 |
| Screenshot was nicked from the Cataclysm website's screenshots page. Don't you just love ASCII graphics? XD |
ASCII Graphics, an absurdly fun (lack of) premise and the perfect mix of seriousness and humor, Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead is one of the most fun roguelikes I have ever played. Lets talk about that.
If you've been reading the TCSA blog for a length of time, you may be familiar with my absurd tastes in games and content, preferring originality and fun over all else. You may also remember me talking about a ridiculously difficult strategy game called Dwarf Fortress at some point as well which is another of my favorite ASCII based games.
If you're wondering, ASCII is the the american character classification system for all the symbols a computer might need to use. (Though ASCII is hardly as all encompassing as USF which includes various non Latin character sets like Cyrillic or Kanji.) In any case, I found Cataclysm by chance while, big surprise, I browsed YouTube for something interesting to see and came across a YouTube Commentator by the name of Aavak, who had just begun playing the game and proved to be quite entertaining to watch as he did his best to make the most of a character he'd purposefully made inherently flawed. (Like you do in games like these. The fun is in the story that results from the game, not the victory screen.)
What caught my eye about Cataclysm in particular, (apart from it being open-source and free - big plus there), was just how insanely detailed this odd little game is. Apart from the interesting premise built around almost any apocalypse you can think of in a strangely cohesive pot of madness, there are some truly well thought out systems which, apart from helping to create the story of your character by morphing their actions, are incredibly well thought out and logical. Learning is determined by how focused your character is, skills degrade over time, clothing encumbers individual parts of your body to provide a detailed understanding of whats affecting your ability to do things, and for good measure you can build a functional car from all kinds of various components and drive it using logical car controls instead of the direct control most games give you over the vehicles... and that's only some of the stuff.
Suffice to say, there's a lot in this game to make for absolutely fantastic gameplay and storytelling, to the extent that I thought it might be a fun exercise to chronicle the (admittedly short lived) exploits of my first character in the form of a narrative that explains his various character traits and skills through a story, rather than simply spelling out stats. It's probably a really terrible read if my inner critic is to be believed, but the purpose isn't good reading, it's to give you an idea of what kind of story's can emerge from this ridiculously detailed game. So without further ado, here is the unfortunate (and rather short) tale of Victor Henning.
Victor Henning had never been a particularly lucky person. Born with an unfortunate jaw deformity which is best described as "hideous", he spent most of his life as a social outcast. While his parents were more forgiving of his looks and did the best they could for him, even those he spent a lifetime training martial arts with at his parents behest shunned him for looking so intimate with the proverbial ugly stick.
Eventually Victor's parents grew old and could no longer support a son that nobody wished to be near for long, forcing him to enter the job market without any marketable skills. As it turned out, he made a rather good construction worker, and few people had to look at him while he was at it. At least until the "Cataclysm".
Not many people know what happened (or lived to tell the tale). Whatever it was, Victor had been having lunch while it happened. Stampeding people, car crashes, screaming, explosions. Whatever it was, Victor didn't want to find out, quietly finding his way to an evacuation shelter outside of town that he had helped build a while ago. Seemingly under-stocked and empty of people, save himself, Victor set about looking for something to help him survive whatever was going on.
The shelter was basically furnished. Benches, counters, lockers and a couple computers were it's contents. The room was also centered around a central staircase which added to the building's symmetry, as did the 4 doors on the 4 sides of the building.
Victor, figuring his best bet would be to take what he could and leave, looted the lockers quickly for the thermal blanket and luminescent emergency jacket that they contained before heading for the basement to continue his looting.
The basement was dark. Not dark in the ominous and evil sense of the term, but the "I can barely see my hand in front of my face" sense of the term. Stumbling around blindly for a few minutes, Victor realized that the floor was strewn with a wide variety of items, and decided to gear up, starting with a set of hiking boots.
Of course, this being the "unfortunate" tale of Victor Henning, it should come as no surprise that trying to put hiking boots on in an near pitch black basement during some apocalyptic event is probably a bad idea. Having not yet even removed his own shoes, Victor suddenly found himself covered in disgusting smelling bile which had issued from the bloated stomach of what looks like a fat, rotting man. Said man then beset upon Victor with violent intent.
Victor, however, fell immediately into the instinctual self-defense movements that he had practiced for so long, delivering a startlingly strong punch to the assailants face from which a sickening crunch emanated. Oddly, this blow did little more than cause the bloated man to stumble before setting upon Victor once again with renewed rage. Taking no chances, Victor delivered an additional set of blows to the head which would have crippled an ordinary person, but instead prompted an enraged swing at Victor's own head. Ducking this, Victor bounced into to rabbit punches which rocked the creature's head further.
Still not subdued however, the assailant tired to grab Victor with a flailing swing, only to be yanked forward with the offending arm and tripped. Unceremoniously delivered to the floor, Victor delivered a unceremonious kick to the it's bloated stomach, with veritably explosive results. Wiping the gore from his face, Victor quickly set about looting the basement of some basic supplies before hurriedly heading for better lit surroundings above.
Emerging from the basement, Victor considered two things. Firstly that he had just been covered in gore after beating the hell out of a raotting fat man, and secondly that there was enough food and supplies in the basement to keep him in health for weeks if need. Was Victor surprised about the fat guy though? Nope. Anyone who lives in the 21st century knows what a zombie is, and poor Victor had spent many solitary hours of free time playing games and watching movies about them.
Taking a seat at one of the computers, Victor decided to see if maybe the government knew about the zombies. Logging into the computer, Victor was greeted with the glowing green message you would expect at a time like this.
"Greetings citizen. A biological attack has taken place and a state of emergency has been declared. Emergency personnel will be aiding you shortly. To ensure your safety please follow the below steps:
1. Do not panic.
2. Remain inside the building.
3. Seek shelter in the basement.
4. Use provided gas masks.
5. Await further instruction."
Victor chuckled at step three considering how he currently stank like a lunch, once digested, with a side order of grave-robbers delight. Of course the useless terminal had no internet access, leaving Victor with a problem.
While Victor did have enough supplies to last him weeks in this building, and probably should just wait like the terminal told him to do, that would make for an absolutely rubbish story about an ugly hermit. So of course in the grand scheme of story telling, Victor decided he'd go exploring.
Knowing that whatever was out there was probably going to try to kill him, Victor decided that now was a good time to quickly brush up on his first aid skills from a book he found in the basement earlier. A few minutes of skimming and Victor felt a touch more ready to deal with any injuries if necessary, keeping the book on hand to consult.
Sucking up some courage from the air about him, Victor stepped out into what I *cough* he had forgotten to mention was the freezing cold of early spring. Walking about ten paces from the shelter, it was immediately apparent to Victor that he could no longer feel his face nor his fingers. Whatever was out there, it would have to wait for Victor to find a way to keep himself warm if they wanted a fair chance to kill him before the weather did.
Stepping back into the shelter which had suddenly grown colder itself as the night fell, Victor set about grabbing anything that might help keep him warm. Gloves, winter jackets and fur boots. Anything that might keep the cold at bay. When that turned out to be insufficient, Victor decided to set up a fire. Smashing one of the benches in the main room of the shelter, he quickly threw a fire together using the wood and a lighter he found in the basement earlier, sighing with relief as the heat washed over him from the warm flames. Calming down, Victor found himself dozing off into a relaxed sleep after the days events.
As you might expect though, lighting fires inside of buildings is a really bad idea, and Victor awoke to screeching metal, falling rocks and thick smoke in his lungs as the building began to collapse around him. Unfortunate Victor may have been feeling somewhat silly about this revelation as the first chunk of roof fell on top of him. And the second. Finding a moment of respite, he began crawling for the exit in the hopes of outliving his poor decision. Moments before reaching the door however, an significantly large piece of burning rubble fell upon him and set him alight.
Thus ended what Victor had likely expected to be a somewhat longer foray into the Cataclysm. In the final thoughts of those who had learned from bad ideas too late, Victor wondered what his tombstone might have looked life if anyone could make one.
In his head, his epigraph simply read: "Fuck.", before he died.
Fin
And so ended the badly thought out tale of Victor Henning. I admit that his death was a moment deserving of a truly epic facedesk on my part, yet it was still a very humorous thing to witness. If you agree, and think that it could be funny to have more of these stories written, do be sure to let me know down in the comments below, or via Facebook/Twitter. We here at TCSA love to hear your feedback as it helps us bring you more of the content you enjoy. And of course, if you enjoy finding out about awesome stuff on the web and world then do please be sure to like the Official TCSA Facebook page and/or follow us on Twitter using the associated buttons on the bar to the left to get all the latest posts as they're published. Also, do be sure to share posts you enjoyed with your friends as it helps us out a great deal. Regardless of what you do, I thank you for having taken the time to read this post; hope that you have/had an absolutely FANTASTIC day, and I will speak again soon.
Good luck surviving my friends.
