Cataclismo
- July 22, 2024
- Digital Sun
- 10h median play time
Cataclismo needs a little more time in the oven to really polish up its systems, but it has great bones and Early Access will probably do it a ton of favors.
Get on Steam"Cataclismo" is a single-player fantasy strategy game with a sensational plot and atmospheric gameplay, featuring delightful visuals and music. As the leader of humanity's last survivors, players must build and defend fortresses against waves of Horrors, managing resources and coordinating units in their defense. Despite some grinding and bugs, the game offers high replayability across various biomes for an engaging and challenging experience.
PC
Windows
Reviews
- The game features a unique building mechanic that allows players to construct defenses brick by brick, enhancing creativity and strategy.
- The art style is visually stunning and contributes to the game's immersive atmosphere, making it a pleasure to play.
- The campaign offers an engaging story with well-paced missions, and the endless mode provides significant replayability.
- The game suffers from some balance issues, particularly in endless mode where the pacing can feel slow and resource management becomes tedious.
- There are quality of life concerns, such as cumbersome unit controls and the inability to easily delete or move structures once placed.
- The voice acting and narrative delivery can be inconsistent, detracting from the overall experience.
- story860 mentions
- 31 % positive mentions
- 65 % neutral mentions
- 4 % negative mentions
The story in "Cataclismo" is described as engaging and intriguing, blending elements of survival and strategy within a dark, atmospheric setting. Players appreciate the mix of narrative-driven missions and varied gameplay mechanics, although some express a desire for longer missions and more depth in the storytelling. While the campaign is currently short, with around 8-10 hours of content, many reviewers are excited about the potential for future expansions and deeper lore as the game develops.
“The story is engaging and I look forward to more.”
“The story is grim, but very interesting and serves as a 'learn-as-you-go' tutorial for those not quite ready for everything the game has to offer all at once.”
“The story is compelling and the art design is quite nice as well.”
“The 'story' they put in between the missions isn't interesting enough.”
“I found the campaign story mind numbing and boring.”
“Voice acting is pretty lousy, story beats are boring, and honestly nothing really seems at stake.”
- gameplay565 mentions
- 42 % positive mentions
- 55 % neutral mentions
- 2 % negative mentions
The gameplay of "Cataclismo" is praised for its engaging and polished mechanics, combining elements of city-building, tower defense, and resource management in a unique way. Players appreciate the depth and creativity allowed by the building mechanics, although some find them overly complex and in need of streamlining. While the game is still in early access and has room for improvement, particularly in content and quality-of-life features, the core gameplay loop is compelling and offers a satisfying experience for strategy enthusiasts.
“Very satisfying gameplay and strategy without overcomplicating things with convoluted resource management, tons of units and dozens of aspects to consider at any one point.”
“The building mechanics are deep and strategic.”
“The gameplay loop is fun, 3D they are billions.”
“However, it shows that the game is incomplete, as it lacks some quality of life features, like the ability to deconstruct things quickly, and unit control being lackluster, and has some clumsy implementation of some mechanics and has a lack of content regarding enemies and biomes.”
“I wanted to like this game very much but after 10 hours the gameplay kind of boils down to something far too simple.”
“There isn't anything within the gameplay that demands you get creative with your building.”
- graphics424 mentions
- 60 % positive mentions
- 39 % neutral mentions
- 1 % negative mentions
The graphics of the game have received widespread acclaim for their unique and beautiful art style, which blends whimsical and dark elements, creating a captivating atmosphere. Many players appreciate the game's aesthetic warmth and charm, noting that the visuals enhance the overall experience, despite some technical issues reported with certain graphics cards. Overall, the art direction is considered a standout feature, contributing significantly to the game's appeal and immersive storytelling.
“The graphics are fantastic and highly performant.”
“The presentation, voices and animations are very high quality, the graphics are very stylized and beautiful, feels like a 3D representation of the 2D arts in the game, so it looks very organic with the theme.”
“The art style is beautiful and the visuals help add to the satisfaction of building better stuff!”
“Unfortunately, I encountered a bug on level 6 which causes my graphics card (AMD) to bug out, which results in me having to smother my PC underwater (hold the hard power button down) to resolve.”
“It's upsetting and I'm sure it'll be fixed at some point, at which time I'll absolutely change this to a positive review - until that point I can't recommend you sinking a few hours in just to be halted by a massive graphical error.”
“Found the graphical style very off-putting.”
- music79 mentions
- 47 % positive mentions
- 49 % neutral mentions
- 4 % negative mentions
The music in the game is generally praised for its quality, atmosphere, and ability to complement the art style and gameplay, with many reviewers highlighting its unique and beautiful compositions. However, some players feel that the music could be more dramatic or varied to enhance the overall experience, while a few noted that the ambient sounds sometimes overshadow the music. Overall, the soundtrack is considered a strong point, contributing significantly to the game's immersive feel.
“The music and art fit well and elevate the game and it has a great vibe to it.”
“The soundtrack is really nice, it fits the vibe well and is atmospheric.”
“Expert art-direction, music and storytelling are sublime.”
“Music could use a bit more work, I feel as if it was more dramatic it would elevate the experience of defending a large siege.”
“While the idea is cool, the overall feel while playing is a bit depressing; the combination of music, gameplay, and story are making it hard to keep playing, to be honest.”
“The sounds are bare-bone, and I really would want more music instead of the constant ambiance.”
- atmosphere66 mentions
- 68 % positive mentions
- 27 % neutral mentions
- 5 % negative mentions
The atmosphere of the game is widely praised for its unique art style, haunting soundtrack, and immersive storytelling, creating a captivating yet unsettling mood that enhances the gameplay experience. Reviewers highlight the grim and gloomy settings, filled with ominous ruins and a sense of tension, which effectively complements the tower-defense mechanics. Overall, the combination of aesthetic elements and atmospheric sound design contributes to a rich, engaging environment that resonates with players.
“Beautiful art style, atmosphere, and music.”
“Coupled with atmospheric sound design and a haunting score, the game creates a captivating yet unsettling mood that keeps the tension high during battles.”
“The setting, graphics, score, and general vibe really make this a very atmospheric game and the gameplay itself is absolutely on point, having a nice mix of complexity and simplicity.”
“The atmosphere of needing to defend is strong because the horror is really horrifying in terms of damage.”
“The world is grim, filled with ominous ruins and eerie atmospheres.”
“The grimdark atmosphere gets the job done, and the campaign is decent.”
- replayability50 mentions
- 34 % positive mentions
- 60 % neutral mentions
- 6 % negative mentions
Overall, the game's replayability is a mixed bag; while some players appreciate the endless mode and procedural generation that enhance replay value, others feel that the content becomes repetitive after completing the campaign. Features like community workshops and level editors promise potential for extended play, but many reviewers express a desire for more varied gameplay options to sustain interest over time. Despite its limitations, the game is seen as having a solid foundation for future improvements in replayability.
“It allows a very creative and fun approach to building towers that maximize the damage of units and defense of the base, which will allow for a lot of replayability.”
“With community workshops available and level editors, this game has the capacity to be endlessly replayable.”
“The map design is very good - I was pleased to see the endless mode has procedurally generated terrain, which really helps with replayability.”
“The only reason it loses two points is because there's not a ton to do after you complete the campaign, so replayability is not great.”
“Not sure about replayability yet - after the campaign there's endless mode, but it remains to be seen if there's enough variation run-to-run.”
“For me, currently endless gets boring around wave 40-50 when I have the map locked down and most of the tech I want, and I feel like making it a roguelike would add almost endless replayability if enough options were added.”
- optimization35 mentions
- 40 % positive mentions
- 51 % neutral mentions
- 9 % negative mentions
Overall, the game's optimization is a mixed bag; while many players report stable performance and a lack of bugs, significant issues arise during intense moments, particularly in endless mode and with high enemy counts. Some users experience satisfactory frame rates on mid-range hardware, but others face performance drops and overheating concerns, especially at higher settings. Despite these challenges, the game's early access status has led to quick fixes and improvements, leaving room for further optimization.
“Performance is great for an early access game, except for issues when there were thousands of enemies on the screen.”
“Devs fixed early bugs quickly and it's stable and runs smoothly now.”
“Your architectural creativity is what increases your performance here, so it's quite a satisfying fight.”
“Also, I am playing endless and around wave 45, performance takes a big hit during attacks.”
“- I was expecting better performance from my RTX 2080 at 1440p, but it quickly runs very hot to maintain 72 fps at medium settings (which isn't catastrophic, but annoying in summer).”
“The whole idea is really cool, and I like the art style & building, however the performance is quite bad.”
- grinding32 mentions
- 0 % positive mentions
- 0 % neutral mentions
- 100 % negative mentions
The grinding aspect of the game is often described as tedious and repetitive, particularly in the context of block-by-block base building, which can become a chore without effective blueprinting or mass cloning options. While some players find enjoyment in the mechanics and appreciate the chill gameplay, many express frustration with the slow pace of the campaign and the laborious nature of constructing and deconstructing structures. Overall, the experience can feel like a drawn-out tutorial that detracts from the overall enjoyment.
“It definitely doesn't help that the main campaign is basically a very long, slow, and tedious tutorial, and I don't even feel like finishing it honestly.”
“Good ideas and the building system is fun to tinker around for a bit, but it quickly becomes repetitive and the lack of good blueprinting or mass cloning makes it very tedious.”
“Currently, my only complaints are that unlocking things in endless mode is really tedious, and building roofs or intermediary floors in larger buildings is a huge pain, since you can only build sideways 1 or 2 blocks with the arches.”
- stability25 mentions
- 16 % positive mentions
- 0 % neutral mentions
- 84 % negative mentions
Overall, the game's stability has received mixed feedback from users. While many players report a generally stable experience with minimal major glitches, some have encountered significant issues, particularly related to AMD GPUs that can affect graphics outside the game. Visual glitches are noted as expected in an early access title, but many users find the game to be less buggy than other recent full releases.
“Loving it so far, runs great, beautiful art style and smooth gameplay.”
“Other than that, it runs great on Steam Deck too!”
“I got Cataclismo on 26/07/24. At the time, I didn't know that there is a bug with AMD GPUs and the game where, after some time playing, it may break something in the software of the GPU, causing glitches in your graphics even outside the game. Everything turns buggy, full of overlapping artifacts, to the point I could not restart my PC because I could not see anything on my screen.”
“Sadly, the game was buggy and needed patches to play decently, and I probably played more than 10+ years ago.”
“The only other complaint I can come up with (and it is pretty minor) is that the game sometimes freezes very briefly as you go to place an object, and the object will then be built where your cursor is at the end of the freeze, rather than where you clicked originally, meaning you have to delete the object and rebuild it.”
- humor9 mentions
- 100 % positive mentions
- 0 % neutral mentions
- 0 % negative mentions
The humor in the game is described as surprisingly engaging, with players enjoying the chaotic and comedic elements of building defenses while navigating a doomsday scenario. The mechanics are noted for their fun and humorous interactions, making it an entertaining experience for those who appreciate a lighthearted approach to destruction and creativity.
“If you ever wanted to build towering defenses while dodging doomsday, this game is your hilarious and thrilling end-of-the-world escapade!”
“Surprisingly funny!”
“Pretty funny mechanic to play around with, and even fun from a creative structure perspective.”
- character development6 mentions
- 50 % positive mentions
- 50 % neutral mentions
- 0 % negative mentions
The character development in the game is praised for its beautiful and consistent design, with well-crafted character visuals and engaging banter that enhance the overall experience. Players appreciate the thematic coherence across character and UI illustrations, contributing to the game's enjoyable aesthetic and gameplay.
“The character design, building design, UI illustrations, everything is consistently beautiful and on-theme.”
“I also loved the character designs and banter.”
“This game is fun, it looks nice, it plays well, and things like the UI and character design are well crafted.”
- emotional3 mentions
- 100 % positive mentions
- 0 % neutral mentions
- 0 % negative mentions
Players highlight the game's ability to evoke strong emotions, particularly through its integration of time and pausing mechanics that enhance the narrative. The emotional impact of the story, especially during the closure of the last early access mission, has resonated deeply with users, contributing to a sense of addiction to the gameplay experience.
“Also, a big plus for making the time and pausing mechanics integral to the story. The emotional beat and closure of the beginning of the last early access mission really got me.”
