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Cataclismo is not about protecting your towns, it’s about protecting your beautiful staircasesL’esprit de l’escalier
L’esprit de l’escalier
Image credit:Digital Sun
Image credit:Digital Sun
BetweenAgainst The Storms’ critters,Manor Lords’s perfectoxen, and nowCataclismo, Hooded Horse’s roster ofstrategygames share a common thread that many guard-the-village-em-ups can fatally overlook: they present a civilisation that’s worth protecting. Even if the fallen culture you’ll defend against waves of gribblies offers fascinatingly few concrete details on its origins, there’s a lithe and impressionistic otherworldliness and use of colour in Cataclismo’s art that evokes unearthed layers of history. Also, everyone is just so gosh darn likeable, with their foppish hats plopped atop stretched bodies, and dialogue that remains resolute, chirpy, and eager, even when you’re click-marching these poor folk straight to their deaths.
Still, none of this will stop me will sacrificing every last man, woman, and child of these beleaguered warriors if it means preserving a single one of my immaculately crafted staircases.
This is Cataclismo’s real trick, you see. The RTS-meets-tower-defence of its wave survival is sturdy and satisfying; its economic management tense and fraught with tight calls. But all of this is set dressing to what the game is actually about - unleashing hell on the marauding scuttlers who make the fatal mistake of trying to mess up your lovely lego castles. If a single brick in my immaculate creation falls, so too will the wrath of the gods upon their gross bug heads.
Cataclismo - Launch TrailerWatch on YouTube
Cataclismo - Launch Trailer
I’ve become a little obsessed with these staircases because they’re a vital part of the whole operation. While you can’t interact with any of your workers individually - and, in fact, some of them are basically invisible - they will all need theoretical paths back to your central building to keep your economy working as intended. As well as wood and stone, you’ll also need oxygen. The pumps need to be placed high up to gather efficiently, so you’ll need to make tall plinths, but you’ll also want a staircase so there’s a navigable line between the pump and your castle. I’ll show you the blueprint I made for mine later, because it ties into a larger point I want to make. For now, you may thrum fizzily in anticipation.
Image credit:Digital Sun
There is a theoretical perfect wall in Cataclismo, one that offers a range of ideal elevations for each of your troops - they each perform best at varying heights - with adornments for each that offer buffs and bonuses. In this perfect wall, all of these places are easily and instantly accessible, and beyond all this, the wall itself is tall and sturdy enough to offer perfect defence. The aspiration to one day envision and create such a wall remains a strong motivation, and the fact that I can imagine its myriad nuances mean that, even early on, the game’s blockset does facilitate oodles of tactical depth. But, again, I think the real key to Cataclismo’s blocks is that they’re clearly designed with a just-as-important toylike creativity in mind. Conceptually, it might be a riff onThey Are Billions, but there’s more than a whiff ofBesiegeabout it all, right down to the ability to drag and save blueprints, then upload them to share on the Steam workshop. Someone is going to make a working helicopter within three days and break the whole game. I just know it. It might not even be technically possible, but it’s still going to happen.
I am 150% sure there was a better way to do this but I don’t care. I love my horrible shit-bridge |Image credit:Digital Sun
Oh yeah. Here’s me blueprint:
Image credit:Digital Sun
The thing is, right, it’s not even that special. Took me about three minutes. But it’s mine! I made it, and it works, and I’m incredibly proud of it. I’m proud of it every time I plonk another one down. You don’t get that with pre-fab buildings, and each time another structure I make holds and does its job in Cataclismo, it ends up feeling incredibly personal: like I invested something of myself beyond just the time needed to read a few tutorials. Everything else in Cataclismo is of incredible quality, thoughtful implementation, and rich with imaginative flair. This said, there’s nothing especially noteworthy about any individual system taken out of context. Base building is about space economy and not stretching your resource chain too thin. Fightin' is about considered positioning, varied composition, and a bit of target prioritisation. But these tiny acts of creation, often slapped together hastily as you pause between waves, really do bring it all together into something special. There’s a neater and fresher term than that one about sums and parts for all this, but I likely won’t come up with it until I’m halfway down my unassailable, genius stairs.
Brendy done some words for this one. If you see a word and think, I like that word, it might have been Brendy.
