Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead
2013
- role-playing (rpg)
- simulator
- adventure
- indie
- action
- horror
- survival
- sandbox
- open world
- 4x (explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate)
The story
Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead (aka Cataclysm DDA or CataDDA) is an open source survival horror roguelike set in a post-apocalyptic and fictional New England. Unlike most roguelikes, it has no goal: the player is free to explore the procedurally generated map, clear areas of monsters, work with NPCs, and build shelters and vehicles. The gameplay is mainly based on day-to-day survival, and the game tracks parameters like hunger, thirst, morale, illness and temperature which the player must manage to stay alive. Like most roguelikes Cataclysm: DDA follows turn based gameplay. The world has support for seasons and dynamic weather conditions and the season lengths can be modified during world generation. A typical world has cities, towns, rivers, forests, bridges and other landmarks. Cities and towns generally have all the common establishments generally found in real world such as houses, departmental stores, malls, parking lots, swimming pools, hospitals, malls, etc. Exotic locations such as Science Labs, Military installations, missile silos can be found in remote places throughout the whole world. Latest versions have support for experimental 3-D buildings.
What it’s like
Ascii glyphs on a dark terminal grid, with the world rendered as tiles of brown, grey and green, and the day cycling through dim dawns, hot white noons and blue-black nights as seasons turn the fields and treelines. The soundtrack, where it exists, is sparse and ambient, so most of the atmosphere comes from the quiet hum of a turn-based pace: each step, search and crafting action ticks forward, and the silence between them carries a lonely, watchful dread. The vibe is bleak but methodical, a patient and absorbing survival loop with long stretches of routine like rationing, repairing and barricading a house before dusk. Its intensity runs from tense to brutal: zombies and other monsters, combat with gore and blood, death that is permanent and frequent, and a steady pressure of hunger, cold and illness, though nothing sexual and little that is shown in detail beyond the grid. It suits a late night alone, a long-haul trip spent planning a base, or anyone who enjoys roguelikes and sandbox games with no final goal. It is for players who want to build small, careful routines against an indifferent world and accept that every mistake may be the last.
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