2008-03-19 16:57:21 (edited by dark empathy 2008-03-19 16:58:38)

It's always a very sad business when an audio games developer decides that for whatever reason they can't continue providing us with the constant stream of earhole insertable gameage which we all require on a very frequent basis to stop our heads exploding and our brains turning to mushroom clouds.

And to make said sad business even sadder, thanks to a tip off from long standing forumite ConspiraZ, that's what I'm reporting today. DanZ games, developers of free and commercial games are closing their doors in June. We can only wish Dan Z the best of luck in whatever he's upto next, and thank him for the work he's done thus far.

Like the nice fellow he is, Dan's now making all of his games freeware, so if you haven't sampled what's been on offer before, here's your last chance!

the games include Super deakout, a fast action robot avoiding, coin grabbing point scoring fest, and two word games, search party and chain link, which will both do fiendishly terrible things to the vocab centers of your brain.

also on offer are the games Maze craze, and DanZ memory.

sinse all these games are now free, why not pop over to DanZ games to pay your respects and pick up some very nice items.

Happy, ---- though also slightly unhappy, gaming!

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2008-03-19 17:25:13

I know. How sad it is... He also did a good portion of the code in Troopanum2.0 and Pipe2.0 I think. I might be wrong so don't bash me on that lol.

And yes, it is sad, if i had the DanZ post address to the list i'd sadly announce it there, too...

2008-03-19 17:29:17

A really  really cool contribution I used to use quite a lot which i suspect will also be going down:
His games for the Blazie note takers. Those have been free for a long time now, and I really enjoyed playing them till i got me a Bn. But, his BlazieBasic tutorial was also quite funny and encouraging. Very sad to see him leave. I wonder though, what he's upto next, if Dan is reading this, i wish you the best of luck in what you do next. Take care, Super Deek Out is the most challenging game I've played. Lol i cant get passed level 2. So that proves my point...

2008-03-20 00:38:25

Andy, it's great to show your appreciation for what DanZ has done, but please try to keep double posting to a minimum, especially in news threads which might be read by visitors to the site. If you wish to add something to what you said previously and nobody has replied, use the eddit link.

appologies for playing the posting police here.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2008-03-20 03:01:38

Sorry dark... Wont happen again. Anyway, i just emailed the list and got a prompt reply. Dan stated that the Chain Link database will be going down in June 2008. And the Super Deek Out scoreboards. So, I asked if he could put the databases in some kind of extracting file like the registered product, and I am awaiting his reply.

2008-03-20 09:19:21

Hmmmm, I'm not sure about an extracting file, but it would be helpful if there was a way to share chains you make, by exchanging files, the way that you can share Rr tracks or Lw missions. Even if blind addrenaline went down, people in future could make tracks and just send the files around by E-mail. But looking at the chain link folder, there doesn't seem to be a separate file for each chain, or anyway to manually copy them into the game, which is a pest.

either there needs to be a way to do this, or before everything goes down, it should be exchanged (and the games reconfigured), to some other location, ----- maybe Damien Sadler would be willing to host things on X site? Or tom ward on Usa games?

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2008-03-20 22:06:15

Well, some sort of way to get the chainlink database puzzles into the game, even after it goes down. So maybe in a file just click it and they'll "appear", or something. I dunno, but it'd be awesome if there  was a file or multiple files one could download, and back up to a drive--or maybe, as you mention Darkk, Tom from USAGames can host it or Damien Sadler from X-sight.

2008-03-22 18:16:28

Well,Dan has good games.  Unfortunately, one game he was charging for you could go and get for free off of another sight.  Also, he had not been updating his games and staying on top of them for a while and there for when ever people were purchasing them, the key he would give for unlocking the game would not work.  I know this becausemy girl friend had purchased one of the games at one point and he gave her a key that didn't work.  He also had that problem with another person whom had purchased a game.  He says that he stays so busy doing things that he really doesn't have the time to update his sight that much.  To be honest, the games were good but they were so old in a sense, they really werent werth the money.

2008-03-22 21:13:59

Hmm. What game was that that was free on a different site? Doesn't really matter since they're all free now. But still cool to know.

2008-03-24 23:57:06

the game that was free from another sight was the super deekout game.  You could find the same game or or what not on BSCGames.

2008-03-25 01:41:14

No that was actually Deekout, which is nothing like Super Deekout.

2008-03-25 12:35:25

I suspect deakout was the inspiration for super deakout, being as it has the business of avoiding a robot in a small inclosed space for as long as possible, but as Andy said, super deakout added so many more elements to the basic idea as to be an entirely different game.

Personally, i'm very glad to play DanZ's games now, but I will admit when I first looked over them a couple of years ago I decided against buying them. I'm no good at the grid style things like boggle and word targit anyway (I think my brain just doesn't work like that), and while chainlink looked to be interesting I wasn't prepared to pay money for a word game when things like Jim kitchin's hangman were available for free.

As to super deakout, a very nice game indeed, but as I've said before I'm much more interested in exploration and ambience in audio games than just wracking up as higher score as possible, so it wasn't precisely my thing.

I've had some rather fun games of super deakout now though, ---- perhaps my judgement was a bit too faulty?

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2008-03-25 22:57:17

Hmm. Maybe...

Btw, the Super Deekout scoreboards are down! Go to them try to view them. Get a nice, error, right? I reported it to Dan and his reply was that he took them down.