Cataclismo’s Early Access Release Offers a Strong Foundation to Build On

After seeing the first trailer for Cataclismo, a strategy game from Digital Sun (Moonlighter, The Mageseeker) about building medieval fortresses to withstand sieges, I was immediately taken with its possibilities. Admittedly, part of this is because it jostled hyper-specific memories of being weirdly obsessed with LEGO castle sets as a kid, but more broadly, I was excited because it seemed to be combining the freeform creativity of something like Minecraft with the direction and large-scale engagements of a real-time strategy game.

After spending about two dozen hours with the game’s Early Access release, I can say that it’s already largely living up to its promise, offering freeform castle creation that taps into the joy of sandbox games combined with simple but effective city-building elements that lead to lots of interesting micro decisions. While there is one big issue in its current state, this version is a good first blueprint that has the potential to become genuinely excellent with revisions.

The game takes place in the aftermath of the Cataclismo, an apocalypse where a mysterious mist transformed most of humanity into the aptly named Horrors, fleshy nightmare creatures that come in the night. The survivors gathered in the last city, Hogar, which rests on a mountain above the fog. Against this desperate backdrop, we follow Lady Iris, a young woman who can travel back in time, as she sets out on an expedition to save her people.

You control Lady Iris’ forces during this campaign, building settlements and siege defenses to combat these monsters. There are 11 story missions at the moment, with more to come, and they come in three types: Expeditions, which are usually brief and don’t involve much base building, Tower Defense, where you build quick and dirty battlements to pelt incoming Horrors following a winding path, and City Building, the mode that you’ll be spending most of your time with and that demonstrates everything the game has to offer.

In this last type, you’re tasked with establishing a pipeline of resources by building sawmills to collect wood, quarries to mine stone, filtration systems to gather oxygen (characters wear stylish gas masks to ward off the Mist), homes to house workers and troops, and more, as you shore up materials that can be used to craft battlements. Essentially, you click a menu option to create prefabricated structures that generate resources, while you can also create freeform structures out of wood and stone to make castles and anything else.

These resource management elements fit in nicely with the rest of the game thanks to how streamlined they are compared to many other city builders (you don’t have to worry about creating roads, for instance, they’re created automatically if there’s a clear path) while still boasting a satisfying degree of depth, as you try to efficiently generate the raw materials needed to build defensive walls and more. To produce something complicated like an advanced troop training center that generates deadly Cannoneers you’ll need to slowly scale up your settlement to increase your Prosperity rating (this unlocks advanced buildings), manage oxygen production, and bring in additional personnel.

It all creates a constant feeling of progression as you make tons of little decisions that dramatically impact what’s available down the line. And although you’ll always be juggling several types of material resources to avoid bottlenecks, the most important resource is time. Time is constantly ticking down until the next wave of foes is on the way, but it also takes time for troops to be trained or buildings to be constructed, adding a constant tension that makes this experience engaging and difficult to put down.

Thankfully, while time is your greatest enemy, it’s also your ally. For starters, one of the things that makes Lady Iris special is that she can travel to the past. Gameplay-wise, you can set anchor points that let you rewind (basically a one-way quick save), allowing you to readjust your strategy. It’s certainly a welcome inclusion considering that some of the longer missions can last for several hours. You can also freeze time whenever you want, and while this will also pause the construction of resource-generating structures, in this frozen state you can create freeform structures from basic building blocks to your heart’s content.

Although there’s an inherent satisfaction in upgrading your settlement to make resource numbers go up faster, the ultimate point of all this city planning is to generate materials needed to create defensive walls, troops, and traps that will repel the waves of Horrors that come at nightfall. It’s in this mode, where you’re tinkering with castles and siege-proof walls, that the game is at its most joyous. Digital Sun has cited LEGOs as a core influence, and this inspiration comes across in the modular blocks used to construct these fortifications, letting you create setups as simple or elaborate as you want.

One compelling element here is the constant push and pull between wanting to build high castle walls that can take more punishment and the fact that decking out your defenses takes more resources. To stretch your stone and wood supplies further, you can look for natural chokepoints in the terrain or build bulwarks that utilize natural high ground. These levels’ distinct geography ensures that you won’t be building the same ramparts over and over. Add in other factors, like how you unlock additional advanced structures throughout the story or that certain unit types are effective at varying heights, and there are a ton of little circumstances that naturally lead to variety in what you create.

And beyond these levels forcing me to switch things up, I found myself learning neat engineering tricks that let me build more efficiently. For instance, I eventually realized I could craft all manner of lean scaffolding to save on wood, which sounds mundane but ended up being a big deal considering wood is the base resource for both troops and resource-generating structures. By the end of the experience, I was constructing complex defensive walls with pillboxes for Lobbers and Cannoneers and figuring out layouts that left room for disparate unit types while ensuring my fortifications had as much HP as possible.

The game’s sharp aesthetic identity further adds to the appeal of designing impressive defenses by offering an interesting mixture of medieval imagery, religious iconography, and faint anachronistic flourishes. There is an eye-catching tension between new and old, such as how the characters’ oxygen masks seem like they were designed by an armorer from the Middle Ages or the way archers and more advanced gunpowder-based weapons often fight side by side. A subtle use of color ties it all together, with the natural greens and browns of these forests and landscapes contrasting against the harsh grey of human-crafted battlements and the unnatural paleness of the Horrors, as both humans and monsters exploit and destroy their surroundings in their never-ending war.

The overarching narrative, however sparse, further builds up encounters with these waves of monsters by invoking the grand stakes of our hero’s journey as we face creatures that used to be human before hubristic overreach caused the Cataclismo and its deadly fog. While the game’s imagery of “enemies at the gates” comes with a lot of symbolic baggage, the kind often stoked to fuel nasty ideologies, this tale at least partially defuses this by having these monsters be the former members of this very same society.

Since the story isn’t complete, it’s a little tough to parse what is ultimately going on here thematically, if anything substantial, but the narrative being presented via an in-universe oral storyteller places things in a grandiose, broad context that works well with the fantasy stories it’s riffing on. Ultimately, while there isn’t a ton going on here in terms of explicit storytelling, especially because you’ll spend dramatically more time building and tinkering than in the game’s short illustrated cutscenes, it all provides just enough context to let the strong art design and gameplay loop do its thing.

However, there is one fairly huge issue with the game in its current form, something that at least slightly dampens all of the previously mentioned boons: with the exception of the last two missions of the campaign (in the current build), the actual battles themselves are almost always anti-climactic. If you’re like me, you’ll spend tons of time setting up cities, maximizing resources, training troops, and crafting custom defensive walls that take advantage of the environment, only to face a lackluster wave of Horrors that your troops dispatch with ease, making it feel less like the Battle of Helm’s Deep and more as if you’re swatting away an unimpressive militia that forgot their siege equipment at home.

Medium, the default difficulty, is a cakewalk, and even after upping things to Hard, most of these levels still lacked friction. Necessity is the mother of invention, and I would have liked to see what kind of structures I’d be forced to dream up to overcome more challenging odds. However, more than just being easy, these scuffles just aren’t as visually impressive as you would like. I went into the experience expecting the kind of epic battles found in the trailer, where waves of monsters pierce castle walls as you desperately take up a backup defensive line, but that wasn’t the case for most of my playtime.

Another issue is that the fights are so straightforward that you rarely have to make any kind of tactical adjustments, and while I didn’t go into the experience expecting something like StarCraft, I was hoping for a little more troop management. As it is, you can only set some basic orders for your units, such as if they should target the closest creature or the most powerful one, and while Iris has skill abilities with cooldowns, these aren’t quite enough.

However, just as I was about to concede that the battles were a complete disappointment, the last two missions suddenly upped the challenge by introducing a new boss enemy that defied previously established rules. Although this difficulty spike was frustrating at first, in large part because the boss popped out of a hole behind my defensive line in a way I couldn’t have possibly predicted, I eventually came to appreciate the increased pushback this foe provided. In the end, the last mission currently available (again, they’re adding more as Early Access goes on) gave me exactly what I wanted in a set-piece battle that involved hordes of enemies, shattered walls, retreats, and real desperation; all culminating in a scripted sequence that entirely delivered.

While I wish the game got there faster, I’m hoping it doubles down on this feeling going forward, both in the new levels introduced and in the secondary features, like its Skirmish battles and Endless mode, which both fall into the same problems. In the Skirmishes, you play out pre-made levels (sans any storytelling) that last a little longer than campaign missions, while the Endless mode has you fight infinite waves of Horrors. Although the former mode is fun for all the reasons the base game works, the battles are still underwhelming. The Endless mode has a lot of potential, but it’s currently far too slow-paced, as it takes forever to accumulate the points you need to purchase upgrades. Additionally, its procedurally generated maps are flat and uninteresting, making them a prime target for tweaks in the coming months.

That said, overall, I’m very impressed with Cataclismo’s Early Access launch and optimistic for its future. It took me over 20 hours to get through the 11 available missions, most of which were engaging despite the often lackluster siege defense sequences. The base building elements are fun and have just the right amount of depth, and most importantly, it is intrinsically rewarding to design these custom-made structures, crafting defenses to withstand impending onslaughts. If you’re a certain type of person, you’ll probably spend way too much time adjusting little details to ensure your battlements feel just right, even if the battles they’re designed to withstand don’t currently live up to the buildup. Still, despite its flaws, Cataclismo is already a sturdily constructed experience with the potential to become a real marvel of engineering with some adjustments.

Cataclismo was developed by Digital Sun and published by Hooded Horse. Our review is based on the initial Early Access release for PC.

Elijah Gonzalez is an assistant Games and TV Editor for Paste Magazine. In addition to playing and watching the latest on the small screen, he also loves film, creating large lists of media he’ll probably never actually get to, and dreaming of the day he finally gets through all the Like a Dragon games. You can follow him on Twitter @eli_gonzalez11.