Killer Klams (1982) for the Apple II — despite the metal-as-hell name, it’s not exactly killer.
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Killer Klams (1982) for the Apple II — despite the metal-as-hell name, it’s not exactly killer.
You’re not blasting aliens or saving galaxies here. You’re a clam. A literal clam. Your job? Dodge hungry fish, starfish, weird black blobs, and the occasional clam digger who wants to rip you out of your happy little seabed. Movement is four-way simple, and if an obstacle’s in your path you can gnaw upward through layers until you finally break surface. The “timer” isn’t a clock but a 5,000-point bonus that bleeds away the longer you take. Three lives, then back to the shell.
The look is very Apple II hi-res: black void for the sea, horizontal blue lines to mark depth, chunky sprite-like creatures splashed in artifact colors. By 1982 standards? Perfectly cromulent. Today? It looks like MS Paint after a seagull attack.
The developer was Rod Nelsen, the same guy who gave us Tharolian Tunnels and Cricketeer, and the publisher was The Software Farm—a small-label Apple II outfit that had a knack for quirky one-offs. The game never got a lot of attention even then, and now it mostly lives on Internet Archive disks and TOSEC collections.
Worth playing today? Not really. It’s more “weird artifact of early ’80s Apple II shareware-adjacent culture” than a hidden gem. But it’s fun as a curiosity—if only because it proves someone once thought the ultimate arcade hero should be a clam with teeth.
