Cataclismo is an RTS base-builder from the makers of Digital Sun and Hooded Horse where you build and defend fortresses in the wake of a great cataclysm. Read our review to see what it did well, what it didn't do well, and if it's worth buying.
Cataclismo Review Overview
What is Cataclismo?
Cataclismo is an RTS base-builder set in a world ravaged by once-human creatures called Horrors. You play as Iris, an overseer sent by the leaders of Ciudad Hogar—the last city—on a mission to gather information lost during an apocalyptic event known as the Cataclismo. As you lead an expedition of the city’s finest, you must push back the Horrors of the Mist and fortify various settlements through strategic holdfast tactics, masterful masonry, and careful leadership. Build walls to keep the Horrors out and fight the tide from the battlements in the unending siege of Cataclismo.
Cataclismo features:
⚫︎ Advanced freeform building system for battlements and defenses
⚫︎ Real-time unit management with pause
⚫︎ Wave-based siege defense mechanics
⚫︎ Expansive story mode with full narration and 2D cinematics
⚫︎ 2 additional game modes with Skirmish and Endless modes
⚫︎ Powerful metagame progression options with a massive tech tree
For more gameplay details, read everything we know about Cataclismo's gameplay and story.
 Steam |
$29.99 |
Cataclismo Pros & Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
 Leaves No Brick Unaligned With Its Gameplay Time Anchor Feature Is A Godsend Exploration Breaks Up The Monotony Great Enemy, Unit, and Building Variety |
Glacial Pacing |
Cataclismo Overall Score - 94/100
Cataclismo may be labeled as early-access, but in terms of quality, it already stands tall above many fully-released titles. Its gameplay is wildly imaginative, and its story is equally so, with world-building so solid and intricate that it resembles a legendary palace among the wonders of the ancient world. I haven't seen anything quite like it, and I don't expect to again anytime soon. I already consider this game a monumental success and it isn’t even finished. One can only imagine the heights its final construction will reach.
Cataclismo Story - 9/10
Cataclismo's story is a finely crafted tapestry depicting a fictional nation's origins, success, destruction, and aftermath. It features well-defined, well-placed touches of world-building that give it a uniquely artisanal feel, evoking themes of strength in adversity and the delicate hope for a better future. This beautifully contrasts with its vicious, stone-and-steel gameplay, creating a story that is as fun to recall as it is to experience.
Cataclismo Gameplay - 10/10
Cataclismo's gameplay is an imaginative and unique blend of RTS, base-building, colony management, and tower defense mechanics, with each aspect shining without overshadowing the others. I am particularly impressed by the game’s Lego-like building system, which puts creativity in construction front and center while still allowing for flexible strategizing. It’s a gameplay loop unlike any other and I can’t wait to see what else the game’s final build will have in store.
Cataclismo Visuals - 9/10
Cataclismo's visuals reflect the artisanal, esoteric, and vaguely Spanish-inspired stylings of its narrative, depicting the survivors of this cataclysm in a dainty, moon-bathed silver. The stylized 2D cinematics, apart from being well-drawn, provide much-needed variety from the game’s mostly 3D presentation. The minimalistic UI contrasts elegantly with the game’s detailed assets, rounding off a visual style that the game can confidently claim as its own.
Cataclismo Audio - 9/10
This game’s soundtrack is a poignant reminder of what was lost in the Cataclismo. It’s a masterwork of plucky strings and ambient hums that fills me with a sense of dread and a fragile hope that there’s still a future worth fighting for. The voice acting, though soft as a whisper, is well done, and the subtle accents the actors give certain words nicely enhance the game’s overall aesthetic.
Cataclismo Value for Money - 10/10
You’re getting way more than your money’s worth with this game, and you wouldn’t be spending much to begin with. For a meager $30, you can experience the last stand of a lifetime against an unending horde of horrors from the safety of a citadel you built brick by brick. If you’re looking for the definitive siege defense experience with a bit of thought-provoking lore thrown in, then this is the game for you.
Cataclismo Review (Early Access): A Wonder To Rival Any Monument
If there’s one thing I learned from my countless hours of dungeon-diving and haggling in Moonlighter, it’s that Digital Sun doesn’t miss. They might produce something sublime but underrated like Mageseeker, but they are not a developer of half-baked concepts and cash grabs. So, imagine my delight when I saw their newest title pop up on Kickstarter with a novel art style and an even more intriguing premise—I was practically on cloud nine! When the game’s Kickstarter reached its goal in less than a week, I knew immediately this was going to be an absolute banger.
Cut to almost a year later, the game’s early-access build is out, and I couldn’t have been more correct.
There’s so much to discuss about this game, from its richly developed and unique world to its imaginative gameplay, but we need to start somewhere. So, much like the game’s winding narrative, we will begin with its namesake—the end of all things. The Cataclismo.
As you may have guessed from its not-so-subtle moniker, The Cataclismo was a world-changing event that occurred in the distant past. It serves as the catalyst for all the events you experience in the game, from the birth of Iris to the unending defense against the Horrors of the Mist. From a world-building standpoint, this is a solid foundation to work from, and Digital Sun could have skimped on the details and still produced a semi-salvageable story.
Fortunately for us, Digital Sun doesn’t take shortcuts, and instead, we get a rich tapestry of a nation’s history from start to finish. We learn about the origins of their people, the source of their power and culture, their motivations as a nation, and their eventual downfall. The game’s story picks up years later, during a period of restoration led by the last city standing, Ciudad Hogar. You play as Iris, a scholar turned expedition overseer, and through your strategic mind and intrepid heart, artifacts from deep within the mist can be found and studied for your people’s benefit.
All that is just what you get from the first few minutes. The lore and world-building throughout the rest of the game overflow with lost pages from failed expeditions, personal accounts of The Cataclismo, and the ruins of all of mankind's fallen cities. It’s a solid and well-developed world that you’d expect from a AAA title, not an average-priced RTS from a company with only three games. This is perhaps the best way to have your expectations shattered, and I’m all for it.
Now, let’s talk about Cataclismo’s bread and butter—or bricks and mortar, rather—as its gameplay is an imaginative and well-executed mix of RTS, colony simulation, base-building, exploration, and tactical army combat. Cataclismo is what I’d call a "last stand simulator" because you never take the fight to the enemy. Instead, you hold fast in citadels, settlements, and gates—some built by your own hand—and do your best to survive until the next day. If this was all that Cataclismo offered, it would be a very reactive game that would get old fast. Fortunately, during the ample hours of daylight, you spend nearly every minute gathering materials, building walls, training troops, or otherwise managing your bastion.
Let’s focus on the building aspect first because it’s the one you’ll become most familiar with as you play. Building defenses in this game isn’t just a matter of opening a menu and placing a structure. No, you build everything by hand, placing each brick individually while keeping structural soundness in mind. This might sound tedious, but the process has all the joy of a Lego set and the tactical advantage of an actual castle, as each piece you add not only improves your wall’s integrity but also enhances the effectiveness of your troops. Thankfully, gravity is no issue while building, although the game does maintain some realism regarding what structures can and can’t be supported by your foundations.
This may sound unimpressive to some, but I spent 50% of my playtime just building the most ludicrous castles, complete with parapets, spiral staircases, murder holes (yes, that’s what they’re called), and enough buffs to turn a single archer into a killing machine. It’s not just limited to range and damage increases too. If you’re strategic about your construction, you can include fire arrows, barricades, traps, poison cauldrons, and even cannons into your walls. The best part is that your preparations are never in vain, because the horrors that assail your base every night come in by the swarms. It’s a legitimate challenge to beat them, even with the most impervious defenses, so you’re forced to outdo yourself every single time.
I, for one, appreciate the challenge, but some might not. Fortunately, there are plenty of modes to choose from. Endless Mode is the ultimate challenge because you’ll undoubtedly fall eventually; the question is when. Skirmish Mode is for those who prefer a quicker siege but still want to build their castles high. Between those two modes is the campaign mode, which tells the story of Iris and her adventures, as described earlier. Across all three modes, there is an option to adjust the difficulty higher or lower, depending on your preferences. This ensures that anyone can play this game; they just need to tweak the settings a bit.
That’s not all Cataclismo offers in terms of gameplay. There’s also an incredibly detailed colony management layer that you’ll need to tend to between waves. It’s mostly a juggle between resource gathering and usage, but the special rules surrounding each resource add variety. You have six resources to keep track of, including Stone, Wood, Minerals, Population, Oxygen Stock, and Oxygen Upkeep. Most are gathered through standard RTS means—a resource building on a node—but Oxygen and Population are trickier since both can be lost if you don’t defend your citadel well. This adds a fun layer to the nightly defense and provides a compelling reason to build the walls in the first place.
No gameplay loop is perfect, and Cataclismo does suffer from one particular roadblock: pacing. This is an RTS game that you can pause, so naturally, you’ll be pausing a lot. Usually, pausing isn’t an issue in fast-paced RTS games. However, Cataclismo is quite slow in real-time, with around 10 minutes of downtime between each wave. This is good for preparation and resource generation, but since you can build while paused anyway, it just seems like too much downtime. I don’t think it lessens the game’s quality, but it’s something to note if you don’t have a lot of time to spare for a game like this.
Moving on to the game’s presentation, its visuals and audio are as masterful as its world-building. Although the 3D environments and character design are unique and eye-catching, it’s the 2D cinematics that really caught my attention with their geometric stylization and tableau-like presentation. It’s like I’m learning the culture of a long-lost civilization through a series of beautiful murals. The voice acting is on point too, with stellar performances across the board for the narrator and characters. I enjoy their subtle accents and unique pronunciations of certain words, which evoke a Spanish influence.
And now we reach the end of Cataclismo’s accolades. As much as I’d love to conclude that Cataclismo is one of the best games of 2024, it technically isn’t even finished yet, and to sing its praises with such finality now would be a disservice to what else it can bring in the future. That said, Cataclismo is certainly one of the, if not the outright, best early-access games out there. It provides a wonderful story set in a vibrant yet melancholic world that you can rebuild brick by valiant brick. It has a great building/combat system that leaves no feature undefined and is as enthralling as it is impressive. As I said at the beginning of this review, Digital Sun doesn’t miss.
Pros of Cataclismo
| Things Cataclismo Got Right |
|---|
|
Leaves No Brick Unaligned With Its Gameplay Time Anchor Feature Is A Godsend Exploration Breaks Up The Monotony Great Enemy, Unit, and Building Variety |
Leaves No Brick Unaligned With Its Gameplay
I’ve discussed this game’s building system at length, but its complexity merits further discussion. Apart from the Lego-like construction, the game’s building system includes a host of unit and structure buffs determined by how you arrange your buildings. As a rule of thumb, the taller the structure, the stronger it is. The game even changes your wall’s appearance based on its height, granting you grander castles the more you build them up.
Moreover, specific pieces can buff both your units and your walls. For example, merlons—the protruding portions of a parapet—increase a unit’s attack range and the wall’s durability. Even resource-gathering buildings have specific rules that tie into the brick-by-brick construction of your walls, with air filters requiring a certain altitude being a prime example.
It’s this seamless connection between various gameplay features that astounds me about Cataclismo. Nothing feels left out, and every part of the core gameplay loop—from resource gathering to wall construction and exploration—has a role to play in the grand scheme of a playthrough. You don’t see that in most early-access games, or even full-release titles, for that matter.
Time Anchor Feature Is A Godsend
With the game’s inherent difficulty, there needs to be a certain mechanic in place to prevent players from giving up in frustration. Fortunately, Cataclismo implemented the Time Anchor system. Although it looks like a glorified save feature, it has a few extra functions that prevent it from being merely a save scum button.
Firstly, you can’t save at any time. The game autosaves at the start and end of specific parts of the day, and the Time Anchor only lets you revert your save to one of those times. Secondly, it’s less of an exploit enabler and more of a legitimate gameplay feature, as the direction of the waves isn’t usually known until it's too late. Suffering a failed defense and restarting with new knowledge is pretty much required to succeed in this game, not that I’m complaining. Overall, it’s a great feature that makes the game more accessible for novice RTS players.
Exploration Breaks Up The Monotony
Fun as it is, having to build and defend against horrors endlessly will eventually become stale. It’s a good thing that Cataclismo breaks up the monotony of an eternal siege with short exploration levels, where you build bridges and pathways instead of walls and citadels. You have a limited set of pieces in these segments, so it’s more of a puzzle game than an RTS. It’s nothing too substantial, but it’s a welcome break from the core gameplay that keeps things fresh without straying too far from what makes the game great.
Great Enemy, Unit, and Building Variety
I will be forever grateful that Cataclismo’s catalog of enemies, units, and building pieces is so expansive. Much of the game’s fun comes from the unpredictability of each wave: you never know what horrors will face you, which units you’ll have to defend, or what building pieces you’ll have at your disposal. If Cataclismo had only five or so variants of each, the game would quickly become stale, even with its stellar gameplay features. Thankfully, the variety is exhaustive, and you’ll easily clock in tens of hours before you unlock or experience even half of them, let alone all of them.
Cons of Cataclismo
| Things That Cataclismo Can Improve |
|---|
|
Glacial Pacing |
Glacial Pacing
If I must point out something bad about this game, it would be its glacial pacing. Its difficulty is notable, but the game provides myriad ways to either lessen the challenge or increase your odds of surviving the night. The game’s progression speed, however, remains constant no matter what you do. Each mission in the main campaign takes anywhere from 30 to 60 minutes to finish, depending on how well you do in each wave. If you fail, you need to redo a wave, taking even more time. It’s not a major downside and certainly doesn’t compromise the game’s quality, but if you’re someone who doesn’t have a lot of time to play video games, this might not be for you.
Is Cataclismo Worth It?
Worth Every Hour You Put Into It
Cataclismo’s early-access build can stand toe-to-toe with many AAA titles in terms of quality, content, and game design, but it surpasses them all in terms of value. For a mere $30, half of the standard AAA price tag, Cataclismo offers tens of hours of castle-building fun, complemented by an amazing story and an immersive world. You’re not just getting your money’s worth with this game; you’re buying yourself the experience of a lifetime.
| Digital Storefronts | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Steam |
|||||
| Price | $29.99 | ||||
Cataclismo FAQ
In Which Languages Will Cataclismo Be Available?
According to the game’s developers, Cataclismo will be available in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Polish, German, Russian, Japanese, Chinese (Simplified), and Korean.
Will There Be A Console Port Or Steam Deck Version Of Cataclismo?
According to the game’s developers "Cataclismo was always conceived as a PC-only game, so no plans for it. Although the game runs on Steam Deck, we aren’t verified and it’s not a top priority at this moment."
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Cataclismo Product Information
 |
|
| Title | CATACLISMO |
|---|---|
| Release Date | July 22, 2024 |
| Developer | Digital Sun |
| Publisher | Hooded Horse |
| Supported Platforms | PC (Steam) |
| Genre | Action, Strategy |
| Number of Players | 1 |
| ESRB Rating | RP |
| Official Website | Cataclismo Website |
