Cataclysm: The Last Generation

In my opinion, this is the best version of Cataclysm on the market. While this one does require a by in, unlike Cataclysm DDA, I feel like this version of the game has much more refined focus to it. CDDA, in my opinion, feels like it has too many cooks in the kitchen, and a stricter focus on realism than fun. It can feel tedious, and arduous to do certain tasks, and downright absurdly difficult. Last Generation, again this is my opinion, does focus on realism, however, it leaves room for more fun and gameplay that isn't as tedious. Overall, I've been having a lot of fun with this fork of the game, and I highly recommend it for its price.

I really want to like this branch for so many reasons. But having to nap after pulping is not fun, sorry. Nor is it funny to make fire not burn hot enough under any reasonable circumstance (a literal 60000 unit gas soaked 5-6 log, 10 plank bonfire) to ash corpses. I do not want to be forced to take a nap if I choose to write my story a certain way because god decided fire doesn't work anymore. Yes I was a Strength build. Yes I was using guns to save ALL my energy for smashing corpses. Yes I was using big weapons. Yes I had companions helping. Spending every day going home at 10am-11am when I want to keep playing is *not fun*. This is skill rust levels of not fun.

Great iteration of Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead, that addresses many issues I had with C:DDA. Tons of excellent work with game balance (items. mutations, combat tweaks), enhancing survival aspects, new enemies and encounters, etc. Gameplay feels more cohesive, challenging and rewarding, I recomment trying it. The community and the dev are cozy and helpful people, so check out its discord as well. The game itself is free, so you can download it freely from the github links, but steam is more convenient due to frequent updates + it supports the dev.

She's cookin here, so many small sensible adjustments being added multiple times a week over the course of years makes this the best version of Cataclysm.

I'm helplessly addicted to this game. I've tried to play other games and I can't, I just can't focus on anything but this quirky, tough all-apocalyspes survival game. Cataclysm: TLG and DDA both ask a lot from the player just to operate them, but they give so much back just in terms of how much freedom you have to attempt survival. Want to crash a car into a house and leave the stereo pumping loud as can be to attract the whole horde of zombies? Go for it. Then want to sneak out the back door and chuck a molotov in behind you? No problem. Now you can enjoy watching the house burn down and kill most of the zombies. If you can come up with a plan, this game will let you do it—provided you've figured out how the systems work to make it happen. Watch Worm Girl's youtube tutorials; they may be a little dated and from DDA, but they're still a great help!

The best fork of Cataclysm, ticks all the boxes for me and is actively updated by one of the most consistent devs I have ever seen. Suggestions get read, bugs get fixed, quality of life and common sense fixes abounds. Balanced gameplay rather than basing everything off of hardline 'realism' that either tortures or spoils you with no in-between. Survival is actually an accomplishment.

Do I like this game? Yes. I'm giving it a thumbs up because of that- but I like the game despite itself. Now let me rant for a *bit* here. It has the worst UI and controls I've experienced since Dwarf Fortress and Nethack. That's bad. Like *real* bad. Better contextual menus, better mouse support, more hidden mechanic explanations, more *anything* to explain what all the things do and what you need to be doing to do all the things would be really *really* great- and not just pages of text tucked in an encyclopedia, just little contextual hints (that you can turn off after you know what you're doing!) would make all the difference. Centralize more menus so you can look up things about your character/items more easily... there are like 8 different menus all mapped to 12 different keys to look up 20 different bits of information instead of, you know, a single character or item menu with actual tabs- and no, not that one character menu that has fake "tabs" all on the same page that you have to play a separate minigame to navigate- that's also bad and *still* lacks character info. Make better groupings in menus for making selections for actions you want to do, add categories to the ? contextual keybinds menu. Nuke most of the default keybinds and keep keybinds for important things, for example instead of '&' it should be 'c' for crafting, c for close doors can instead just open/close doors as a toggle with the open door key (which also probably shouldn't be 'o' and probably could just be wrapped into the 'a'ctivate menu)... there are so many more things like this in the game that could just be toggled or pulled into other existing systems. Lots of nonsensical keybinds too, my v key is for insert items into containers, p for Bionics, [ for Mutations, $ for sleep? Okay, I'll admit that @ for a character stats page *is* a nice touch. Also, I get that you can rebind things, but come on- most people will use the defaults and that's their first experience of the game. Make inventory sorting easier. Consolidate the '/' and 'g' menus- there should only be one "get/move items" menu and it should have the functionality of both since / doesn't handle containers super well (heck, maybe this should just be rolled into inventory tabs for inv vs nearby). Have containers be the top level of all inventories and open into new bag menus/tabs showing contents- not just mixed in randomly in places. Have a single separate "here is what you have equipped" menu with better controls/indicators of what things are ACTUALLY doing for you- all in one place! The { menu (yep, that's the keybind!) for body parts is practically useless since it lacks so much info and you can't do anything there. Add an option to blacklist all categories in one go so I can more easily make containers that are "No, really, I just want *this* in there" It's also buggy, I've encountered several errors that you just type ignore to keep going to and when I started I had to mess with the graphics settings a lot just to get the game to stop flickering. But you know what? Despite *ALL* that my constantly mutating extra large cold blooded alligator razor girl with bladed bionic fingertips wearing a crafted pink faux fur coat, a quilted gambeson, combat boots, an army helmet, a leather tail sleeve, and a long wool scarf for muzzle warmth is tearing through zombies with kung fu style dragon tail sweeping attacks and clawing monsters from another world in twain... once victorious she can then pulp their corpses into fine mushy oblivion so they never come back. Which is pretty f'ing rad. Simultaneously the best and worst game I've played in a while.