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Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead
source link: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2330750/Cataclysm_Dark_Days_Ahead/
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Most Helpful Reviews
In the past 7 days
Posted: 31 March
In case you're not familiar with CDDA, here's some neat infos to know before considering to buy the game:
-Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead is a free open-source game available at https://cataclysmdda.org/releases.
-This steam version has only two purposes:
1. To support the developer behind the steam version (KorGgenT).
2. Prevent a potential third-party from commercializing the game.
-The steam version will only contain the LAST stable branch of the game. NEW stable branches are usually released every 16 months, you can gain access to "experimental" unstable branches on the CDDA website.
-Nobody else in the development team benefits from the sales of the game. They have however approved the release of this release.
-Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead is a free open-source game available at https://cataclysmdda.org/releases.
-This steam version has only two purposes:
1. To support the developer behind the steam version (KorGgenT).
2. Prevent a potential third-party from commercializing the game.
-The steam version will only contain the LAST stable branch of the game. NEW stable branches are usually released every 16 months, you can gain access to "experimental" unstable branches on the CDDA website.
-Nobody else in the development team benefits from the sales of the game. They have however approved the release of this release.
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Posted: 31 March
Fair warning: Although I am not directly affiliated with the Steam release, I am one of the lead developers on this project. I have probably over a thousand play hours in this game, and I don't even want to think about how many hours I've devoted to either directly writing or drawing content for it or helping others to do the same... probably in the five digits. Great scott, I'm surprised my wife hasn't staged an intervention.
Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead is one of the most captivating games I've ever played. I'm a lead developer on it - a volunteer role, mind you - because I've never found anything else that so perfectly encapsulates the feeling of *living after the end*. It's difficult to put into words what this game is. It's choppy, hard to learn, and kind of ugly to look at most of the time. Personally, I think it's easier to explain it through the events in game that made me love it. Once, my survivor was wet and cold and sad, after a day out in the rain where she'd had to put down the zombie corpse of a child. She curled up by the fire, reading a trashy romance novel and eating salvaged cookies right out of the box. It didn't take away the bad memories but it helped. Another time, I lost a survivor because I foolishly opened a barn hoping to find a functioning vehicle. Instead, I learned that the farmer had sealed in a horde of zombies in there, and I'd just released them. I frantically tried to slam the door closed, but it was too late: the machinery was too slow. In this game, I've built custom cars, comfortable homes, and told myself stories about the lives my survivors lead when all is lost. I love the survival-rpg genre, and CDDA has to some degree ruined other games in this genre for me. Even ones I love always have me coming back here, wishing I could have taken apart the furniture to build myself a shelter in that fancier, prettier 1st person game. It also grows and expands faster than any game I know of, with each stable build bringing in what feels like a new game. On this playthrough, I've been on hiatus for a few months from the game, and I'm finding myself surprised and sometimes even shocked by how much it's changed just since I last joined. Pet peeves are gone, UI is improved, and I can forage for false solomon's seal, which obviously is absolutely core to any gameplay experience.
I'll use this review to clarify a few things as well. I am one of the lead developers in the free version of this game. KorGgenT is another lead dev. He published on Steam only after approaching as many of the lead devs and core contributors as he could and making sure we are okay with it. For years we have been saying that donation to Korg's patreon is the best way to support the game, as he is the only lead dev hoping to make a career out of game development. The rest of us have our own day jobs and no interest in monetizing our hobby, but we absolutely want to see Korg succeed at this: it is no coincidence that the staunchest supporters of the Steam release are also some of the longest-running, most involved contributors. Of course nothing is 100% and a few contributors feel differently, but Korg made every reasonable effort to ensure that this release had the blessing of as many central, decision-making figures in the DDA project as he could. It does. Buying this release is supporting Cataclysm's development in as direct a way as you can possibly achieve. The other option was to leave it for an uninvolved third party to take over on Steam, which would have led to precisely no money coming back to support development. You can, of course, still download the game for free, and nobody will think any differently of you; we just want people to play our game, nothing else. Buying it on steam gives you access to cloud saves and achievements, and I imagine more will open up over time, but it's not intended to be a "pay for special rewards" release. Just a way to support the project and bring it to a wider audience, as well as to see just how many hours you've spent salvaging questionable snacks from the pockets of a rotting corpse.
Anyway. I've devoted enough time to this. My survivor needs a bed, and it's not going to make itself.
Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead is one of the most captivating games I've ever played. I'm a lead developer on it - a volunteer role, mind you - because I've never found anything else that so perfectly encapsulates the feeling of *living after the end*. It's difficult to put into words what this game is. It's choppy, hard to learn, and kind of ugly to look at most of the time. Personally, I think it's easier to explain it through the events in game that made me love it. Once, my survivor was wet and cold and sad, after a day out in the rain where she'd had to put down the zombie corpse of a child. She curled up by the fire, reading a trashy romance novel and eating salvaged cookies right out of the box. It didn't take away the bad memories but it helped. Another time, I lost a survivor because I foolishly opened a barn hoping to find a functioning vehicle. Instead, I learned that the farmer had sealed in a horde of zombies in there, and I'd just released them. I frantically tried to slam the door closed, but it was too late: the machinery was too slow. In this game, I've built custom cars, comfortable homes, and told myself stories about the lives my survivors lead when all is lost. I love the survival-rpg genre, and CDDA has to some degree ruined other games in this genre for me. Even ones I love always have me coming back here, wishing I could have taken apart the furniture to build myself a shelter in that fancier, prettier 1st person game. It also grows and expands faster than any game I know of, with each stable build bringing in what feels like a new game. On this playthrough, I've been on hiatus for a few months from the game, and I'm finding myself surprised and sometimes even shocked by how much it's changed just since I last joined. Pet peeves are gone, UI is improved, and I can forage for false solomon's seal, which obviously is absolutely core to any gameplay experience.
I'll use this review to clarify a few things as well. I am one of the lead developers in the free version of this game. KorGgenT is another lead dev. He published on Steam only after approaching as many of the lead devs and core contributors as he could and making sure we are okay with it. For years we have been saying that donation to Korg's patreon is the best way to support the game, as he is the only lead dev hoping to make a career out of game development. The rest of us have our own day jobs and no interest in monetizing our hobby, but we absolutely want to see Korg succeed at this: it is no coincidence that the staunchest supporters of the Steam release are also some of the longest-running, most involved contributors. Of course nothing is 100% and a few contributors feel differently, but Korg made every reasonable effort to ensure that this release had the blessing of as many central, decision-making figures in the DDA project as he could. It does. Buying this release is supporting Cataclysm's development in as direct a way as you can possibly achieve. The other option was to leave it for an uninvolved third party to take over on Steam, which would have led to precisely no money coming back to support development. You can, of course, still download the game for free, and nobody will think any differently of you; we just want people to play our game, nothing else. Buying it on steam gives you access to cloud saves and achievements, and I imagine more will open up over time, but it's not intended to be a "pay for special rewards" release. Just a way to support the project and bring it to a wider audience, as well as to see just how many hours you've spent salvaging questionable snacks from the pockets of a rotting corpse.
Anyway. I've devoted enough time to this. My survivor needs a bed, and it's not going to make itself.
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2 people found this review funny
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Pre-Release Review
Posted: 31 March
Product received for free
CDDA is so good I waste my life making content for it.
More seriously, this game good. If you want to become a cyborg, we got you. If you want to become a mutant catgirl, you can do that. You want to build a motorcycle from scratch? Yep. Why not take it a step further and make a colossal armor plated amphibious deathmobile with turrets and seats for your mutant NPC companions? Oh yeah, that too, there’s driving in this, which is a pretty uncommon feature for similar games. You want to build a forge from some rocks you found and work your way up to crafting yourself a full set of plate mail so you can batter dozens (hundreds?) of zombie variants, otherworldly creatures, mutant animals, and etc.? You know we have that.
I don’t know man, I could list a million things that I love about this game. Truly one of my favorite of all time, I don’t know what else to say. Give it a shot, you might be like me and find a game you’ll play for the rest of your life.
More seriously, this game good. If you want to become a cyborg, we got you. If you want to become a mutant catgirl, you can do that. You want to build a motorcycle from scratch? Yep. Why not take it a step further and make a colossal armor plated amphibious deathmobile with turrets and seats for your mutant NPC companions? Oh yeah, that too, there’s driving in this, which is a pretty uncommon feature for similar games. You want to build a forge from some rocks you found and work your way up to crafting yourself a full set of plate mail so you can batter dozens (hundreds?) of zombie variants, otherworldly creatures, mutant animals, and etc.? You know we have that.
I don’t know man, I could list a million things that I love about this game. Truly one of my favorite of all time, I don’t know what else to say. Give it a shot, you might be like me and find a game you’ll play for the rest of your life.
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160 people found this review helpful
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Most Helpful Reviews
In the past day
Posted: 3 April
This is solely meant to apply to the Steam release, which I paid $19.99 for despite having probably a thousand hours in the free version.
I hope that more effort is put into integration with the Steam overlay, which freezes the game (or Steam?) if you attempt to "Backtab" using the default "Shift-Tab" keyboard shortcut, a vital command in the game and the default Steam overlay keyboard shortcut.
Game errors still pop up, such as "There's already an enemy in location x" etc., errors which are common to the experimental/stable open source version as well. However, I would expect a $20 Steam release would attempt to more firmly address these problems.
I got a lot of text shimmering at 1440p with the default font settings upon game start. I eventually chose a good terminal font and followed a helpful Steam guide to alter my settings and now the game looks great. I would expect more effort be made to make the default settings appropriate, or easier for new players to fix those problems. The steps you need to take for this version are obtuse. For free, I can deal with it. Not at $20.
Certain items with the default tileset still use ASCII characters as on-screen graphical representation. Again, for $20, every tile in the game should have proper representation in the default tileset.
Steam Achievements are nice, the game looks great, sounds great, plays great, but for $20, the production values do not match my expectations.
I hope that more effort is put into integration with the Steam overlay, which freezes the game (or Steam?) if you attempt to "Backtab" using the default "Shift-Tab" keyboard shortcut, a vital command in the game and the default Steam overlay keyboard shortcut.
Game errors still pop up, such as "There's already an enemy in location x" etc., errors which are common to the experimental/stable open source version as well. However, I would expect a $20 Steam release would attempt to more firmly address these problems.
I got a lot of text shimmering at 1440p with the default font settings upon game start. I eventually chose a good terminal font and followed a helpful Steam guide to alter my settings and now the game looks great. I would expect more effort be made to make the default settings appropriate, or easier for new players to fix those problems. The steps you need to take for this version are obtuse. For free, I can deal with it. Not at $20.
Certain items with the default tileset still use ASCII characters as on-screen graphical representation. Again, for $20, every tile in the game should have proper representation in the default tileset.
Steam Achievements are nice, the game looks great, sounds great, plays great, but for $20, the production values do not match my expectations.
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45 people found this review helpful
Posted: 3 April
Cataclysm is the kind of game you need a wiki open for. It's a post-apocalyptic survival rougelike, but it is not "like rogue" in every way. It is very heavily geared towards a strong sense of "versimillitude", the authenticity of the world it presents the player; realism suff. There is permadeath, and only one save per character per world; no built-in savescumming (although quicksaves and alt+f4 have your back there). There's an enormous amount of stuff to do and see, and the amount of content in the game increases with every release. Expect to die many times, because every death is a lesson on how to do better next time!
For the most part, you'll end up having to loot houses and commercial buildings in a vaguely New England themed infinite world, live off the land, and make quick decisions on whether you can afford to fight that group of monsters with the gun you just looted off a zombie soldier, as limited in ammo as it is, or if you'll just need to drop everything and run to survive for another day. The tools you need to get that old car running, or craft that item you need, might not always be in your reach. You'll need to keep a variety of food and meds ready, despite often being without refrigeration, to stave off vitamin deficiencies and keep your body weight and health in good shape. And when winter hits, you'll need to keep warm, or freeze to death. Playing Cataclysm is a gauntlet of risk assessment and carefully planning your next move despite what is likely to be an endless torrent of setbacks. There's really no other game like it.
The game also supports a healthy modding community, and comes pre-packaged with a number of mods. Dinomod, a mod adding dinosaurs and zombie dinosaurs, and Magiclysm, a mod adding a full magic system and magical creatures and items, are two of the bigger ones. There are also a variety of tilesets available, selectable in the options menu. There are a swathe of different visual styles among them; this can be seen from the store page screenshots. Other mods can be found scattered around github and reddit, but one must take care to ensure the mod is meant for that version of the game, in this case version "Stable 0.G" for steam, and not one older or newer.
Due to the fact the Steam version of Cataclysm is set to a stable release, you will be unlikely to encounter too many issues or errors out of the box, the developers tend to do a great job ironing out bugs and errors for their stable releases. There is also an experimental version of the game which is not currently accessible through steam. It gets updates basically daily, but they may not all be stable changes or complete; errors and glitches and unfinished systems are extremely common on experimental. But on the other hand, experimental lets you play with all the new features being added to the game as they're put in, and to be able to give feedback on whether or not there's any glaring issues with them. Unless the experimental builds were to be added to steam's beta, we could expect a few hotfixes for 0.G, until work begins on finalizing the next stable version, presumably "0.H" based on the game's development history, but this won't take place for another year or two.
Outside of the game itself, its development style is notable: this an open-source game, where anyone with programming skills or even just a simple understanding of the JSON file format can contribute to its development, as long as your changes fit the vision of the project leadership. All versions of the game are actually free, via the github linked on the store page. You do not actually need to buy the game here on steam if you don't want to. And in fact, I would actively encourage trying it out for free first.
This may make you curious as to why buy the steam version at all; It's really just to support the game's development. However, like most things on the Internet these days, there's some drama, you may see some angry refunded reviews about this, so allow me to explain, or just skip if you don't care: Buying this version of the game supports specifically one of the top members on the dev team, KorgGenT. All the other leading members of the dev team, after much discussion, chose Korg as the man to both set up everything to do with supporting the steam version, and to take all the income the steam version will raise. None of the devs besides Korg was willing to undertake the effort of integrating steam's API into the game, and they are all in agreement that splitting the money between them would both make it too small an amount to be worthwhile, and become a PITA because of the extra layer of money management involved; their ultimate hope here is that, with all the proceeds from this paid version of the game going to Korg, it could be enough to allow him to work on the game full-time. This would be enormously beneficial, as there are currently no full-time developers working on the game; everyone has regular jobs and contributes to the game as a hobby, on their own time. Someone finally working full-time on Cataclysm could only help speed up the pace of experimental game updates, and subsequently to reduce the timescale between stable releases; more Cataclysm, faster than ever before. This is not Korg going rogue, or breaking rules, or anything; this is how it is, and how the lead devs want it to be. Right now, the main steam exclusive feature for the game is simply its achievements, but Steam Workshop integration may be upcoming (which could be pretty cool, as discovery for mods can be rather difficult as-is without a centralized repository for them like the steam workshop. There's been no promises about this, though).
So, pay for the steam version to support the game's development, or play for free if you're just trying/learning and don't care about any of that. It's all good either way! Cataclysm is a good game, it's worth learning about, it's worth watching people play who have experience with the game, it's worth trying out for yourself. Highly recommended.
For the most part, you'll end up having to loot houses and commercial buildings in a vaguely New England themed infinite world, live off the land, and make quick decisions on whether you can afford to fight that group of monsters with the gun you just looted off a zombie soldier, as limited in ammo as it is, or if you'll just need to drop everything and run to survive for another day. The tools you need to get that old car running, or craft that item you need, might not always be in your reach. You'll need to keep a variety of food and meds ready, despite often being without refrigeration, to stave off vitamin deficiencies and keep your body weight and health in good shape. And when winter hits, you'll need to keep warm, or freeze to death. Playing Cataclysm is a gauntlet of risk assessment and carefully planning your next move despite what is likely to be an endless torrent of setbacks. There's really no other game like it.
The game also supports a healthy modding community, and comes pre-packaged with a number of mods. Dinomod, a mod adding dinosaurs and zombie dinosaurs, and Magiclysm, a mod adding a full magic system and magical creatures and items, are two of the bigger ones. There are also a variety of tilesets available, selectable in the options menu. There are a swathe of different visual styles among them; this can be seen from the store page screenshots. Other mods can be found scattered around github and reddit, but one must take care to ensure the mod is meant for that version of the game, in this case version "Stable 0.G" for steam, and not one older or newer.
Due to the fact the Steam version of Cataclysm is set to a stable release, you will be unlikely to encounter too many issues or errors out of the box, the developers tend to do a great job ironing out bugs and errors for their stable releases. There is also an experimental version of the game which is not currently accessible through steam. It gets updates basically daily, but they may not all be stable changes or complete; errors and glitches and unfinished systems are extremely common on experimental. But on the other hand, experimental lets you play with all the new features being added to the game as they're put in, and to be able to give feedback on whether or not there's any glaring issues with them. Unless the experimental builds were to be added to steam's beta, we could expect a few hotfixes for 0.G, until work begins on finalizing the next stable version, presumably "0.H" based on the game's development history, but this won't take place for another year or two.
Outside of the game itself, its development style is notable: this an open-source game, where anyone with programming skills or even just a simple understanding of the JSON file format can contribute to its development, as long as your changes fit the vision of the project leadership. All versions of the game are actually free, via the github linked on the store page. You do not actually need to buy the game here on steam if you don't want to. And in fact, I would actively encourage trying it out for free first.
This may make you curious as to why buy the steam version at all; It's really just to support the game's development. However, like most things on the Internet these days, there's some drama, you may see some angry refunded reviews about this, so allow me to explain, or just skip if you don't care: Buying this version of the game supports specifically one of the top members on the dev team, KorgGenT. All the other leading members of the dev team, after much discussion, chose Korg as the man to both set up everything to do with supporting the steam version, and to take all the income the steam version will raise. None of the devs besides Korg was willing to undertake the effort of integrating steam's API into the game, and they are all in agreement that splitting the money between them would both make it too small an amount to be worthwhile, and become a PITA because of the extra layer of money management involved; their ultimate hope here is that, with all the proceeds from this paid version of the game going to Korg, it could be enough to allow him to work on the game full-time. This would be enormously beneficial, as there are currently no full-time developers working on the game; everyone has regular jobs and contributes to the game as a hobby, on their own time. Someone finally working full-time on Cataclysm could only help speed up the pace of experimental game updates, and subsequently to reduce the timescale between stable releases; more Cataclysm, faster than ever before. This is not Korg going rogue, or breaking rules, or anything; this is how it is, and how the lead devs want it to be. Right now, the main steam exclusive feature for the game is simply its achievements, but Steam Workshop integration may be upcoming (which could be pretty cool, as discovery for mods can be rather difficult as-is without a centralized repository for them like the steam workshop. There's been no promises about this, though).
So, pay for the steam version to support the game's development, or play for free if you're just trying/learning and don't care about any of that. It's all good either way! Cataclysm is a good game, it's worth learning about, it's worth watching people play who have experience with the game, it's worth trying out for yourself. Highly recommended.
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15 people found this review helpful
Posted: 4 April
You use your femboy body pillow for comfort.
You put on your | | fedora (poor fit).
You put on your | | trenchcoat (poor fit).
You perform a kuji-in mantra with your hands. Rin, Kai, Jin!
You wield your | \ katana.
You put on your | | fedora (poor fit).
You put on your | | trenchcoat (poor fit).
You perform a kuji-in mantra with your hands. Rin, Kai, Jin!
You wield your | \ katana.
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8 people found this review helpful
4 people found this review funny
4 people found this review funny
Posted: 3 April
Support the open source community! Massive love and respect to everyone who contributed to CDDA. From small doc updates and bug fixes, to large feature sets, all of you have made one of the greatest traditional roguelikes we have seen. As a long time player, you all have consistently improved the game over the years with each release. Thank you!
Also, cloud saves are worth the $20 on its own, IMO.
Also, cloud saves are worth the $20 on its own, IMO.
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3 people found this review helpful
Posted: 3 April
You can smoke crack with eldritch abominations. 10/10
Was this review helpful?
6 people found this review helpful
Posted: 3 April
I probably spend weeks with the free version, bought it on steam to support KorGgenT.
Promptly dumped 11 more hours into the game, Clearing a school building of Zombies, finding only one semi automatic gun (I thought this was america?), no soap, but one cheerleader skirt in a teachers desk.
Proceeded to break the 100 Z's killed within the first four or so hours thanks to my trusty throwing knives and a Baseball Bat, slapped the Nurse robot around for not having ANY medical supplies, proceeded to whack some cat sized Roaches and Cellar spiders.
Found a Tuxedo, some more guns and Platinum bling, went to do a workout after most of a cake, ate the rest of the cake, and then went to bed hugging a stuffed shark.
That was a decent first day I would say.
Promptly dumped 11 more hours into the game, Clearing a school building of Zombies, finding only one semi automatic gun (I thought this was america?), no soap, but one cheerleader skirt in a teachers desk.
Proceeded to break the 100 Z's killed within the first four or so hours thanks to my trusty throwing knives and a Baseball Bat, slapped the Nurse robot around for not having ANY medical supplies, proceeded to whack some cat sized Roaches and Cellar spiders.
Found a Tuxedo, some more guns and Platinum bling, went to do a workout after most of a cake, ate the rest of the cake, and then went to bed hugging a stuffed shark.
That was a decent first day I would say.
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2 people found this review helpful
2 people found this review funny
2 people found this review funny
Posted: 3 April
Don't really know what I'm doing, nor do I have the time right now to figure it out, but I am having a great time. I see the sheer amount of things that can be done in this game and I am wholeheartedly advocating it.
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4 people found this review helpful
Recommend
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