Castles have all the time been an important place to carry out against the hordes, and that’s as true within the likes of Lord of the Rings because it was in real-life human history, and even in the very best strategy games comparable to Warcraft 3. Cataclismo is a recent RTS game all concerning the beauty and performance of great castle design, and PCGamesN spoke to Digital Sun’s game design director Vicent Ramírez Luzón at GDC concerning the game and the design inspirations of the team.
Cataclismo is a real-time strategy game about constructing out a functional castle, brick by brick, that’s able to serving as a bastion to carry out against ever-growing swarms of horrifying foes. Core to that have, then, is getting the castle designing right. While they’ll definitely be impressive, majestic buildings in their very own right, “Castles look the best way they give the impression of being because they’re useful for battle,” Luzón points out.
Getting that design right for Cataclismo “was most of my headaches,” he laughs. “We really wanted [it to be] that lovely castles are also probably the most useful castles, and that was not what was happening [during testing].” Testers were creating incredible structures, he explains, but they weren’t working well. “We really wanted beautiful castles to be the very best technique to defeat the enemies.”
Cataclismo encourages this design with decorations and unit bonuses that provide boosts when applied to optimal setups. Certain units comparable to archers will need to be higher up, while others must be closer to the bottom to be effective, all of which is complemented by your more versatile hero unit.
Quite a lot of the team is from the Castile region in Spain, Luzón says, a reputation meaning “land of castles.” “So yeah, we form of breathe castles,” he remarks. Digital Sun has also grown dramatically since its first game Moonlighter, which launched in 2018. “When Moonlighter was released we were about 20 people – we at the moment are 60 people.” That includes some in other countries, however the core influences are very much rooted within the team’s Spanish origins.
While castle-building is the central focus, the sport’s campaign, which is estimated to take roughly 25 hours, also features “adventure levels” focused on exploring together with your hero and fighting smaller groups of enemies. Luzón compares this to Warcraft 3, probably the most iconic names within the genre – though he notes that the asymmetrical nature of combat in Cataclismo means it isn’t really designed for multiplayer.
Where that collaboration with other players really can shine, nevertheless, is the sport’s creative mode. With the freeform, Lego-like creativity of the castle constructing, Luzón hopes that “numerous people who should not that into strategy games are going to be considering Cataclismo due to constructing castles your way and tinkering with small pieces and other things.”
Digital Sun’s level editing tool will likely be made available for players in-game, allowing you to establish castles and cities nevertheless you would like, spawn in enemies, and create your individual challenges or scenarios which you can share via the Steam Workshop for other players to try. Even higher, you may turn these designs into blueprints that may then be built during standard play if you will have enough resources to make them.
That adds a extremely exciting element where players, given enough time and creativity, could replicate entire real-world structures – and even a number of the most famous fictional ones. Luzón suggests Minas Tirith, the vast capital city of Gondor from Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, which is definitely somewhere that appears like a superb place to carry out against the hordes.
Cataclismo releases on Steam Tuesday, July 16. In the meantime, you may try it out for yourself immediately due to a free Steam demo, and add it to your wishlist to maintain track of when it launches.
If you may’t get enough of constructing and defending a formidable base, you’ll need to ensure that to explore the very best RTS games on PC immediately. Alternatively, stay up for more of the largest and best upcoming PC games in 2024 and beyond with us.
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Additional reporting by Nat Smith for PCGamesN at GDC.
