Cataclysm

News!

Mac Version of 0.5 Brigitte is now available.

Musical Talent Needed!

The best games all have that one, iconic piece of music, that really gets under your skin, uniquely recognizable and able to pull up the same feelings the game does with it's first few notes. A theme is important for setting mood, for establishing the scene, and even ASCII games like Dwarf Fortress have a piece of music that is simply perfect for them. We, however, don't.

But I think we could.

I know we've got some talented fans out there, and we'd love to give you the opportunity to contribute to the Cataclysm project. If you think you can craft an iconic theme for Cataclysm, we need you. Because we want this game to be the best game it can be, and we can't do that alone. So if you've got the passion and the skill, let us know - either post in our dedicated forum thread, or send an e-mail expressing your interest to GlyphGryph@gmail.com and we'll talk about the details.

I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Cataclysm Dark Days Ahead (0.5 Brigitte) released

Took a little longer than usual, but 0.5 is finally here. There's a bunch of new stuff so hopefully it was well worth the wait! Remember, though - your character's probably won't survive the transition, so you might want to consider downloading it to a new folder. You should do a clean install anyway - this WILL break save compatibility.

You can grab the executable from the right column, or hop on over to the announcement subforum to check out the changes.

This is also our first named version.

If you want to be spoiled a bit and see why it might be worth updating to the newest version, feel free to check out the changelog.

Nightly Builds and Server Play

Stuck on Windows? Looking forward to the new version? Truly can't wait? Well, now you can download a nightly windows build! Stability is... not guaranteed. Standard warnings about breaking of save compatibility being likely apply. Everybody give a shout out to Xantrim for making this possible!

Don't care about nightly builds? How about a shared public server? Decesus has you covered with his shared public server. What's the benefit? Well, you've got a chance of joining a world another player has already played and died in, meaning you'll be able to see the side effects of their journay - structures built, buildings burned, vehicles left wrapped around trees and a big ol'corpse full of goodies. Sound like fun? Then click that link up there, follow the instructions, and give it a go.

Progress Report

Progress is chugging along. If you want to see how close we are, we've got a milestone system set up on git. At the time of this writing, there are 9 outstanding issues to resolve before we make the 0.5 release. In addition, we've started work on a Cataclysm related side project we hope some of you find interesting. It will probably be a while before you hear any more about that, though.

However, as part of it, we're hoping for a few skilled writers to offer their services for a lore-building background-enhancing jaunt on twitter, so if you think you've got the chops to write some convincing short fiction in bite-sized pieces, send us a PM on the forums or e-mail glyphgryph@gmail.com.

Finally, we're looking for some good screenshots to create a gallery on the site and to use as promotional images. Have some you think are good enough to make the cut? Help us by sharing your screenshots!

0.4 Released

Some worth noting: NPCs are off by default. You can toggle their presence in the config file.
You can either re-enable the starting NPC, or both the starting NPC and wandering NPCs.
Don't worry - this is hopefully a fairly temporary change while we work on fixing their tendency to crash or otherwise break your game.

Where do I begin...

You emerge from the shelter into the dim light of an overcast day, and look around for the first time since the disaster.

The world as you knew it is gone and in it's place, a twisted mockery of all that was once familiar.

Everything was cast aside in that frantic race for the shelter. You have no food, nothing to drink, no weapons. Nothing but your ingenuity and the fierce determination to survive against appalling odds.

A grim prospect faces you. Perhaps worse even than the nightmares of last night, when you were tortured by dreams of the dead themselves rising to jealously tear life from the living.

You cast your eyes up the road and begin to walk towards a house in the far distance.

What is Cataclysm?

Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead is a roguelike set in a post-apocalyptic world. Surviving is difficult: you have been thrown, ill-equipped, into a landscape now riddled with monstrosities of which flesh eating zombies are neither the strangest nor the deadliest.

Yet with care and a little luck, many things are possible. You may try to eke out an existence in the forests silently executing threats and providing sustenance with your longbow. You can ride into town in a jerry-rigged vehicle, all guns blazing, to settle matters in a fug of smoke from your molotovs. You could take a more measured approach and construct an impregnable fortress, surrounded by traps to protect you from the horrors without. The longer you survive, the more skilled and adapted you will get and the better equipped and armed to deal with the threats you are presented with.

In the course of your ordeal there will be opportunities and temptations to improve or change your very nature. There are tales of survivors fitted with extraordinary cybernetics giving great power and stories too of gravely mutated survivors who, warped by their ingestion of exotic substances or radiation, now more closely resemble insects, birds or fish than their original form.