Cataclismo

Cataclismo was provided by Hooded Horse for review. Thank you!

A LCD Steam Deck was used for this review. OLED testing will follow.

Cataclismo is in early access, so performance and content is subject to changes.

Indie publisher Hooded Horse shows no signs of slowing down, and their most recent acquisition, Digital Sun, has released a brand new title with them. From the makers of Moonlighter, Cataclismo is a fascinating little title that offers a lot. While I found Moonlighter a little stale at times, I loved the creative design that went into it. Combining a dungeon crawler with running a little shop was a fantastic idea, and Digital Sun brought that same creativity into their new game.

When I first learned about Cataclismo during Summer Game Fest, its setting and unique mechanics caught my interest immediately. Still, the base-building RTS set in a dark, apocalyptic hellscape with Lego-esque building mechanics makes it more complex than many rivals, and even though it is in early access, it boasts polish and content with 11 campaign missions, skirmish and free build mode, and even Steam Workshop support. After spending time with the different modes available, I can happily recommend it, and apart from some minor annoying issues, it is enjoyable on the Steam Deck.

In this post-apocalyptic world, mankind is barely clinging to life after the realm is engulfed by a cataclysm known as Cataclismo, a demonic fog that covers the land. With hordes of terrifying horrors hunting down humanity, the fragile survivors hold out in small citadels, desperately trying to survive. It is a great example of a story told through game design. Everything from character movement to building a citadel makes sense in the world’s lore, and the voice acting breathes life into the tale.

Currently, I consider Cataclismo’s campaign an extended tutorial alongside the story. As much as I enjoy this approach, I would appreciate a separate mode to learn the game. I usually avoid incomplete story games in Early Access because a lot can change during development. Still, I will say that the cutscenes in the campaign are incredibly well done. Despite it being incomplete, I recommend playing through what’s currently available. You will learn to play the game better and enjoy a decent narrative.

Real challenges exist as a real-time strategy game that combines freeform building with tower defense combat. While you do not need to micromanage workers to collect resources, buildings must be built so workers can always access them. Logistics matters in this game, and if you’re like me, you need to be careful what pathways you build. When I built a quarry, I was caught out a few times and wondered why my workers weren’t mining stone. I discovered they could not get up the cliff: the path I had made for them was wrong! When I fixed it, a swarm of horrors attacked my Citadel, forcing me to retry. Oops.

Oh, and that demonic fog I mentioned? It impacts gameplay, too. Your surviving colony needs clean air, and building air filters to reach the clean air is essential. All the freeform building blocks available to the player come into play as you need to make platforms and elevations for everything from defenses to cleaner air filtering. Weather conditions will impact your survival later, so planning will be very important.

Then, we have the combat, where the tower defense comes in. While you build defensive positions and train units, the enemy throws themselves at you in increasing numbers. Fortifying walls, setting up chokepoints, arming traps, and using your soldiers effectively are all vital for survival. These enemies bring down unfortified walls quickly, and I found the frantic defense of my Citadel deeply engaging. It’s not easy, but the gameplay is balanced between challenging and frustrating. I must also mention the sound design because the ominous music and ghoulish sounds help set the scene.

One of Cataclismo’s biggest strengths for Early Access is the map editor. Access to this is one of the most important features in the genre, so I’m delighted we’re able to make our maps already. I played a little with it on PC and the Deck and had fun! You can create skirmish maps and endless modes with a fair amount of customization:

On the technical side, I encountered a couple of bugs. Occasionally, my units got snagged on parts of the terrain, and I had one nasty crash on Mission 4 that erased all my progress. While the save was salvaged on my laptop, it would not register on the Steam Deck despite the cloud saves. I wasn’t able to replicate the crash, and it did not take me too long to get back to where I was, but I expect a couple of teething issues.

I’m also not a fan of the lack of manual saving, but the auto-saving feature feels robust, and you can rewind days if something goes wrong.

Cataclismo - Steam Deck Performance

Cataclismo’s performance on the Steam Deck is somewhat of a mixed bag, although not in the way you might think. As usual, I began with an unmodified Deck setup. With 60hz, unlocked TDP, a native 1280x800 resolution, and graphics on Low, I achieved a steady 60FPS across the board. With the unlocked TDP, Cataclismo is fairly kind on the Steam Deck’s hardware, but I switched to a 40hz refresh rate fairly quickly to improve battery life. You can tweak a few settings in-game, including environmental detail, shadows, anti-aliasing, and v-sync. With the Steam Deck’s screen, I found little visual benefit in turning graphical settings above Medium at most.

As someone who loves squeezing as much battery life as possible, I began tinkering with settings. Unlike many other games I’ve tested, Cataclismo does not benefit much from a lower TDP. By turning off shadows and bringing all the settings to their minimum, I could reduce the TDP limit to 5 and maintain a reasonable 30FPS with the in-built frame limiter set to 30 (Vsync off). With that, I found an average power draw of 10 watts. The battery savings were helpful, but I don’t see much of an advantage in limiting TDP to that. For science, I tried 3w TDP but found it unplayable. Either keep it at 5 or just leave the TDP untouched, which is my recommendation. This is Early Access, so optimizations might improve performance down the line.

Despite running at an unlocked TDP, Cataclismo is not too harsh on the battery life. With the standard settings and a 40hz refresh rate, it managed an average power draw of 11 watts, with occasional spikes to 12 and 13w during intense attacks by dozens of horrors. Overall, it's not bad! This translated to an estimated 3.5 hours of battery life for the LCD Steam Deck I own. I expect a modest improvement in battery life for the OLED model. This ended up being my preferred way to play for the extra smoothness.

There is no controller support for Cataclismo. The controls are functional with the Mouse and WASD controller profile, although you might want to tweak mouse sensitivity. Trying to navigate narrow pathways for your economy took some getting used to. I also recommend setting the Q/E keys to the back buttons on your Steam Deck to enable camera panning.

I found reading dialogue and text difficult on the Steam Deck, and there was no way to change the interface size or font. While this is a problem, I would not go as far as to call it unplayable. I could still play the game reasonably well, but it is something to mention. Between that and the lack of built-in controller support, Cataclismo requires a little maintenance to work. 

Accessibility

Cataclismo is playable in English, French, German, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Portuguese, Traditional Chinese, and Simplified Chinese.

You can change screen resolution, invert the X and Y axis, and change the cursor sensitivity. The recycle mode activation can also be toggled on or off, and an automatic pause can be turned on for a building’s requirements. The camera has a wide range of control in general settings as well.

There are no options for colorblind support, and the interface cannot be changed.

Conclusion

Overall, Cataclismo makes an impressive package. With solid worldbuilding through gameplay, the modular way you can build fortresses, and a fair amount of starting content, Digital Sun has come out of the gates swinging with Cataclismo, and I am looking forward to seeing where development will head. Despite some small text frustrations and the lack of controller support, I would still recommend Cataclismo for the Steam Deck with the caveats mentioned. Even with the lack of controller support, I could navigate the game fairly well. With Hooded Horse backing them, I have high hopes for Cataclismo and Digital Sun.

Our review is based on the PC version of this game.

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