Cataclismo is a brand new wave survival/city builder entering Early Access. Like other Early Access titles, the Cataclismo devs are giving us an early (duh) and unfinished look at their game, hoping to build hype for a greater, more polished product down the line. Even in its early stages, I can confidently say Cataclismo has something special to offer, and it’s already become a new genre favorite of mine.
If you’ve played They Are Billions, you have a good idea of what Cataclismo has to offer. It’s a wave survival game with a city-builder economy simulation, tasking you to gather resources to train troops and build defenses before periodical attacks on your settlement.
Cataclismo has a unique setting, but where the game really stands out is the way it handles the build mechanics.
Think of Cataclismo as having Lego brick mechanics. When building walls, structures, etc, you do so with stone blocks of varying shapes. Stone walls, of course, prevent enemies from getting to and destroying your structures, but they have a unique stacking mechanic I haven’t seen elsewhere. The more stone blocks you put on top of each other, the stronger a wall becomes. Rather than simply making layers upon layers of walls (something you will still do, of course), the game incentivizes you to build high.
Height doesn’t just give you stronger walls; the units you employ to man said walls gain advantages for being placed high above your enemies. Certain structures, like air filters, also produce more resources when placed at adequate heights. Buildings can also be stacked, making Cataclismo a game of building support foundations and stacking as high as you can go.
The game was clearly designed around this mechanic, not just with several different areas of the city building requiring you to think tall, not wide, but the emphasis on going high is also cleverly written into the game’s story.
Cataclismo tells the story of the titular Cataclismo, a world-ending event spawned from humankind’s exploitation of powerful forces beyond their understanding. The Cataclismo spawned beautiful but deadly mists that engulfed the world, turning any who were lost within into crawling, pale Horrors. The remainder of mankind huddles within the walls of the last city, Ciudad Hogard, high above the mists, defending it for generations against the hordes of horrors.
The idea of this mist, which hangs in the low places of the world, being the main danger and source of these horrors is an incredibly interesting way to incorporate the stacking mechanic into the game’s lore. “Clever design” can be considered to be the operating phrase when describing Cataclismo. The whole game is absolutely oozing with great ideas and fun mechanic choices.
It is hard to underestimate how much I enjoy the building in Cataclismo.
Using an almost lego-brick-style building system is an incredibly simple way to give the game’s base building depth and flexibility. It might not even sound as impressive as it is, but by getting your hands on it yourself, I can promise you you’ll feel just how good it is to stock these walls high and build towering cities out of little stone blocks.
Beyond the blocks themselves, though, Cataclismo very cleverly incorporates little pieces here and there that help push the base building even further. Take, for example, buff pieces, like a flag that boosts the damage of adjacent troops or little parapets that increase a unit’s range when standing behind them. These are not just ways to make your troops stronger, but actual, functional blocks themselves that both take up space and add to the building (the parapets, unless I was mistaken, count as a stack of stone to increase the strength of your walls.) This gives you even more strategic complexity in how you build your defenses against the horde of Horrors.
Add to this the fact that towers and walls, should you need troops to scale them, require functional staircases to form paths to and fro. It can, at times, feel as though you need a degree in architecture to build a sustainable base in Cataclismo. Thankfully, the game has a feature that allows you to publish or import building blueprints to the Steam workshop, which further adds a social element to the game as well.
For a good as Cataclismo is so far, it does have some work to be done before it leaves Early Access.
I want to see the game have more troop and building variety. As fun as building is, I appreciate games like this that allow us some cosmetic flexibility in things like houses that we place around the map. Adding two or three alternate models to each of the static structures in the game would be a great way to add more customization to the game.
An expanded troop roster would also be appreciated, both to add some more strategic depth to the game and because I really love Cataclismo’s character designs and want to see more.
Bugs and glitches are to be expected in an Early Access game, but Cataclismo is surprisingly light. The only glitch I experienced was in the Endless mode. Something about the way Cataclismo calculates or renders its world currently causes some random, frequent frame drops that effectively freeze the game for a few seconds here or there. It seems like the longer you have a game going, the less often these drops occur. I would hope to see this fixed before the full release.
Cataclismo is already incredibly promising, with unique mechanics, cool lore, and wonderful world and character designs. It has filled a void left after I got bored of They Are Millions, and I will continue to play it through its Early Access run and into the full launch.
Pros:
- Great mechanics, excellent worldbuilding, and phenomenal art direction
- Satisfying “Lego” style structure building, with a lot of strategic depth
Cons:
- Some frame rate issues currently present in the game’s Endless mode
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