Cataclismo on Steam - User reviews, Price & Information
Design and build fortresses brick by brick to stand against endless hordes of Horrors in this real-time strategy game with resource management, siege defense, and exploration. Lead from the ramparts, push back the darkness, and hold fast against the creatures of the Mist.
Cataclismo is a strategy, base-building and simulation game
developed by Digital Sun
and published by Hooded Horse.
Released on March 20th 2025 is available only on Windows
in 16 languages: English, French, German, Spanish - Spain, Japanese, Portuguese - Brazil, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Korean, Polish, Hungarian, Italian, Czech, Turkish and Ukrainian.
It has received 3,374 reviews of which 3,087 were positive and 287 were negative resulting in a rating of 8.8 out of 10. š
The game is currently priced at 29.99ā¬ on Steam, but you can find it for 12.49ā¬ on Instant Gaming.
The Steam community has classified Cataclismo into these genres:
System requirements
These are the minimum specifications needed to play the game. For the best experience, we recommend that you verify them.
Windows
- OS: WindowsĀ® 10 (64-bit)
- Processor: IntelĀ® Coreā¢ i7-4770 (quad-core) / AMDĀ® FX-Seriesā¢ FX-9590 (quad-core)
- Memory: 8 GB RAM
- Graphics: NVIDIAĀ® GeForceĀ® GTX 760 (2 GB) / AMDĀ® Radeonā¢ R9 270X (2 GB)
- DirectX: Version 11
- Storage: 10 GB available space
User reviews & Ratings
Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.
TLDR: I like Cataclismo. It is an ultimate expression of creativity, when it comes to castle building. By combining several elements of, "They are Billions", "Age of Darkness", "Diplomacy is not an Option", and similar games like those, it presents an interesting format with which you can cultivate your own outpost. It is not overly complex and allows you to enjoy the game at your own pace, without having to count every second. (Either thanks to the lower difficulty or pause button.) But it does not shy away from a punishing difficulty either, for those who enjoy a good challenge. It would be unfair to say that it has no issues. It certainly does, but not enough to be given a negative review for an early access game that has strong bones/foundation. The Positives: Units: A decent roster of units, combined with a tech tree and in-mission upgrades, makes for an interesting dynamic. Especially if you like one particular unit. Of course, certain missions will require more than one type to succeed, but at large, you are not punished for playing the way you want to, in regards to said units. IMPORTANT: There are no melee units. Only ranged. You will not be able to play out a heroic melee last stand, like in "Diplomacy is not an Option" or "Age of Darkness: Final Stand". The economy: It is simple and straightforward. Find a resource node, build a mine/logging/air collector camp and passively collect the resources you need. You can however improve these buildings, by either upgrading them directly, or building separate addons that increase their efficiency. It does not bog you down with unnecessary complexity. Defenses: This is where the game shines the most. Unlike other strategy survival games, this one requires you to invest time and creative thinking into building your defensive walls or castles/towers. Stone-by-stone. One could say that this is where the complexity of the game shows itself. Specifically, the symbiotic relationship between the wall and the units. Each unit has an optimum height and tile count for maximum efficiency. (Like an archer that should be placed on a tall tower, while mortar and globadier, on the average height wall). Some units however, require more than 1 tile to be placed upon a wall. And all of them can be improved with additional defensive options, like fire arrows, palisades, roof overhead(to protect from rain debuff.) and so on. Every stone piece, contributes to the entire height of the wall. With a very clear transformation that shows you how good of a wall you have. (If you want strong walls, you must build high!) Additionally, you can place spike traps and explosives to either slow or wither down the monster wave. Structures: This one is my personal favorite. Being the casual gamer that I am, I often built houses(for additional population), in a straight line, or perhaps around the capital building, to make it look pretty. Like in most strategy games. In this one, you're allowed to build vertically. You can connect walls to your buildings and place units on top of them. You can stack several houses or workshops together, or on top of each other. Further enhancing your creative/immersive experience. Blueprints: The game is fairly slow, when it comes to building up your defenses. You spend a lot of your time in 'Pause', just so you could build a semi-decent wall. Luckily enough, you can save all of your creations. And even with a new and unusual terrain, it doesn't take much for you to adjust it with additional bricks, before planting your favorite tower/home on top of it. Performance: So far? I haven't had a single hiccup or a crash. The game runs flawlessly and doesn't seem to be slowing down from the overall amount of enemies. (But of course, that is my personal experience. Take it with a grain of salt.) Stable and above 60fps. The Neutral: Tech tree: This one might be a hit or miss for some players. The supposed tech tree is only available in the campaign mode and not in the sandbox. Because in the sandbox or endless survival, you already have everything you need. (thus removing the aspect of choice.) You can only further improve your structures or units within the in-game session. Units: As mentioned before, there are no melee units. I understand the concept here, and it is a personal gripe of mine, but it would be entertaining to see highly stylized melee infantry, same as all other ranged units. Solo missions: I personally don't mind them, and there are not many of those, but I know that some players do not like individual missions, where you operate as a campaign's hero. Trudging along the map, in search of some clue or units or messages. But at least it still offers you interesting ways of going through those. By collective scattered supplies and building makeshift bridges over obstacles. Sometimes even smaller outposts. Voice acting: The voice acting is clearly designed with a heavy accent in mind. In some cases, actors under deliver on the urgency of the situation(sounding too relaxed or passive, when there's a new horror in sight), while in others they sound interesting and clearly alien to our world. The Negatives: The lack of opposition: Outside of your castle/outpost, you will rarely find a monster spawn camp, besides a small log that is easy to take out. Perhaps it's a hiccup of an Early Access release, but so far, there's not much you can do, besides roaming, killing a few stragglers and building isolated mining camps. I recommend adding more open spaces where you can encounter previous expeditions or perhaps remnants of other cities, that -you- have to besiege, in order to get through. (maybe even allow building upon the destroyed bases of your enemies! Since this game is all about building, and being creative, let us be creative with our enemies and their buildings too.) (You can also give enemies, ranged units too. Corrupted expedition members or some such). And my personal favorite idea that they could implement: Add surviving expedition camps, that you can liberate and fortify. Lack of oompf: Right now, the story is moving steadily forward, where you try to uncover the secrets of [insert in-game lore stuff here], and build outposts along the map, with occasional challenges here and there. The boss unit that is featured in the trailers is certainly interesting-looking, but not much beyond that. I would recommend something more mobile than that boss-mob. Something that doesn't just spawn additional monsters, but also creates conditions that the player needs to deal with. (like casting fog of war, causing all these ranged units to miss their shots.) Maybe spreading corruption on walls, that allows these creeps to climb over(thus we could have a reason for melee units), or creating some sort of a spitting tower, that damages your walls from afar). I'm sure there will be more to experience and explore in the full release. But for now, it's lacking.
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The campaign is quite fun but I beat it in under 9 hours, and there isn't much else compelling to do. There is a lot of content to be added before the value proposition makes sense to me.
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TLDR; Very good game with a lot of potential, an example where release as EA is a good thing. THE POSITIVES; First of all, the game is surprisingly very polished for an EA game, I encountered no bugs or crashes during my time with the game and completing the campaign. The art style and general presentation of the game is superb. The enemy designs are nicely grotesque and creepy but there is enough difference between the different types of mob that you can quickly identify the risks to your fortress and adapt your troops accordingly. They look awesome as a swarm and the AI works well as they react to chokepoints and attempt to break through your defences. The building system is flexible and easy to use, There are some slight caveats to this, but overall you can build some really cool and impressive structures. There is a good variety of blocks which require you to think and work with the structural integrity systems, ensuring your buildings actually make sense and aren't just defying the laws of physics by existing. The troop variety is pretty good and each unit has their own strengths and weaknesses, plus they also have their own ideal height/distance indicator to min/max their effectiveness in battle. This integrates well with the building system, as you will find yourself adjusting and adapting your structures to meet the requirements of your available units to get the most dps from them. The map design is very good - I was pleased to see the Endless mode has procedurally generated terrain which really helps with replayability. The campaign maps really look handcrafted, and it is really cool that most of the levels have ruins of previous cities/fortresses which you can either build off as inspiration for your defences, or ignore as part of cool scenery - while you create your own vision of a fortress that will stand the test of time better than their predessors. Also, the presence of ruins sometimes provided some light puzzling elements, as you need to rebuild areas to reach new terrain or objectives, and offered a nice element of environmental storytelling. The lore so far seems interesting. I did find myself gripped by the cut-scenes and the way the narrative was told. The developers interestingly added a time-travel mechanic, which contributes nicely to the story and also means there is no shame in save-scumming, which some of us may feel guilty for doing when it all goes wrong! Overall there is plenty of content to get your money's worth already and I would definitely recommend getting involved at this stage, From what I have seen, the developers are responsive and open to feedback, and their prior games show they have a very good track-record when it comes to creating fun games. THINGS TO CONSIDER/"NEGATIVES" While I already praised the building mechanics, it can take some getting used to. Adjusting the interiors of buildings can be a bit of a pain with the camera and while there is a transparency setting you can use, this can still lead you to misplacing or deleting the wrong blocks in the wrong place when you are adjusting some of the finer details to your fortress. Also, the menu can be a little awkward to navigate when you are rapidly switching between block types, and the implementation of hotkeys would help with this. The structure system is cool in principle but can be a little bit confusing. Building a ceiling/roof can be a nightmare as sometimes you cannot easily see why a block cannot be placed as there is not enough structural support. The default is to use wood blocks, which are much more flexible, but those are extremely weak. There is a certain mob later which can AoE your structures and the wooden floors tend to be destroyed instantly, which can leave your troops trapped in the stone shell that was left and essentially useless for the rest of the fight - unless you can quickly rebuild around them. I also wish the toughness cap was hit a bit earlier - as this can be quite limiting. Your fortresses quickly turn into monstrosities to reach the required level of toughness late game but I think this is counter-intuitive to building a fortress which is aestheticly pleasing and fits the map well - surrounding your settlement with GoT-level walls is cool at first but I'd like to create forts which look realistic and don't need to be ridiculously tall to not be easily destroyed. This is also why I would like to see melee/hybrid units so we can lean more into the RTS element of the game which I will go on to. The troop variety, while cool, feels a bit lacking still. I would really like to see melee units implemented which could hold chokepoints/courtyards with aerial support from other units. This would lead to players having to decide whether they risk sacrificing troops or structures if the horde overwhelms your ranged units, as currently there are only traps to deal melee dps. Melee troops would open up nice options around army diversity and could play around weather systems or certain types of horror that could be added later. It would also be nice to have mage units who may be very expensive but offer options such as group buffs, heals or targeted CC effects like a fire wall or ice storm. I would enjoy a troop levelling/rank system, where seasoned troops fight better if you are good at protecting them in the early stages/waves and help with the current difficulty curve and make unit losses feel more impactful. To build on the aforementioned idea more, I would like to see more meaningful interactions from weather systems. Currently there is rain, which reduces the accuracy of your units if they are not covered by your buildings. I would love to see more weather systems which might randomly cycle in Endless - with a "forecast" so you know what is coming a day or two prior to prepare. Cold weather/snow might reduce attack/movement speed and/or require torches/firepits to prevent your units suffering the effects, but have passive effects like reduced oxygen consumption. It may also slow horrors so it is not an outright negative. Rain might not effect melee troops, meaning they are a good option if you do not want to adjust your fortress too much if you would otherwise rely on ranged. Sunny weather might increase ranged troops but fatigue melee units in their heavy armour, but also cause horrors to gain an additional effect. Maybe make effects on the night too, such as a "full moon" which make horrors appear in greater numbers or mutate on the field. Lastly, there are a couple levels which are Tower Defence. I think these are a great proof of concept but could use a little balancing - currently the best way to win seems to be to stack all your units near the start and then move a few back to pick off the stragglers. Perhaps in this mode there could be an "overcrowded" mechanic which reduces unit efficiency if they are too close to each other, this would encourage players to actually use the whole map and think more carefully about unit placement throughout. I think this looks awesome but just needs some balancing. The lack of co-op will put some people off but I really don't think it would add much. Some games are just best played single-player. I think there's an attitude with gaming nowadays that everything should be multiplayer for some reason, but the only way I see that working is if players get their own fort on a large map, like in AoE for example. The constant pausing to build will probably lead to frustration between players so I think removal of pauses, but longer days to allow for preparation in real-time, could work. Also the rewind mechanic would obviously have to be removed in that as well to prevent bad blood from lost progress! Lastly I know the devs are looking to add more rogue-like mechanics to the game. This would be a great addition and I know from Moonlighter that they already understand what makes the genre enjoyable and how it adds value. Anyway, great game with lots of promise. Buy it!
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save scumming is a lore integrated gameplay mechanic 10/10
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Remember 'Castle Story'? Add some of the resource management stuff from They Are Billions, mix in a well-built world with some freaky flesh monsters and toss in a dash of old-school Lovecraft unknowable horror, and you're probably thinking of something remarkably close to Cataclismo. Great building mechanics, intuitive resource system, solid art style. TL,DR; Castle Story meets They Are Billions with a gorgeous artstyle and engaging gameplay. Worth your money.
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Last Updates| Steam data | 13 April 2025 00:28 |
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| SteamSpy data | 12 April 2025 12:29 |
| Steam price | 12 April 2025 20:49 |
| Steam reviews | 12 April 2025 14:02 |
If you'd like to dive deeper into the details about Cataclismo, we invite you to check out a few dedicated websites that offer extensive information and insights. These platforms provide valuable data, analysis, and user-generated reports to enhance your understanding of the game and its performance.
- SteamDB - A comprehensive database of everything on Steam about Cataclismo
- SteamCharts - Analysis of Cataclismo concurrent players on Steam
- ProtonDB - Crowdsourced reports on Linux and Steam Deck Cataclismo compatibility
Online players
303
Developer
Digital Sun
Publisher
Hooded Horse
Release
20 Mar 2025
Platforms
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