CloneKeen is what old PC game preservation looked like when a fan decided the cleanest answer was to rewrite the game engine and give away the source.
The project describes itself as a nearly complete clone of Commander Keen: Invasion of the Vorticons. It is written in pure C, uses SDL, and was released as free software under the GPL.
The surviving site carries a 2003-2016 copyright line, which places it squarely in the era when SourceForge pages were one of the main public homes for hobbyist open-source projects.
Preservation by portability
CloneKeen did not stop at making the old gameplay run on a contemporary desktop.
The site lists support for GNU/Linux, BSD and other Unix-like systems, Windows XP-era Win32 machines, Mac OS X, Haiku, GP32X, Symbian phones, and even the Sega Dreamcast.
That list is almost more interesting than the game itself.
It captures a period when “portable” meant somebody had actually made the code compile on a ridiculous collection of machines.
The clone also added things the original did not have: two-player support, a built-in level editor, shared user maps, alternate game modes, and deliberately silly options such as a fully automatic raygun.
That is the nice thing about source-level preservation. Once the engine is understood well enough to recreate it, preservation can turn into experimentation.
The website itself is just as period-specific as the software. Small graphical navigation buttons lead to downloads, screenshots, installation instructions, modding information, and contact details. There is no launcher account, no cloud library, and no store client between the user and the source code.
You download it. You compile it. You mess with it.
CacheRat’s 1,967 Ancient Web Domains research list includes many SourceForge-era projects because they preserve more than executables. They preserve the point where old commercial software met the free-software culture that wanted to keep it running everywhere.
CloneKeen is a compact example of that transition.
A DOS platformer became C source, then wandered onto Unix boxes, handhelds, phones, and a Dreamcast.