Photo: Digital Sun

Javi Gimenez, CEO of Digital Sun, recently shared on X (formerly Twitter) that Cataclismo, the fortress builder RTS coming to Steam and GOG on July 16, uses no AI-generated assets. He also stressed the importance of laws against AIs trained with other artists' work.

Cataclismo is a top-down, real-time strategy game that uses building blocks ("pieces") to build walls, forts, and towers to defend against monsters that emerge from dense mist waves. It’s not quite tower defense, but it is perhaps “siege defense”. 

It might help to think of the game as LEGO meets They Are Billions. 

From moment to moment, the player will click together pieces to creatively construct the best defense for particular siege situations while commanding soldiers to take up tactical positions that best suit their strengths, including bowmen, cannoneers, ballista operators, and so on.

Humankind got greedy. The land has succumbed to a terrible plague of mist and "horrors" - the result of an ancient civilization misusing mysterious orbs called “perlas”. The subsequent Cataclismo left the world in ruin, and it has never quite recovered.

But there is hope. The city of Hogar is holding out against the foul creatures of the mist. It is the last bastion of humanity. The player follows Iris, a gifted user of magical abilities ("artes") as she leads an expedition beyond the city walls and into dangerous territory to find an artifact that will help humanity thrive once again.

But perhaps this artifact holds its own secrets...

Game Modes

• Campaign - 30h story-driven campaign consisting of multiple siege and exploration levels
• Skirmish - hand-crafted levels by the developers meant to challenge players and test their knowledge
• Endless - build an ever-lasting fortress in procedurally generated maps, survive as many waves as you can
• Sandbox - a testing environment for defensive setups/sieges. Determine the layout, the units and their positioning within your fort, the type of enemy horrors and size of the wave, and find out whether it withstands.

Features

• Tactical brick-by-brick castle construction inspired by LEGO castles
• Brace for the nightly swarms of Horrors and defend your fortress
• Optimize life and production within the castle walls
• Deploy a roster of soldiers with unique tactical specialties
• Siege equipment, such as flaming arrows, poison, claw traps, and more 
• A 30-hour campaign, plus sandbox, survival, and skirmish modes for endless replayability
• Beautiful comic art illustrating a somber world, lost to the perilous Mist

Digital Sun is a multi-game studio dedicated to creating games worth playing while enjoying the process. Since 2013, the artists, programmers, designers, and producers have been working together to achieve their mission. Plus, they're known for creating Moonlighter and The Mageseeker.