I love strategy games, but getting into new ones is always an uphill battle for me. There’s a ton of new information to absorb, new systems to get familiar with, and all the weird quirks and clunky controls to get used to. But every once in a while, one of them would grab me right away and wouldn’t let go. That’s it now Cataclysma fantastic tower defense city builder that takes the coolness of LEGO and elevates strategy gaming from good to great.
go out steam and Humble Bundle Early access on July 22, Cataclysm Published by Hooded Horse, it is the third game from the creators of Digital Sun, the indie team behind the business RPG Moonlighter and League of Legends action fighter Dharma seeker. In that regard, it’s a radical departure, swapping the dungeon-crawling structure of an action RPG for a horde-mode management sim about building air purifiers. I’ve played about five hours of the campaign mode so far (along with skirmishes and endless modes), and it’s the game I’m currently checking before going to bed, only to look up and realize it’s already midnight when I go to sleep. of.
Cataclysm The story takes place in a post-apocalyptic Gothpunk world, where armies of enemies known as “The Terror” crawl out of the foggy ocean and lay siege to the outposts and kingdoms of survivors. During the day, you explore the map with your troops, killing nearby enemies and salvaging resources, while building your settlement and preparing for nightly terrorist attacks. Balanced development means having the resources you need to build a strong defense, while nighttime combat is mostly about standing on the sidelines and watching your best-laid plans creak and crumble under the pressure of the horde.
This will look familiar to anyone who has played the game by now they have billionsis a popular tower defense real-time strategy game released in 2019 by Numantian Games. What settings Cataclysm The separation is not necessarily something you build, but how You build it. While buildings like houses and barracks are standard, the prefabricated units, walls, towers, and bridges used to traverse the game’s shattered world are built individually piece by piece. Since the map is so dense, the most efficient way to build a settlement while keeping it safe is to expand upward rather than outward. The result often looks like a dark fantasy shanty town, supported by a maze of stone walls and wooden scaffolding. Maybe this sounds boring to you. I promise not.
I mentioned air purifiers before. Clean air is an important resource Cataclysm. Buildings need it. Soldiers need it. And research upgrading also requires a lot of investment. Capturing it requires building an air cleaner high enough above the ground to collect as much air as possible per minute. Building it high off the ground means creating a tall wooden scaffolding, and since all buildings must be accessible to your settlement’s automated surrounding workers to produce resources, it also requires a tall structure all the way to the top. stairs. You control all of this by connecting each individual piece together, which clicks into place with satisfying precision (most of the time) and sounds no different than real Lego.
This is the most basic example, but Stonewall follows similar logic. It’s not enough to just build them thick and tall, they also need places for archers to stand, ramparts, banners, and other castle equipment to decorate and enhance your army. Build stone windows and you can stack multiple rows of archers. But you’ll also need to build stairs for them to climb up, and make sure they’re not so close to the action that they’ll fall over and die when the terrorists start eroding the outer layer of your defenses.
The third step is to work on maximizing the space you have by stacking everything as closely together as possible. Houses and barracks have stone roofs that you can build on. Wood and stone arches allow you to build your base into a mini cathedral that feels like king arthur meet blade runner. Countless other buildings, technologies, and unit types (which I only started to explore in the later stages of the game) build on this fantasy and the satisfaction of grafting short-term and clumsy medieval city-planning solutions onto a community that, against all odds, every night All try to dispel the darkness.
It’s a solid formula that I would confidently recommend to anyone who likes strategy games, and even some who don’t. but Cataclysm Also tailor-made to burrow into my head and captivate me. When I was a child, before game of Thrones Even if they existed, I had huge walls built in my bedroom, patrolled by military personnel who used elevators made from my installation machines to take them to the top floors. On the beach, not only did I build towering, dripping sandcastles surrounded by seawalls, I divided them into sections and dug out sewers for drainage. I spent a lot of time with my kids stacking Duplo blocks into Jenga-style towers supported by precarious stairs and stilts, looking for that invisible point between something breaking and it being strong enough to survive.
Cataclysm Blending each of these experiences into a well-balanced strategy game where planning and building is often more valuable than watching the battles you spent so much time preparing for. This requires a lot of they have billions and adds a whole new verticality to the proceedings. This shift makes for a more aesthetically interesting city builder, where creativity and self-expression play as much of a role in decision-making as simply trying to minimize resources and defense capabilities.
I’m not sure if Cataclysm It will end up having the same advantages as this game in terms of later combat and tactics. But for now, its journey into Early Access is off to a good start.
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