Public Commander Keen Forum

I bet this thread has been done before but i'm too lazy to look for it. Anyway, I know pretty much nothing about Commander Keen, i've never played any of its games in my life, but just like 20 minutes ago I figured i'd give it a shot. But the thing is I don't know where to begin. Which game should I play first? Do I have to play all of them? Is there any good sourceport? Help please!

Welcome to PCKF, OceanMadman! It's great to hear that you're interested in trying out Commander Keen! I'm sure it'll be a great experience you won't regret!

Of all the Keen episodes, Keen 1, Keen 4, and Keen Dreams can be downloaded without any charge, since they're shareware. The Keen 6 demo is also shareware. I personally recommended Keen 4; it's a common fan-favorite here! It's got the most visual variety, lots of quirky monsters, and many cool secrets that are waiting to be discovered! Keen 1 is also pretty great, if you can get over the unusual jumping physics and basic graphics. In each of those links I just posted, you can find the download link in the bottom of the infobox that's by the right.

If you're running a modern computer, you're going to need DOSBox to run these games. Once you have installed a Keen game, you must run the executable file (e.g. for Keen 4 it's KEEN4E.EXE). In Windows, you can just drag-and-drop the Keen exe file into the DOSBox exe file. I don't know much about Linux, but if that's what you're using, there's a tutorial on KeenWiki that might really help you.

We do have a few Keen source ports that can run without DOSBox, such as Commander Genius and Omnispeak, if you'd rather try those. I personally recommended playing the games on DOSBox if you can, however.

If you really enjoy the shareware episodes and would like to play the other games (trust me, all 7 DOS episodes are totally worth playing!), you can get episodes 1-5 for only five bucks on GOG.com. Episode 6 is, unfortunately, not available for sale due to rights issues, so the only legal way to get is through second-hand purchases.

Hope this response helps! If you have any more questions, feel free to ask. Happy Keening!

You can try the way they were released with the first trilogy. Or you can start with Keen 4 first, which is considered the best. Both are hard for beginners, but in Keen 4 at least you can save anywhere.

I'd still recommend to begin with where it all started. Plus later, you're gonna experience and enjoy the more advanced and refined second trilogy.

Where you should start depends on what you want to do.

If you're interested in the story, start with Episode 1. There's a progressive plotline that takes place through the episodes in order (spoiler: it was never officially completed but we have a set of mods considered to be "fanon" to resolve the ending).

If you're interested in the gameplay, the first and second trilogies play a bit differently so check out one game from each set to see what suits your taste. I recommend testing Keen 1 out of "Invasion of the Vorticons" and Keen 4 out of "Goodbye Galaxy!" if you want to see the exploration side of it; or Keen 2 from "Invasion of the Vorticons" and Keen 5 from "Goodbye Galaxy!" if you want to see the action-puzzle platformer aspects. There's also a "bonus episode" called Keen Dreams which has its own flavor of mechanics (and it takes place between episodes 3 and 4).

Have fun!

And never forget the Keen6 demo, which contains a lot of the audiovisuals that make Keen6 itself worthwhile. That is the legal way to play Keen6. Worth bearing in mind though Keen4 is more of a priority.

Thanks everyone! I've started playing Keen4 and it's been very fun so far

Second the recommendation of Keens 1 and 4 as a starting point. Particularly Keen 4, the in-level saving makes it more accessible as an introduction (and the Vorticons trilogy's "wind up" on jumps might take a little getting used to), but Keen 1 is definitely still worth a shot.

I agree the jumping in Keen 1 has a slight learning curve but once you have firgured it out, it allows a huge degree of precision provided you're concentrating hard enough!

Yeah it's not a bad mechanic it just might take a little getting used to. Although honestly I don't recall having had any problem getting used to it, but I think I actually played the Vorticons games pretty early in terms of my history of first playing different games, so it might be that I didn't have as much formed expectations of platformer control mechanics / feel as someone who's say, playing them for the first time after having played various other platformers for years might.