CATACLISMO
Build a better barrier, brick by brick
Like a biscuit dunked too long in a cup of tea, the fortress walls begin to crumble and then come crashing down, no longer able to withstand the endless wave of raking claws and toothy maws. The citadel is lost – and as hundreds of mutant creatures storm the keep, pushing into every nook and cranny, we take in the scene. Next time will be different. It’s time to build higher – or simply better.
The defeat is no one’s fault but our own, since the design and durability of Cataclismo’s fortresses are completely down to the player. Each night, hordes of fleshy enemies known as ‘Horrors’ will throw themselves at your settlement, and to fend them off you need to construct fortified stone walls around it. The world has been left in ruin by the eponymous event, and playing as Lady Iris – prophet and commander of humanity’s last great city – you need to defend your people from these monsters in an absorbing fusion of realtime strategy and tower defence.
We start by assembling a basic battlement, selecting and placing each stone block as you would with Lego bricks. There’s a good balance of preset pieces to pick from, and plenty of freedom to build what you envision. The taller your wall, the tougher it will be, encouraging you to push your creations to new heights.
Construction is quick, easy but satisfying work, even if our first build is a little rudimentary. Initially, your units are all ranged attackers and you’ll have to position them at specific heights to make efficient use of them. Archers, for instance, work better from five metres and above, whereas the heavier, more devastating lobbers hit harder from four. Building with these specifications in mind is vital, since you need every tactical advantage you can get when the creatures emerge.
Within those walls, meanwhile, you’ll be dabbling with light resource management. Resources are often out of reach to your workers, so you’ll need to build paths and walkways to access them. Certain structures, such as purifiers that filter the poisoned air, must be built on high ground, and since space is tight, some buildings can be built on top of one another. In other words, you’re constantly thinking in terms of elevation, and with only limited supplies and a handful of soldiers, you need to be smart with what you have. We rebuild regularly as we gain more resources and units, sloppy stonework replaced with sturdier fortifications and more efficient designs.
Yet no matter how prepared you are, you’ll always be bricking it when the night comes. A little before the first wave, environmental icons indicate from which direction swarms are coming, giving you just enough time to switch unit placement if needed. It’s a tense moment of stillness and silence before the hordes arrive: their size doesn’t inspire so much anxiety as their sheer numbers, with hundreds of mindless monsters slamming into your walls. And Cataclismo’s realistic physics systems mean that if one of your lower blocks is broken, those above it will come tumbling down, too – including any soldiers you may have had perched on top.
There’s gripping drama in these battles, as you wait to see if your precise planning and building pay off, or if it will all collapse before your eyes. Our build ends with a teaser of what’s to come, with Iris leading an expedition through the ominous Old Lands and perilous Sea Of Mist to search for the Alta Pearl – a force prophesied to bring an end to the Cataclismo. Assuming things escalate as expected, there’s the potential for Cataclismo’s later battles to match the spectacle and scale of Akira Kurosawa’s Ran or the battle for Helm’s Deep in The Lord Of The Rings. In any event, it’s probably time for us to brush up on the art of castle construction ahead of the full game’s release later this year.
There’s the potential for later battles to match the spectacle of the battle for Helm’s Deep