This is one of those labor of love games like Dwarf Fortress that probably will continue slowly updating until the devs die (which will be a little harder in this case since this is less of a one man show.) It has a lot of potential to do a lot of really interesting and weird stuff. It's always hard to review these because in a year the game could be different in ways that would make it much better or much worse than it is now, but I have been playing it a bunch lately so this is as good a time as any to say that the experimental branch that I am playing is pretty good.

It's not as complex as Dwarf Fortress, but still has incredible depth in gameplay that still surprises me after probably hundreds of hours. For example, after thinking for the longest time that the wallets on zombies were useless flavor items, I found out just recently that you can actually deposit their cash at ATMs and use a credit card to buy gasoline at gas stations. Playing cataclysm is having small discoveries like this every play session. Also the crafting system is so incredibly complex, except for advanced weapons and junk food you can probably craft every single item in the game yourself with enough dedication, starting with sticks and stones and ending at complex machining and chemistry. While sometimes complex tasks can get tedious, there always is a way to do things smarter and more efficiently. Once you figure out how the interactions with the game world are implemented, you can probably emulate most real world actions you could think of in any given scenario, like throwing your empty gun at an enemy's head or using a clothing rack as a makeshift melee weapon.

It's janky. It's clunky. The devs doen't know what kind of game they want it to be. Neither does the game. It's highly moddable. It's got too much going on, too many greebly little systems that don't really work right and too many conflicting themes and moods vying for your attention. The NPCs are cardboard cutouts lacking the depth of Dwarf Fortress. And yet, C:DDA still manages to be compelling. I probably would not like this game in its current state if the devs were not completely open about how it is not finished yet and that they are actively working on it.

I played this with save backups so I didn't get the tense, fragile experience I think you're supposed to have. Playing it like that, it's still hard as fuck, has arguably the most insane and meticulous crafting system of any video game, ever -- seriously, you need to have multiple MSDN-ass wikis with conflicting data open to navigate it -- and just generally conveys how dreary and repetitive and hopeless it would be to smoke meth, constantly maneuver unmanageable and unpredictable threats, and loot abandoned houses for eyeglass lens and scrap metal and powdered milk. This game started to weigh on me in an almost physically palpable way after a good no. of hours and I stopped playing it completely in an instant.

Strange rougelike game with a very minimalist graphic design, although I really like how there's so much brimming complexity in this game - and just about this whole idea of being a supposedly sole survivor after an apocalypse which raises the dead and a bunch of other monsters to chase after you. It's really something where there's so much to take note of with very complicated controls - but also very much where it feels immersive once you're into it.

There's a lot of brimming detail in this game, and I particularly remember my favourite moments were when I was riding about in a modified shopping cart which was filled with guns that I used to shoot zombies with. As well as screwing up my character's body with cyber-augmentations and mutagen, and a particularly horrific moment where my character suddenly started to vomit up black goop - only for it to turn out it's a fungal infection, causing fungus to burst from their arms - crippling them and killing them quickly but painfully. (I literally walked away from my computer because that really freaked me out, just from text descriptions alone).

There's a lot to like about this game, but also there's a lot in it that would no doubt frustrate people. It's not something where you're really meant to complete it, much more just experience the variety with it - and boy is there a lot of that here.

Impossible to review properly, as it is an ongoing open-source project that is constantly changing, but the core experience of Cataclysm is incredibly robust and unparalleled in any other similar title.

Like the similarly complex Dwarf Fortress or Rimworld, Cataclysm's main draw is depth. Instead of focusing on large scale system interaction like those colony sims, Cataclysm is focused on one individual person and the absolutely massive list of places they can visit, things they can do, items they can find, vehicles they can build, encounters they can have, and all the emergent stories that come with that. Everything in the game can be broken down and built into something new (if you have the knowhow), which presents near infinite options for every moment. With excellent difficulty controls you can tailor your apocalypse however you want. It speaks to the strength of the game that playing without enemies is still fun!

The vehicle building system is especially fun and probably the point where the game hooks most people who are going to be hooked. Your first deathmobile is a Cataclysm rite of passage. Long, successful Cataclysm runs are the kind that stick with you.

I love to check back in every few months and see what new things I have to learn again (there is a very helpful keybindings menu now!) and what new systems might draw me back into another game.

I don't really know what to make of Cataclysm, which I've been playing off and on for something like seven or eight years at this point. It's engrossing and elaborate and fascinating to play, but it's also a horrendous slog full of pointless cruft, and it's cursed with a chaotic development process that I think will preclude the game ever really zeroing in on what I think is good about it.

My hottest take is that I don't think Cataclysm is a roguelike. Cata comes from that weird period, around the time FTL came out, when renewed interest in the genre led to people playing around with the boundaries and definitions of it, and I think that while at the time "roguelike" was a fair classification, the boundaries of the genre have (in my own opinion, anyway) pretty solidly coalesced around games with a distinct "run" that I think Cata lacks. It has progression, obviously, but lacking a final boss or any sort of definitive endgame scenario, it's never really aimed at anything, and as a result the only itch I ever really find it scratches is that of a more chaotic and wacky UnReal World with more inventory management.