Clusterball

Clusterball is a 2000 video game featuring futuristic sport gameplay created by the Swedish Company Daydream Software and published by Strategy First, RealNetworks and Daydream Software itself.

Gameplay

In Clusterball the player must collect as many balls as they can from the playing field then fly them through a ring in the center of the stage to collect points. Various weapons and power ups are strewn around the stages, enabling players to steal their opponents' balls or invert the controls of the other player, making movement much more difficult. The balls lie on magnetic ramps and the aircraft must slide on these ramps to collect the balls. As the player tows more and more balls, which create a tail behind the aircraft, the aircraft becomes gradually heavier, therefore more vulnerable to enemy attacks.

Development

When asked how the team initially came up with the idea for Clusterball in an interview with Eurogamer, Daydream Software's Nigel Papworth responded with "We sat around and discussed what we thought were the greatest aspects of real life games and computer games, and concluded that ball games rule in real life, flight sims in the digital universe. The conclusion was to build a flight sim ball game!"

Release

The game was released on July 17, 2000 for both PC computers and as a downloadable title off of Real.com. Plans for a Mac OS X version of the game were announced but later scrapped.

Legacy

Legends of the game include players like Willace, Burnout, Lonewolf, Maverick, Henryiv20, SusieQ, Ootpek, Swed, Thejonke, Naxleo, WiNsToN2, The1andonly and Rusty.

Sequel

A sequel to Clusterball called Clusterball Arcade was released on iPhone by Resolution Interactive, a team consisting of ex-Daydream Software members.

External links

• Clusterball.de German online ranking server.
• IGN article
• Touch arcade article