- Joined
- Mar 21, 2017
Who would have thought a spreadsheet could be so fun?
CataclysmDDA is an opensource survival game set in the near future which pits you —a mere meat man— against worldwide alien invasion. The game focuses equally on exploration and building. Both are viable playstyles, and you are free to chose your own balance between the life of a farmer and the life of a murder hobo. The UX takes some getting used to, but it's vastly better than similar games like Dwarf Fortress. Gameplay is an unusual variant of turn based, with each action you take progressing time proportionally. You'll start by dying, then little by little you'll start surviving, and eventually you'll start thriving.
Play as a restaurant mascot having a really bad shift
Regret your choice
Discover powerful armor in a wealthy furry's home
Get lynched
Find dog-mutagen in a secret government facility and teach those bullies a lesson
Take your punishment directly from god
Learn from your mistakes and choose a simple life unfettered by the follies of modernity
Survive, thrive, and with time take back what's yours
One of the major features that sets cataclysm apart from it's peers is the ability to not only survive, but to thrive. Unlike Zomboid, even those items that are irreplaceable have craftable counterparts meaning there is no point at which you simply can't continue. On top of this there are several different endgames including mutations, cybernetics, and vehicles all of which provide satisfying upwards progression.
The crafting system has a huge amount of depth and creates a very meaningful progression. It is possible to start at zero with only a sharp rock and build your way up to civilization, of course it's probably faster to just steal a knife from someone's kitchen. At any given point you will have many options, and a resourceful survivor will never find themselves being trapped by bogus adventure game logic. If for instance you have an infected wound you can use thyme oil, cattail jelly, or strong alcohol should you not have proper antiseptic at hand. No food processor? Just learn knapping and make a mortar and pestle.
A pretty unique feature is the ability to create entirely custom vehicles. You can create vehicles as trivial as a bicycle or hotdog stand, but also auto-turret covered rolling city blocks if you so wish (and have the horsepower to propel). The vehicle building system starts with placing a single vehicle frame, and from that point the vehicle can be extended in any direction from the vehicle menu, allowing a crazy variety of vehicle designs. My personal recommendation would be to find a humvee and progressively build off of it, they're durable and pretty easy to extend.
On top of all this are mutations and cybernetics, both of which essentially extend your character directly. These include trivial abilities like slightly faster stamina regeneration, better alcohol metabolism, or cold resistance, all the way up to the ability to shoot poison barbs, control magnetic fields, and teleport through walls (just be careful not to teleport into a wall). I recommend night vision, it's almost worth becoming a freak of nature for.
There is a strong modding community for CDDA, and you can find a lot of cool mods, and some stupid ones too. Want to play as a literal gingerbread man? No? Good choice, but that's an option. How about dinosaurs? Was space fungus not tough enough for you? The aptly named dinomod has what you need. My personal choice would be magicylsm, which as the name implies adds magic. It's quite well balanced, and surprisingly doesn't feel out of place at all in the setting.
There's a couple of sites with good info about CDDA to get started
The Hitchhiker's Guide to The Cataclysm has fairly complete information, and up to date information about items and monsters.
The CDDA Item Browser is maintained by the devs IIRC, and is always up to date, though it has somewhat less info than the above
The CDDA Wiki is quite out of date, but goes more in depth than the two item browsers, most of what's on it is still true.
There's also two official public discords, but they may not want to be linked here of all places. They're easy to find, at least one of them is listed in the discord server browser.
Final tip; backup your saves —the game is very stable, but starting entirely from scratch every fuckup is no fun.
CataclysmDDA is an opensource survival game set in the near future which pits you —a mere meat man— against worldwide alien invasion. The game focuses equally on exploration and building. Both are viable playstyles, and you are free to chose your own balance between the life of a farmer and the life of a murder hobo. The UX takes some getting used to, but it's vastly better than similar games like Dwarf Fortress. Gameplay is an unusual variant of turn based, with each action you take progressing time proportionally. You'll start by dying, then little by little you'll start surviving, and eventually you'll start thriving.
Play as a restaurant mascot having a really bad shift
Regret your choice
Discover powerful armor in a wealthy furry's home
Get lynched
Find dog-mutagen in a secret government facility and teach those bullies a lesson
Take your punishment directly from god
Learn from your mistakes and choose a simple life unfettered by the follies of modernity
Survive, thrive, and with time take back what's yours
One of the major features that sets cataclysm apart from it's peers is the ability to not only survive, but to thrive. Unlike Zomboid, even those items that are irreplaceable have craftable counterparts meaning there is no point at which you simply can't continue. On top of this there are several different endgames including mutations, cybernetics, and vehicles all of which provide satisfying upwards progression.
The crafting system has a huge amount of depth and creates a very meaningful progression. It is possible to start at zero with only a sharp rock and build your way up to civilization, of course it's probably faster to just steal a knife from someone's kitchen. At any given point you will have many options, and a resourceful survivor will never find themselves being trapped by bogus adventure game logic. If for instance you have an infected wound you can use thyme oil, cattail jelly, or strong alcohol should you not have proper antiseptic at hand. No food processor? Just learn knapping and make a mortar and pestle.
A pretty unique feature is the ability to create entirely custom vehicles. You can create vehicles as trivial as a bicycle or hotdog stand, but also auto-turret covered rolling city blocks if you so wish (and have the horsepower to propel). The vehicle building system starts with placing a single vehicle frame, and from that point the vehicle can be extended in any direction from the vehicle menu, allowing a crazy variety of vehicle designs. My personal recommendation would be to find a humvee and progressively build off of it, they're durable and pretty easy to extend.
On top of all this are mutations and cybernetics, both of which essentially extend your character directly. These include trivial abilities like slightly faster stamina regeneration, better alcohol metabolism, or cold resistance, all the way up to the ability to shoot poison barbs, control magnetic fields, and teleport through walls (just be careful not to teleport into a wall). I recommend night vision, it's almost worth becoming a freak of nature for.
There is a strong modding community for CDDA, and you can find a lot of cool mods, and some stupid ones too. Want to play as a literal gingerbread man? No? Good choice, but that's an option. How about dinosaurs? Was space fungus not tough enough for you? The aptly named dinomod has what you need. My personal choice would be magicylsm, which as the name implies adds magic. It's quite well balanced, and surprisingly doesn't feel out of place at all in the setting.
There's a couple of sites with good info about CDDA to get started
The Hitchhiker's Guide to The Cataclysm has fairly complete information, and up to date information about items and monsters.
The CDDA Item Browser is maintained by the devs IIRC, and is always up to date, though it has somewhat less info than the above
The CDDA Wiki is quite out of date, but goes more in depth than the two item browsers, most of what's on it is still true.
There's also two official public discords, but they may not want to be linked here of all places. They're easy to find, at least one of them is listed in the discord server browser.
Final tip; backup your saves —the game is very stable, but starting entirely from scratch every fuckup is no fun.
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Gunted! I mean lets be real, people still feel hungry even when they're fat. I think the way it's handled is fairly appropriate, you have to exercise restraint in order to manage your weight, much as in life. And the issue of it becoming easy later on is just part of progression, I think in some way it's part of the reward; what was once a struggle becomes trivial. In my first serious playthrough I over ate, then course corrected too hard with the Hattian diet, but I learned from that experience and I feel that was a fair part of the challenge. If you want to talk bullshit newbie killers though, fungus and flaming eyes fill that role nicely.
Here's hoping my current favorite game doesn't receive an early death for some retarded reason.
