During my Cataclismo preview, I highlighted how Spanish studio Digital Sun smartly mixed the Lego-like promise at the center of the experience with a pretty convincing old school RTS foundation and built up from there. After beating the campaign levels in its pre-release early access build and spending some extra time with the other game modes, I can safely say Hooded Horse’s new bet is off to a promising start.
As an up-and-coming indie games publisher, Hooded Horse has (so far) had an impressive knack for finding and elevating tactical and strategic titles that have something valuable to add to their respective genres and the conversation which surrounds them. Of course, Against the Storm and Manor Lords instantly come to mind, but I’ve personally been impressed by their output, as well as the overall degree of final polish of each project, for a long while now. Cataclismo is yet another early access title daring to engage with its potential community before fully realizing its vision, and if we examine its more creative side, that might’ve been the right call.
As I said in my preview, I prioritized the story campaign – which already runs for five to six hours (depending on the difficulty chosen) – and later moved on to check out the secondary modes, which surely will gain traction as the game grows and players who stick with it beat the narrative-heavy levels. In fact, the current (cliffhanger) ending of the campaign encourages you to do so, also suggesting the right order is to approach the 11 story levels (plus a couple of secondary missions) as an ambitious tutorial of sorts.
Beyond the additional building blocks, actual buildings, and units that are added to Iris’ (the protagonist) arsenal over the course of the campaign, however, there isn’t much here to learn beyond the basics of Lego-building that are shared early on, at least for anyone who’s been playing real-time strategy titles before. I’d already mentioned that Digital Sun’s newest game is surprisingly traditional when it comes to the systems that accompany the creative front, and I stand by that statement hours later.
This isn’t a knock on the game, especially if you look at the studio’s two previous titles, Moonlighter and The Mageseeker, and how the developers tinkered with very tried-and-tested formulas and put their shy but convincing spins on them. While Cataclismo does feel different in that you’re not just dragging and dropping Age of Empires-like walls to protect your towns, everything that isn’t creating and optimizing the flexible, player-built defensive constructions (which can be saved for easier use later and shared via Steam Workshop) behaves exactly like in an early 2000s RTS. Since that subgenre is barely limping along nowadays, I don’t have it in me to see that side of the game as a negative point.
On the other hand, I’m not that sold on the narrative efforts on display up to the cutoff point of the current early access build. There’s a noteworthy tease at the very end that suggests Iris and her mission could take a darker detour, yet Cataclismo’s storytelling seems to be at odds with itself most of the time. There’s a lot of it, with some missions becoming almost glorified cutscenes with very little exploration gameplay despite some welcome puzzle-like sections, but the characterizations (which aren’t a thing beyond the talented protagonist) and epic worldbuilding aren’t really there beyond the opening lore dumps about the Cataclismo, the mysterious perlas (yes, there are lots of Spanish vocabulary ingrained in this one), and Hogar’s difficult position as mankind’s last bastion of hope.
Some might see this as a warning to avoid the campaign, but that’s not what I’m trying to say here. You should totally play it first, and the designs themselves of the numerous building/defense scenarios carry the entire thing and provide meaty challenges if you go with the higher difficulties, but the ‘Story’ difficulty level shouldn’t trick anyone into thinking Cataclismo is enticing without engaging with its most interesting mechanics. The flexible approach to creating defenses that can keep the Mist and the monsters it produces away are the bread and butter of the game, and eschewing that aspect of the experience and doing the bare minimum will lead to disappointment.
This also leads me to believe the game’s longevity will depend on how much players who jump into it actually put the creative tools it offers to good use. Beyond the modes that run on content designed by the devs, ‘endless’ maps can be generated and shared via seeds, and there’s a level editor in place for those who are willing to go deeper into the sandbox. While saving buildings that you come up with after tinkering with blocks for 15 minutes is almost obligatory to avoid slowing the latter levels down to a crawl, level creation is a far more involved process that will understandably appeal to fewer players.
The presentation is every bit as unique but uncomplicated as the main playable hook, with both the in-game graphics and the drawn cutscenes sporting a stylish look which doesn’t let Cataclismo become yet another generic grimdark fantasy game despite the hopelessness that envelops its world. Given the approach to some of the vocabulary and accents used, I was a bit disappointed by the lack of a bigger Iberian influence on the art though. More importantly, it’s easy to discern units and buildings amidst all the chaos, which is a must for a siege-type RTS. That connection with the gameplay is perfected further by the clear sound design and mixing. In many occasions, that’s what got me to turn my attention to an unattended part of the battlefield which I thought was fine. The original music, meanwhile, blends in with the background sound effects and adds to the overall mood, but I’d be lying if I said I’m gonna be humming any of its tracks.
Performance might be a concern for strategy veterans, especially with heavy simulations playing a huge role as surviving each night gets harder, but on a 7800X3D, things only got choppy-ish in the current final level of the campaign, and even then I was well over 60 FPS at max settings and 1440p resolution. The scenery and amount of demanding visuals hadn’t really increased, so I’m attributing it to the sheer amount of enemies charging towards my defenses. This might be a problem for anyone daring to go crazy with the level editor, however, so it’ll be interesting to see whether the inner workings of Cataclismo get some extra polish as it nears its 1.0 release.
Much like past Hooded Horse-published indie releases, Cataclismo feels like a game made by and for lovers of the genre it belongs to. There’s tons of love and passion put into this one, and the expertise and polish can be felt throughout everything that’s there. My biggest concerns are related to whether there’s enough narrative meat on those story bones and the slim possibility of its more creative side flying under the radar and never reaching its true player-fueled potential.
Verdict: Recommended
Cataclismo is launching in early access on July 22 via GOG and Steam.
Published: Jul 19, 2024 10:00 am