Cataclismo Early Access review: They Are Billions plus Stronghold equals fun

Digital Sun laid down strong foundations

Digital Sun / Hooded Horse

“That city is well fortified which has a wall of men instead of brick,” is what Sparta’s legendary lawgiver Lycurgus is supposed to have said – suffice to say, Sparta would not survive long in the world of Cataclismo, for men stand no chance against the tides of horrors that emerge from the foggy depths every night.

Digital Sun has created a hybrid strategy game that unites elements from titles like Stronghold, the iconic castle-building RTS, and They Are Billions, the game that kicked off the current trend of survival RTS, marrying them with a simple, yet elegant modular building system that enables players to freely build the grand fortifications of their dreams.

Cataclismo is a game about survival and follows a strict day-night-cycle: During the day, there will only be probing attacks from stray horrors that can easily be fended off by a lone guard, but during the night the horrors go on the offensive in full force, emerging from the edge of the map to bring down your castle. As the sun goes down, you’ll be shown intel about the horror’s attack directions and strength – one of the critical skills players of Cataclismo need to bring to the table is a knack for balancing their efforts between several theaters of war.

This goes for the small army you have at your disposal as well as your fortifications. Sure, using all of your resources to erect defenses at one location will allow you to easily hold this, but there will be nights on which the horrors attack from somewhere else entirely. Preparing for all moves the enemy could make without spreading yourself too thin is an art you’ll have to learn.

A humble base early on in a skirmish game. / Digital Sun / Hooded Horse

Your defense effort is mainly powered by wood, stone, ore, oxygen, and manpower. Naturally, you’ll need to gather wood and stone to construct buildings, which need manpower to run. Ore feeds your research and higher-tier units. Both buildings and units require a steady supply of fresh oxygen that’s not corrupted by the fog giving life to the horrors – it’s essentially your gold resource used for maintenance. All of these resources need to be gathered by buildings, which in turn forces you to expand over the map – you can’t just be holed up around your initial castle. 

Choosing the correct timings and positions for your expansions is another challenge, as is a danger of spreading yourself too thin. It’s a pretty simple economy, so there are no production chains or anything, but it brings enough strategic impact to the table to enrich the experience. Later in the game you can also unlock a type of energy generator running on the foul fog around the map, which can help power up your buildings.

One of the coolest aspects of Cataclismo is its verticality, which you can use to your advantage to minimize the spread of your settlement. Houses to increase manpower, for example, can be stacked on top of each other and in turn serve as platforms for things like oxygen generators. It’s very fun to experiment with all the different building parts at your disposal to find the best way of constructing things for your current situation. The game comes with a function to save blueprints as well, allowing you to simply copy existing structures and use them repeatedly – it’s very easy to use and there’s great satisfaction in watching your library of useful building plans grow over the course of several matches.

Nights with an attack from only one direction allow you to concentrate your forces. / Digital Sun / Hooded Horse

In addition to your passive resource income, you can use the daylight to explore the map and gather salvage to complement your stockpiles. You can also destroy nests of horrors that have spread around the map and prevent structures from being placed nearby. I think this aspect of the game could be expanded a little more – perhaps with better rewards for clearing nests or by allowing units to gather XP and level up, thereby giving the player some more incentive for these expeditions.

There isn’t a massive unit variety in Cataclismo yet, though some fun upgrades help alleviate that issue somewhat by increasing the capabilities of basic troops. Plus, there is an interesting mechanic in place that makes some units deal more damage when stationed at certain heights. You can additionally place things like banners or supplies for fire arrows on your battlements to boost their power. Really, my biggest complaint about Cataclismo is that there could be so much more variety – and I’m sure that’s where Early Access development will strike. Both the amount of units and what the game calls tactical pieces should be expanded to provide the player with more tools. I’d love to see more types of traps and battlement items in particular – things like mannable ballistas or even automatic defenses that need to be powered by the magical energy gathered from the fog, to give it some drawbacks. The possibilities are endless and I’m excited to see what the developers can come up with to spice things up.

Cataclismo’s building mechanics are intuitive and you can get a grip of the system quickly – and it’s super satisfying. The higher you build your walls, the sturdier they become, but you can’t just blindly build upwards, because a wall made from a single layer of bricks can still be overcome with ease – not to mention the need for sizable battlements to place troops and equipment. It all very naturally funnels you into building intricate fortifications with gatehouses, towers, bastions, and walkways connecting different positions in case a fallback is required.

I’m not a big fan of the formula They Are Billions laid out, but Cataclismo’s addition of modular fortress-building is an absolute game changer. It’s an incredible foundation for the future.

In Endless Mode you earn research points for every night you survive, allowing you to unlock more units, tech, building parts, and so on. / Digital Sun / Hooded Horse

There are some minor wrinkles I’d love to see smoothed over in coming updates: The campaign is sometimes unclear on what your objectives are – it will tell you to “move to X position” when in reality it wants you to move a certain unit to that position, for example. That’s confusing. Just tell me clearly what I need to do. Though most of the must-have control functions for an RTS are there, the game annoyingly doesn’t jump to a group of units when you double-tap its assigned number on the keyboards, which makes navigating a little tiring when you’re fighting on several fronts. You can pause the game at any time so it’s not a massive issue, but it could be better. Smaller problems like these are undoubtedly present at Early Access launch, but none seem unsolvable to me – they are not connected to any deeper design issues.

Cataclismo is built on a fantastic foundation thanks to solid fortress construction mechanics that capture your imagination. Build your Helm’s Deep, build your Minas Tirith, and hold it against the tireless forces of evil – that’s the simple and yet so very seductive promise of Cataclismo, and its Early Access launch already executes the idea brilliantly. Once the developers have gotten around to adding more spice, this meal will delight any strategy fan.

Score: Recommended*

Version tested: PC

*We are not scoring Early Access reviews, instead using a recommendation system. We’ll provide a fully scored review for the launch of 1.0.