Cataclismo review

Merlons. The very word strikes terror into the hearts of invaders everywhere, for their ability to increase the range of units and strengthen defensive walls. Also, there might be an archer behind them—but I'm pretty sure it's the wall thing that gives the Horrors sleepless nights in this city building tower defence game (reverse the order of those words if that appeals to you more) which is on the brink of exiting early access.

I wrote about Cataclismo's early access version last year, and it's a testament to how polished and well-realised the concept was that this is fundamentally the same game, just with extra bits on. The biggest bits are the additional campaign missions, which round out the story of Iris, the mystical overseer on a mission to save humanity from the monstrous Horrors that swarm their cities every night.

It's not a huge campaign altogether, so it's just a few extra citybuilding maps, along with short, narrative-focused 'Expeditions' to give you a breather between all the shack-building and the merlon-making. The environments, the units, the structures are stylish and distinctive, and the world is dripping with atmosphere. It's a beautiful game, if a little self-important about its story.

Cataclismo's hook is just as strong now: you citybuild (and tower defend) by building your defences brick by brick, as if you're playing with the iconic Mega Bloks. The best part of the game is hearing the blocks slot together (the hours that must have gone into making such pleasing sound effects), and their anxious wobbling as you're about to tear them apart.

The focus of most missions is on manually building structures to defend your base, decorating them with costly embellishments including fire arrows and (take a drink) merlons, and finally staffing them with units trained in the local barracks. When the horde attacks on that first night, you can then sit back, sip your brandy and marvel at your idiocy as they find that one wall you forgot to strengthen.

These building mechanics allow for plenty of flexibility and creativity. But you're limited by your supplies of wood and stone, and that you might not want to spend two hours on pause creating a masterpiece that will disappear at the end of the mission. Sandbox mode, added during early access, is included for all you Liechtensteins wishing to make big, outlandish castles out of infinite resources. But whichever mode you build on, it's with one of the slickest, most legible interfaces you'll find in any game—which is no mean feat given how frequently you need to switch between building stuff and ordering units around.

Also added during early access is the ability to recycle multiple blocks at once by dragging the mouse over them, and the incredible rebuild tool, which instantly repairs damaged fortifications—if you have the resources to do so—by remaking them exactly as they were. These two features are probably the low-key biggest additions to the early access version, along with the community that has sprung up around it.

My biggest stumbling block when I previewed the game was its insistence on stairs. For every notch in height that you expand a structure—and your walls need to be tall, as this somehow makes them sturdier—you need a route for your units to actually get up there. That means building copious stairs, and then building platforms to physically support them. I guess I'm reviewing the laws of physics here—which, incidentally, have a lot to answer for—but making stairs was such an exhausting requirement that… Oh, I've just fixed it. Never mind.

To my great shame, I don't think I ever used the blueprint feature before diving into version 1.0, but it's a lifesaver when it comes to plopping down repeatable structures. Like everything else about the interface, it works exactly how you expect it to: you drag the mouse over structures you want to copy and, well, that's it. You can now plop down those stairs or that bit of wall whenever you like, providing you have the resources. And if you can't be bothered to make them in the first place, the Steam Workshop page is practically bursting with helpful blueprints and user-made maps.

Crucially, you can only really outsource small parts of your building work to the community, or your own pre-made blueprints, given how tactically you have to work round the given environment. Any hills or swamps or ruins that are already present on a map cannot be demolished or moved, and it's these natural obstacles that give each map its particular flavour. Overcoming the environment—scouting it out, planning the locations and shapes of your defences, and holding off the Horrors—is slightly exhausting and overly time-consuming, even with all these time-saving features, but it's still satisfying when all your hard work pays off.

With a not terribly replayable campaign, it's Cataclismo's alternate modes that will ultimately determine how invested you get. Into building castles? Hop onto Sandbox mode. How about making, or tackling, interesting maps? Skirmish mode and the Steam Workshop have you covered. The newly revamped Endless mode asks you to citybuild in a procedurally generated landscape, while gradually unlocking building blocks and more radical roguelite upgrades.

Endless is where Cataclismo's full suite of blocks, units and ghoulish monsters finally come out to play. I mostly enjoyed following Iris' story, but it felt good to shirk off its overly enigmatic narrative and be left alone to fully develop a city, while having to make a series of interesting decisions. For example, one upgrade revealed the entire map, completely removing the fog of war, but with a drastic upkeep cost that I had to scrabble to maintain (and, ultimately, failed to).

In a way, Endless is the truest expression of Cataclismo's building and survival mechanics, giving you the space and time to build what you want, while harshly limiting your resources to foster creative decision-making. It's a game that makes you put the effort in. But then Rome wasn't built in a day.