| Evernight Games | |
| Founded: | 1997 |
| Key People: | Developers: Dustin Collis Daniel Crowe Brian Goff Oliver Piotrowski |
| Industry: | Online turn-based strategy games |
| Products: | Multiplayer computer game, browser games |
| Current Status: | List of links to externally hosted Evernight Games |
Evernight Games is a gaming website that ceased hosting browser-based video games in 2009. It was one of the earliest providers of online browser-based games.
In June 2000, Audyssey Magazine, a gaming magazine for blind people, introduced Evernight Design Corporation in one of its issues. The article stated that, in 1998, the online game Monarchy had become part of the Shareplay Network of Games, and that the original creators—Dustin Collis, Daniel Crowe, and Brian Goff—were now working for Shareplay.[1] Monarchy was voted as Multiplayer Online Game Directory's January 2000 Game of the Month and ran at Shareplay until 2001.[2] On November 1, 2000, Evernight Games returned, having split from Shareplay, and Canon was born.[3] Like Monarchy, Canon proved to be successful. In August 2001, it was also given the MPoGD's Game of the Month Award.
Less than six months after leaving Shareplay, Evernight had almost 7,500 registered members.[4] However, the bursting of the Dot-com bubble forced the site to become "pay to play", in order to keep its games running. To cater to their now paying userbase, Evernight released several new versions of the game—Last Guild Standing and Last Man Standing—and two additional theme-based message boards—Jersey Shore and Exodus 7. The early days under the pay-to-play era were troubled, with the site frequently shutting down for different reasons.[5]
In April 2002, Evernight announced they were opening a free version of Canon to the public.[6] The game became completely free in November.[7] In April 2003, OMGN broke news that Evernight's Canon had been removed from the internet over an apparent dispute with hosting providers and financial problems. Tempers Ball was reduced to running from a small server.[8] It was later announced that a move to the dedicated server was complete.[9]
During the recorded history of the Maxim game (from late 2002 to 2005), 39,000 roleplay posts were posted in almost 2,000 story threads,[10] Much of the creativity expressed by players of Maxim was lost, when the message boards were reset in late 2002. A June 2002 snapshot from the internet archive, Wayback Machine, shows another 23 pages of lost Maxim storyline threads.[11]
In December 2006, following the introduction of Oliver Piotrowski to the development team, a new version of the Canon game, called Canon: Massacre, was introduced.[12] July 2007 saw the next chapter in the reshaping of Canon. The three guilded environments—Guilds, Valid, and Covenant—were all discontinued.[13] In their place, another new game called Unity was introduced. Unity built on the changes Massacre had introduced into the code-base, and added another selection of new elements, which included a built-in scout's database, a guild-wide news store, and a second realm to play. Unity also took nine races, including the three that had been made available in Massacre, and introduced a random "guest" race to join the usual suspects within each age.[14]
The changes continued into the year 2008, with the introduction of the Chaos games and combining the Solo, Turmoil and Massacre forums into a single one in Tempers Ball.[15] At this point, Solo joined Massacre and Unity in the newer version of the Canon game code. While no major features were added for Solo, it inherited the random selection of playable races from Unity, as well as receiving a few tweaks to make the game a little more fair and challenging.[16]
The final development, in May 2008, saw the end to the Turmoil game. In its place, another new installment called Last Quad Standing was released.[17] LQS was seeing several combinations of options from Unity and Massacre. New-player protection was set for a week, and during that time, each realm received enough turns to build significantly strong realms. NPP was then removed and sign-ups closed.
Following a decision by Dustin Collis in September 2009 to finally close Evernight Games, the community returned to the name Monarchy.[18] Tempers Ball was left online to ensure that players could find their way to the new incarnation. In 2011, in conjunction with Table Warfare Limited, a miniature range set in the Tonan world was created, including miniatures commissioned by and based on some of the well-known players from the games' history.[19]
Recent changes have also seen an attempt to bring back the historical role-play roots of the site. They are attempting to pull together the strands of several different story-lines into one cohesive overarching story. Along with the game, the Stories of Tonan forums have moved back to Monarchy.
Following closure of the site in 2009, no games are now played from evernight.com.
While under the name Monarchy there were several instances available, these included Guilded (which went on to become Guilds), Non-Guilded (which went on to become Solo) and Chaos (which went on to become Turmoil). These were later joined by a second guilded game where roleplay was a requirement, called Mo-Pri.
| Monarchy : Guilded | 1997 to 2001 | Developed By : Dustin Collis & Daniel Crowe | |
| Monarchy : Un-Guilded | 1997 to 2001 | Developed By : Dustin Collis & Daniel Crowe | |
| Monarchy : Chaos | 1997 to 2001 | Developed By : Dustin Collis & Daniel Crowe | |
| Monarchy : Mo-Pri | 1998 to 2001 | Developed By : Dustin Collis & Daniel Crowe |
Following the return to Evernight Games two games were planned but never released. These included Godsign (a kingdom fantasy game planned to be more complex than the classic game) and Exodus Seven (a space game which existed for a while as a roleplay game on messageboards called 'Comsat Station')
| Godsign | 2001 | Developed By : Dustin Collis | |
| Exodus Seven | 2001 to 2001 | Developed By : Dustin Collis |
Through the years, 2 variations existed where a player could create up to 8 kingdoms at the same time. These included the short-lived Castaway, and Turmoil which ran through to 2008 when it was closed due to lack of active players.[20]
| Canon : Castaway | 2001 | Castaway HoF | Developed By : Dustin Collis | |
| Canon : Turmoil | 2001 to 2008 | Turmoil HoF | Developed By : Dustin Collis |
A few special single kingdom variations existed at one time or another. To take part in Last Prophet Standing, a player needed to sign up during a short period when New Player Protection was enforced. Once that sign-up window was over, NPP was lifted and the winner was the last kingdom to survive. In 2003, a special Christmas game was created during the holidays where you could select between Snowmen, Elves and Reindeer instead of the usual races.[21] Speed was another of the short-lived single kingdom games, with a turn-rate significantly higher than all other games.
| Canon : Last Prophet Standing [LPS] | 2001 to 2002 | LPS HoF | Developed By : Dustin Collis | |
| Canon : Christmas | 2003 | Christmas HoF | Developed By : Brian Goff | |
| Canon : Speed | 2005 | Speed HoF | Developed By : Brian Goff |
Over the years ran several guilded games, some of which ran alongside each other, until eventually being merged into Unity. These included Last Guild Standing (LGS), a short-lived guilded variation of the LPS game; Maxim and Covenant, guilded games with a requirement to roleplay; Valid, the only guilded game to include a high turn-rate; Debacle, a concept game introducing functionality where players that are killed, were converted to the faith of the kingdom that killed them; and Guilds, the all time classic and player favourite.
| Canon : Last Guild Standing [LGS] | 2001 to 2002 | LGS HoF | Developed By : Dustin Collis | |
| Canon : Maxim | 2001 to 2005 | Maxim HoF | Developed By : Dustin Collis | |
| Canon : Guilds | 2001 to 2007 | Guilds HoF | Developed By : Dustin Collis | |
| Canon : Valid | 2005 to 2007 | Valid HoF | Developed By : Dustin Collis | |
| Canon : Debacle | 2005 to 2006 | Debacle HoF | Developed By : Dustin Collis | |
| Canon : Covenant | 2005 to 2007 | Covenant HoF | Developed By : Dustin Collis |
| Canon : Unity | 2007 to 2009 | Unity HoF | Developed By : Oliver Piotrowski |
| Canon : Massacre | 2006 to 2009 | Massacre HoF | Developed By : Oliver Piotrowski |
| Canon : Solo | 2001 to 2009 | Solo HoF | Developed By : Dustin Collis |
| Canon : Last Quad Standing [LQS] | 2008 to 2009 | LQS HoF | Developed By : Oliver Piotrowski |
| Canon : Duo | 2009 | Duo HoF | Developed By : Oliver Piotrowski |