You can just hit the ? key in-game to get a list of all the key commands and rebind them there on that screen if you want.
Thank you! I tried mashing a lot of keys but missed that, I guess.
This game has been at the very edge of my periphery since Caves of Qud opened my eyes to the genre a few years ago. Seeing it pop up here in the forums, and figuring out it was free, made me give it a try. I’ve been playing it on Steam Deck and finally built a control scheme that’s not total shit after a few hours of playing.
I tried to play as a golfer with balanced stats named Donnie Pepper, and boy, the learning experience was rough. I made many clones of Donnie, all on the Evac start condition, and I don’t think a single Donnie clone lasted more than ten minutes. Every combat proved lethal, every system overwhelming, and I was very frustrated that I was never able to live long enough to actually learn anything.
So I said screw it, I downloaded some mods (aftershock, the jurassic park one, something else) and made a schizophrenic cannibal clown named Funnybone instead. I lowered his intelligence, took the burning building start, and took every malady it would let me. With the 15 extra points I jacked up his strength and dex, and took every melee combat trait I could. What’s the point in making a balanced character who can read and write when I’ll die before getting to do any of that stuff?
Funnybone has been a very different experience. He tried to eat the survivor he spawned with in the burning building, but it just ended up being a pathetic slap fight that drew in every zombie around. Luckily the other survivor smelt better or something, because Funnybone was able to give the whole thing a slip, and by the grace of God (Funnybone is Spiritual) the house he spawned in was next to a forest. This is where I first learned that the forest is a friend to clowns, as zombies seem to get lost in there and distracted by squirrels and dinosaurs.
After wandering down a long road, he found a golf course (rest in peace Donnie Pepper). There was shit-all there, not one golf club, but on one of the greens there was a golf cart. That golf cart is pretty much Funnybone’s whole life now – it really feels like vehicles open the game up and give you more freedom to explore, as fast zombies are no longer run-ending. I found some mushroom things that appeared to be infinitely growing some kind of evil mushroom biome. Funnybone didn’t like the cut of their jib, and used a military vehicle with a mounted machine gun to stop the infection. Funnybone has since wandered north into a small town and slowly culled the zombies on his way to the military depot. Right now there’s a zombie police dog between him and the depot, and I’m not sure what to do, since this feels like the most dangerous threat thus far.
I recommend anyone trying to get into this to make a cannibal clown of their own – not necessarily a clown, per se, but a melee beast that is just built to survive combat. I didn’t understand combat until I figured out melee kiting is A Thing. Drop your heavy stuff, hit zombie twice, switch to sprint, run away, repeat. I crafted a cudgel out of a plank of wood (my only interaction with the crafting system so far) and it’s worked wonders. There’s something to be said about turning city size down and spacing up too. Big cities seem to be where characters go to die, and the game has a nasty habit of spawning you in a place where you’re forced into going through the city, even with the evac shelter start.
I have too many quibbles with the game to list here, and most people who play this game will have their own, personal list of the million things they dislike about it. This is about as niche an experience as you’ll find, with the upside that it’s infinitely deep, and the downside that it’s infinitely deep (and controlling the game is as hellish as any post apocalypse that it depicts). I doubt my journey with this game will continue after Funnybone’s death, but I’m glad I was able to find enjoyment here.
Oh, and making a copy of your world in the savefiles is nice too. I haven’t used it yet, but just knowing that getting blindsided by a mechanic I had no idea existed is salvageable is a good psychological safety net that helps keep the experience from being too stressful. I also found out what Backtab was after two and a half decades of using keyboards. Thanks, CDDA!
CDDA is available on Steam as of today. $19.99
For those using the existing download version; don’t worry, no changes.
https://cataclysmdda.org/steam_faq.md
Will the existence of a paid release affect the free and open-source nature of the game?
No. The game will always be free and open-source, and if you continue to get it through this website and github, you won’t notice any difference at all. There could be features unique to the Steam API that are understandably Steam exclusive, but there is not and will never be any plan to have special “premium” features. Remember, there is already a paid iOS release, and it hasn’t affected the game.
Yeah, I have no idea what they are thinking about making it available at this price. It seems self-defeating.
Edit: Hmmm, seems the money is all going to one developer. On an open source community project with many contributors, that seems like a recipe for eventual disaster. The whole thing seems shady as hell.
I have no problem with it. Absolutely nobody is losing anything or being forced to pay for the game. It will always be available to download for free per the irrevocable license (which is mentioned in every other Stream review and constantly in discussions threads). I’m aware of the reasons behind them doing it this way. The game is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 license. Anyone who contributes under that license does so voluntarily and knows up front they have no expectation of remuneration for their contribution (they are free to go sell the game themselves though). ANYONE at all actually can feel free to put the game up on Steam with a price tag completely legally (which almost happened recently). The lead dev team are all publicly supporting this release on all the CDDA sources. In addition to blocking some ‘rando’ from doing a cash-grab this is intended to raise funds to pay for a full time Dev (Korggent who is coordinating the Stream release) for CDDA (assuming enough people are willing to ‘donate’ via the Steam purchase option). They have stated that they don’t want/need the money and don’t have the time to deal with ‘Steam Stuff’. Trying to good-faith distribute any monies out to all the previous contributors is impossible. Location and Verification of crazily named internet identities? Value judgements on a contributions worth (i submitted a spelling error fix, he wrote 10k lines of code overhauling the entire inventory system…what’s our respective cuts of that sweet sweet monies…after factoring in the 1800 other ‘contributors’ over the years)? Nope, flat impossible to do and i seriously doubt enough money is going to be generated to even bother wasting time trying to figure out a method.
The game has been pay-to-play on IOS for years so how is this really any different?
Thanks! Makes perfect sense.