This PC strategy game is the perfect next step for Manor Lords fans

Hooded Horse, a PC video game publisher that rose to fame earlier this year for backing real-time strategy (RTS) game hit Manor Lords, will release another excellent game into early access next week. The game in question is Cataclismo, the latest effort from Moonlighter and The Mageseeker: A League of Legends Story developer Digital Sun Games. It mixes real-time strategy and tower defense mechanics, and players have a lot of freedom in terms of how they build up the defense around their bases in order to ward off the “horrors” that attack them each night.

Although Cataclismo will still be in early access when it launches next week, fans of the RTS genre, base-building games, and tower defense titles will want to keep their eye on Hooded Horse’s latest. With Manor Lords and Cataclismo, Hooded Horse is cementing itself as the PC game publisher to watch.

Cataclismo follows some of the last vestiges of humanity after the titular event corrupted much of humanity and turned them into vicious horrors. Lady Iris is on a quest to find a MacGuffin called the Atla Perl and must fight off horrors each night as her crew hops from citadel to citadel in search of it. From a gameplay perspective, this all plays out through RTS mechanics reminiscent of titles like Age of Empires, albeit with systems that place a greater emphasis on tower defense and base building.

Players will instantly fail missions if Iris is killed or the central building in their fortress falls, so it is up to players to build ample defense and deftly command combat units to ensure that does not happen. During the daytime, I have to build structures within the confines of my citadel to spawn new units and collect important resources like wood, stone, and oxygen. Building up my citadel’s defense was equally important, and the game let me put up a wall, stone brick by stone brick.

Although I’m definitely not the best at creating pretty-looking structures, I appreciate the modularity of its base-building mechanics.