Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead

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Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead

Screenshot of a player ('@') being chased by zombies ('Z')
Original author(s)	Whales
Developer(s)	Kevin Granade and community
Initial release	0.1 / 26 February 2013; 11 years ago (2013-02-26)[1]
Stable release	0.G "Gaiman"[2] / 1 March 2023; 16 months ago (2023-03-01)
Repository	github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA
Written in	C++, ASCII with ncurses, Tiles with SDL
Platform	Linux, OS X, Microsoft Windows, iOS, Android
Available in	25 languages[3]
List of languages English, Chinese, Chinese (Taiwan), Russian, Spanish, Spanish (Argentine), Japanese, Polish, German, Hungarian, Portuguese, Portuguese (Brazil), Korean, French, Italian, Norwegian Bokmal, Dutch, Czech, Ukrainian, Greek, Arabic, Danish, Filipino, Icelandic, Indonesian, Serbian, Turkish
Type	Single-player, roguelike, survival horror
License	CC BY-SA 3.0[4]
Website	cataclysmdda.org

Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead (CDDA) is an open-source survival horror roguelike video game. Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead is a fork of the original game Cataclysm.^[5] The game is freely downloadable on the game's website and the source code is also freely available on the project's GitHub repository under the CC BY-SA Creative Commons license. The game is currently largely developed by its community.^[4] Rock, Paper, Shotgun named CDDA one of "The 50 Best Free Games on PC" in 2016.^[6]

The game is text-based, though alternative graphical tilesets are available. Prior to playing, the player generates a world that can be shared between different characters. The player then creates a character and is placed into one of many possible starting scenarios. The player is then free to do whatever they please. This includes both things required for day-to-day survival such as scavenging, hunting, and finding shelter, as well as larger goals such as farming, installing bionics, making and repairing vehicles, and constructing homes.