove from Library

TLDR: Audio is missing due to CD-Rom check issues. Even for when this was released this has very tiny maps all linked together through arrow shortcuts and the whole thing becomes immediately disorienting

When you think games like Fallout came out in the same general time bracket (the original ones) you really start wondering if this much limitation was necessary. The combat was just hit and get hit. Character generation involved dice rolls and the portrait art was fairly old school. Voice acting tone in line with something you'd expect to see in the Disciples series. Brooding voices, grimy medieval people, talk of demons dividing clans. It would had been a great game to try back in the day, but I remember seeing it at the computer store on a demo computer back then and I was stuck in a house for the 30 minutes I played. Today, on launching the game, I was in the countryside and at least got to fight stuff and even received a quest but the gameplay became quickly tiresome. Its hard to understand if you are progressing experience/stats wise. It is also hard to see what the consequences are for dying since so far all that happened is I got restarted at beginning of level with all previously defeated monsters remaining slain. Except for fringe uses cases, nostalgic people and hoarders I think everyone should just ignore this title.

LiuScarlett
LiuScarlett

I bought this game because its depiction of Hell. But the picture is repetitive and the gameplay is not satisfying. It's an average game, you can buy it for a try, but not suitable for a seirous playthrough.

RoRo1980
RoRo1980

still have the original disc, the best part of this game is the dark and moody aesthetics it has. Is it a good game ? not a chance, is it fun ? no way, but it did one thing good, and it was atmosphere, something most, if not, all other DIABLO clones, did wrong, and offer a very bright, 3D polygons take on the game and failed, at least this one failed looking true to the source.

fevergore
fevergore

The most underestimated game ever.

This game was heavily criticized back in 1999 for being poor Diablo 1 clone, but that only means shame for these critics. Because this game is nothing like Diablo.

Now a days I can compare this game most with Legend of Grimrock 1. In Clans you travel through series of small square rooms, grouped into several big locations, killing mosters, that give you no experience. In fact all the character leveling thing is done via collecting different equipment and potions. Very, very rarely they can be dropped by defeated monsters, but most of the time they are hidden in these rooms. Sometimes you can find a merchant, but they are very rare, and each carries only 4 items, which is not much. To buy stuff you need money, which is hiddent in the rooms as well. Selling loot won't make you rich, so all the money you find matters.

Also Clans has strong adventure element. You will find quest items and solve different kind of puzzles to move on, some of them are necessary to finish the game, some are not. So most of the time you'll be cleaning rooms of monsters and carefully investigating them one by one, solving puzzles in due time. This unites this game with LoG, as well as with early Resident Evil game.

And Clans is amazing for investigating. IMO it has the best dark medieval fantasy atmosphere of all the games ever. Dark woods, dark dungeons, dark villages, dark castles - all of these came from the best fantay books and RPG games. Also the game has a sensible disturbed feeling to it - there is no place you can call home (like Tristram in Diablo), there is no guaranty that you'll find a shopkeeper soon to sell stuff or buy some potins if you ran out of them, there is even no pause in the game! Most NPCs can be found in pretty odd places saing odd things, there are no dialog options and your hero stays silent. All these aspects of gameplay make me think of Clans as a grandmother of Dark Souls.

Also Clans has really pleasant graphics (pre-rendered isometric games almost don't age) and amazing minimalistic rhythm-based soundtrack (it's won't automatically play in Steam version, but you can always switch songs by hand in any music player in parallel to the game. BTW, music for the first game level is Track 5, all the tracks before are for the intros and menu), and that makes the game feel absolutely superb.

There are some noticable flaws in the game like too many empty rooms and the battle system. The battle system looks like this: if you use magic you devastate enemies until you're out of mana, then you stay in the run (or wait calmly if no one is cahsing you) until your mana replenish, and then repeat. This is pretty slow, but pretty safe way of playing. But if you have good magic and low healt, enemies will hit you really, really hard.
If you use melee, then it's just luck of who will die first. Except for health potins and equipment, there's no way you can manually influence the melee combat. All this makes combats feel a bit idiotic (especially on early stages of the game), but, at the same time, the fact that there's no chance to avoid damage in melee combat only strengthens the disturbing atmosphere of Clans.

Though the game is old, and a lot of younger gamers probably won't like it, I would recommend it to every dark fantasy lover and to every lover of dungeon crawles like Legend of Grimrock. For me it's 11 out of 10.

Moimee
Moimee

Well I LOVE this game but it is finicky as hell to get to work. I managed by lowering my resolution and tapping cancel when the music popup appeared and that worked until TODAY when STEAM did an auto update and NOW it will not work!?!?! errr.

The game itself is fantastic; I hope the dev fixes it and perhaps considers more of same.... it is like the great old P & C adventure RPG games and it is good fun

MrMoonDragon
MrMoonDragon

"Help me please young warrior!"

Used to have the CD Version of the game back in the days, it was a quite fun game if you are in for the nostalgia feeling.

rough_thief
rough_thief

Nostalgia can truly be misleading. In my memory this was a salvageable game. It isn't. You'd think that at this price you can't go wrong? Well, just installing the game is wrong. Even if you're in love with old trashy games like me don't bother with this one.

Prince Vegeta
Prince Vegeta

It's kind of like a crappy version of Diablo.

Gamenet
Gamenet

for a shitty game ...
intro is awesome!
music from intro... - from dune2000 (lol)
gameplay - its fucked up.

Letande
Letande

“Failure is not an option. It just happens all the time.
Like, all the time.”
~Craig Benzine

In Steam there are good releases, bad releases and releases that are so bad that they set your sorry butt on fire and make you want to write angry review right away. Guess which kind we have here? Yeah... it's one of the “A-S-S!!!” kind. And you know what? It's a freakin' shame. Because the saddest thing is – I actually like this game quite a lot. Guess, I'll start with that.

First of all, forget all that “olde school Diablo type game” stuff from the official description in Steam store. It's a lie. Ye olde Strategy First did what they do best – tried to fool you. Even though this game is called “Satanica” in its home country, the UI obviously copies what we've seen in BLIZZARD's masterpiece and, naturally, you'll fight a big fat demon at the end, this game is nothing, I repeat, nothing like Diablo. Which... doesn't mean that it's a bad game, though. But keep reading.

First of all, even though UI suggests Diablo while character creation screen screams Dungeons & Dragons, what we have here is more like... a Point & Click Adventure. Sure, you'll fight monsters, but most of the time it'll be just you clicking on them for a couple of times. Don't expect a lot of action here. Clans is a nod to the old games like Cadaver and Heimdall. You'll explore the world screen-by-screen, you'll solve puzzles and you'll kill some enemies from time to time. That's how this game works. And that's why I actually like it.

I mean... it's hard to explain, but there's actually a lot of charm in all that. Every screen here looks like a little fantasy diorama (both Cadaver and Heimdall had the same exact effect), there's a cute CDDA soundtrack and, the best of all, the game comes with its own unique pace. Which was the reason why at some point I used to play Clans daily (it's very short and you can easily bit it in one sit). See, Clans is a very casual experience. Remember LucasArts Desktop Adventures? The games people often played to... you know, relax. The same way they've played Minesweeper. Clans have somewhat similar effect. Except it's even more basic than Desctop Adventures. Dumb even. And that's the worst thing about it.

I mean, yes, it's dumb. Very dumb. You slowly walk from one screen to another, click on enemies to kill them, pull the levers to open more paths, collect keys to unlock doors and do some simple puzzles. Like placing barrels on switches. It's good for the times when you need something like that but if you'll expect this game to be a real deal? Let's just say I can see why so many people consider this one to be a complete trash. It is not. But I can see the reason. Expecting the real deal from Clans is like expecting Monkey Island from Putt-Putt. The game wasn't about that since very beginning. But if you had a hard day at work and want to relax? Or have a kid who's too young for those big adult titles? This game can actually be a very good choice. You just need to know what to expect from it. And clearly, Strategy First didn't help much with that.

Unfortunately, not only with that. Because that's where good things end and disaster begins. Like I said at the beginning of my review, what we have here is a broken release. Broken beyond belief. People who worked on it? They were incompetent at best. Seriously, The Great Cornholio can do a better job. Lloyd Christmas can do better. I'm pretty sure that even potato can do better if you'll put a couple of electrodes into it. I mean it, the person who worked on this release? They're the dumbest vegetable in the garden.

Let me explain, though. As I've already said, the original game was released on CD. And like many other CD games from that time period, it used CDDA music. It probably won't tell much for modern kids since even their parents grew up with iPods, but back in the days, when people used CDs to listen to their music, it was a common practice to put a game music on disc not as digital files, but as CDDA tracks. In other words, your game CD also served as a regular music disc and you were free to put it into any of your CD players to enjoy the soundtrack outside the game. Personally, I remember listening to Big Red Racing in my SONY Walkman more than playing the actual game. Such a format allowed us to get both high-quality music in game and a “free” soundtrack CD as a bonus.

Unfortunately, when CD era was over, it led to an obvious thing – digital re-releases needed more work. The most common practice nowadays is to re-encode the music. Most of the times publishers just compress the CDDA tracks into the lossy formats like MP3 or OGG, make the game to address those files instead and voilà! Here's your digital release of Total Annihilation. Sometimes they screw things up (like they did with the first Konung on GOG), but most of the time it's hard to even notice the difference. As long as you don't have an ear for music, of course, since... you know. Lossy stuff is lossy. Anyway, you know what Strategy First did? They said “It's an old game, so, we were unable to give you the music”. That's it. And as an apology they've offered us ripped music in MP3 format. Like... what... the f*ck is wrong with you, Strategy First?

The cringeworthy stuff doesn't end here, though. See, the suckers say that we're free to put any music CD into our CD-ROM drive and the game will pick up tracks from there. They say it like it's something good. Of course you can use any music CD! That's just how it works! But guess what? In reality you can't even do that. That's actually my favorite part of the story. See, I still have my big box version of this game. Naturally, I decided to install the game through Steam and then put my old CD into the drive. What can I say? It's stupid enough as it is. Think about it. I wanted to play the game I had on CD, so, I've paid extra for Steam version, wasted quite some time to find my old CD and then dusted off my old PC that actually had CD-ROM drive in it. Crazy sh*t, huh? But what's even more crazy is that... it didn't even work.

To recognize your disc, the game wants it to be in drive D and drive D alone. You have the letter D taken by something else? Good luck playing with Windows settings. But guess what you'll get after you'll finally manage to put your game CD into the drive D? The Steam version won't launch. Simple like that. Sure, it'll stop giving you the music error, but it'll start giving you another one. This time the one that claims that the correct game CD is not presented in the drive. I actually started to exploring that problem when I finally realized that I'm wasting my time on the most stupid thing ever. I mean... the original CD version still plays fine on Win 10 / 11. So... what's the point to waste time on Steam release? The answer is – there's no point.

Steam release of Clans feels a lot of like those crappy “ripped” versions of games you can find in the net illegally. Some morons butchered the heck out of the game and what we've got in the end is only half of the experience. Even if you'll pay for this, you'll still need to google yourself a full ISO of the game to get the real deal. But since Clans was not for everybody to begin with... let's just say it'll be a better idea to pretend that this entry in Steam catalog didn't exist in the first place. Dixi.