When you were growing up, how often did you wish a game did something a little differently? I had that urge a ridiculous amount of times. To an extent, it was probably because I grew up with a Commodore 64 for a long time and those games were frequently delightful, yet also extremely limited compared to the options we have now. Throw in a lack of money and I was simply grateful for whatever came along, but that didn’t stop me dreaming of how I wanted games to play out.
The dream was an RPG where you played a footballer working their way up to glory. I tried coding it in BASIC, mostly by writing it down in a notepad rather than actually sitting in front of the Commodore 64. Predictably, it was not a huge success, but I liked thinking it through. It was a similar case for many an adventure game, too. I think I realised at that young age that graphics weren’t going to be my forte so I focused on storytelling and the text-based side of things. I just wanted to make . Anything.
This was the opening for the Shoot-Em-Up Construction Kit. Sure, it wasn’t about storytelling but it was about creating your own levels, creating enemy bullet patterns, changing the behaviour of enemies, and essentially setting yourself up for a spectacularly tricky bullet-hell experience. You could even export your games for others to play and yup, they did. Commodore 64 magazine, Zzap!, showcased many SEUCK (as it was affectionately referred to) games on its cover tapes.
See, making a game doesn’t have to be solely a matter of coding and staring at a screen of complex data. There’s always been a wealth of fantastic game creation systems aimed at the more inexperienced and more casual market. Of those, one of the most fondly remembered was Klik & Play. Released in 1994, it was published by Europress – famous at the time for seemingly every educational game you probably ever played (if you were the right age, of course) – and the mag lived up to its name. Effectively, you could click and place various elements of a game together, creating ‘exactly’ the experience you wanted. OK, it was more limited than conventional coding and in hindsight, it was actually very buggy, but it was a portal into a world that so many of us dreamed of but didn’t know how to achieve.
To really consider its importance, though, you need to put it into context. Options were limited and programming seemed unwieldy for most. Klik & Play made it far more accessible for younger users. It also came bundled with a selection of ready-made games. They were more demos, suggesting what could be achieved rather than full games, but it was perfect for sparking one’s imagination. There was a racing game, some card games, a simple platformer, a take on the classic game of Reversi, and so on. This was during the Windows 3.11 era so games weren’t exactly how they are now. Instead, simple fun was key here and Klik & Play offered oodles of it.
Being able to drag and drop what you were creating opened up a world of imagination. Suddenly, making a game seemed far more accessible than ever before. I have no idea how many people it inspired to go into game creation for real, but I’m going to take a shot and reckon it was the first step for many creative types further down the line.