Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead is a turn-based roguelike survival sim with staggering depth: nutrition, injuries, crafting, mutations, vehicles, NPCs, and factions. It's free, open-source, and runs on almost any hardware while outclassing many commercial 3D sims in systemic detail. I've seen more emergent storytelling in one CDA run than in entire campaigns of more polished games. Performance is trivial—tiles or ASCII at any resolution will hit 60+ FPS on decade-old hardware. The learning curve is genuinely steep, though, so expect your first few characters to die in embarrassing ways before the systems click.

Overview
About Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead
Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead (aka Cataclysm DDA or CataDDA) is an open source survival horror roguelike set in a post-apocalyptic and fictional New England.
Unlike most roguelikes, it has no goal: the player is free to explore the procedurally generated map, clear areas of monsters, work with NPCs, and build shelters and vehicles. The gameplay is mainly based on day-to-day survival, and the game tracks parameters like hunger, thirst, morale, illness and temperature which the player must manage to stay alive. Like most roguelikes Cataclysm: DDA follows turn based gameplay.
The world has support for seasons and dynamic weather conditions and the season lengths can be modified during world generation. A typical world has cities, towns, rivers, forests, bridges and other landmarks. Cities and towns generally have all the common establishments generally found in real world such as houses, departmental stores, malls, parking lots, swimming pools, hospitals, malls, etc. Exotic locations such as Science Labs, Military installations, missile silos can be found in remote places throughout the whole world. Latest versions have support for experimental 3-D buildings.
Story setup
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 its 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. Things may be bad right now, but you've got a sinking feeling that there are darker days ahead.
Reference
At a glance
- Released
- June 1, 2013
- Platforms
- macOS, PC, Linux
- Genres
- RPG, Simulation, Adventure, Indie, Action
- Play modes
- Single Player
- Time to beat
- 4 hours
Media
Screenshots
Click any screenshot to view it full size.
Playtime
How long to beat
Player-reported completion times for Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead.
- Typical
- 4hoursStory plus some extras
Playing together
Multiplayer & game modes
Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead offers various play modes for different gaming experiences.
Play Modes
Single Player
Also in our guides
Often listed alongside Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead
Titles that appear in the same guides on this site. Grouped by where they show up, not by recommendation.
Coverage
Featured in our articles
This game appears in 1 article on this site.
#2
Game data and imagery provided by IGDB.com
