The Game Census
Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead cover art

Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead

CleverRaven · KorGgenT · 2023-03-31

Steam

AdventureRPG

Modes: Single player · Perspectives: Bird view / Isometric, Text

Releases: Jun 01, 2013 (PC (Microsoft Windows)), Jun 01, 2013 (Mac), Dec 31, 2013 (Web browser), Jun 01, 2013 (Linux)

The epitome of a modern traditional roguelike: with turn-based play and a RPG-like skill progression system, it hearkens back to some of the major aspects of this genre. This game has an incredible depth, with a deep inventory system, vehicles and boats, NPCs with their own stories, and more.

Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead is a 2023 Adventure, RPG game priced at $19.99, with an estimated 100,000 .. 200,000 owners and a Very Positive review sentiment (87% of 547 reviews).

27
playing now
87%
positive of 547 reviews
Very Positive
steam's rating (official)
100,000–200,000
owners (SteamSpy est.)
90/100
IGDB user rating (25 ratings)
38
Nexus mods (12k downloads)
pending
deck/linux tier (ProtonDB)
Playable
Steam Deck (Valve)
SteamOS: Playable
$19.99
steam price (US)

27 players in-game as of 2026-10-14 16:00 UTC (census sample)

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. 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. Rock, Paper, Shotgun named CDDA one of "The 50 Best Free Games on PC" in 2016 and later one of "The Greatest PC Games of the 2010s."

Health check

Quietly active
  • · 27 players in-game at the last census sample.
  • · 59 reviews in the last 8 weeks (~7/week).
  • · Review velocity up 20% vs the prior 8 weeks.
  • · Top 18% of 28,821 Adventure games in the census by review count.

Health tier since 2026-08-31

Estimated sales: 11k–25k copies

Review-multiple estimate from 547 total reviews — how this is computed.

All-time low: $5.00 at Game Jolt (2018-11-11)via IsThereAnyDeal

12-month high $19.99 · on sale 1 of 2 observed days (census price snapshots)

Review momentum

PositiveNegative
11111120232026Week of 2023-03-01: 37 positiveWeek of 2023-03-01: 4 negativeWeek of 2023-04-01: 111 positiveWeek of 2023-04-01: 6 negativeWeek of 2023-05-01: 29 positiveWeek of 2023-05-01: 3 negativeWeek of 2023-06-01: 15 positiveWeek of 2023-07-01: 8 positiveWeek of 2023-08-01: 8 positiveWeek of 2023-09-01: 8 positiveWeek of 2023-09-01: 1 negativeWeek of 2023-10-01: 4 positiveWeek of 2023-10-01: 1 negativeWeek of 2023-11-01: 20 positiveWeek of 2023-11-01: 3 negativeWeek of 2023-12-01: 6 positiveWeek of 2023-12-01: 1 negativeWeek of 2024-01-01: 11 positiveWeek of 2024-02-01: 18 positiveWeek of 2024-02-01: 1 negativeWeek of 2024-03-01: 13 positiveWeek of 2024-04-01: 2 positiveWeek of 2024-05-01: 16 positiveWeek of 2024-06-01: 7 positiveWeek of 2024-06-01: 3 negativeWeek of 2024-07-01: 14 positiveWeek of 2024-07-01: 2 negativeWeek of 2024-08-01: 13 positiveWeek of 2024-08-01: 4 negativeWeek of 2024-09-01: 7 positiveWeek of 2024-10-01: 7 positiveWeek of 2024-10-01: 1 negativeWeek of 2024-11-01: 10 positiveWeek of 2024-11-01: 2 negativeWeek of 2024-12-01: 10 positiveWeek of 2024-12-01: 1 negativeWeek of 2025-01-01: 10 positiveWeek of 2025-01-01: 3 negativeWeek of 2025-02-01: 11 positiveWeek of 2025-02-01: 1 negativeWeek of 2025-03-01: 8 positiveWeek of 2025-03-01: 1 negativeWeek of 2025-04-01: 5 positiveWeek of 2025-04-01: 1 negativeWeek of 2025-05-01: 8 positiveWeek of 2025-06-01: 10 positiveWeek of 2025-07-01: 4 positiveWeek of 2025-07-01: 3 negativeWeek of 2025-08-01: 1 positiveWeek of 2025-08-01: 2 negativeWeek of 2025-09-01: 4 positiveWeek of 2025-09-01: 1 negativeWeek of 2025-10-01: 5 positiveWeek of 2025-11-01: 5 positiveWeek of 2025-12-01: 5 positiveWeek of 2025-12-01: 2 negativeWeek of 2026-01-01: 4 positiveWeek of 2026-02-01: 4 positiveWeek of 2026-02-01: 1 negativeWeek of 2026-03-01: 5 positiveWeek of 2026-03-01: 1 negativeWeek of 2026-04-01: 5 positiveWeek of 2026-04-01: 2 negativeWeek of 2026-05-01: 6 positiveWeek of 2026-05-01: 1 negativeWeek of 2026-06-01: 2 positiveWeek of 2026-06-01: 4 negativeWeek of 2026-07-01: 4 positiveWeek of 2026-07-01: 13 negativeWeek of 2026-08-01: 5 positiveWeek of 2026-08-01: 6 negative
Weekly review counts (Steam review histogram). Positive above the line, negative below.

Players online

45132026-09-15 01:00 — 27 players2026-09-16 09:00 — 16 players2026-09-17 17:00 — 22 players2026-09-19 00:00 — 23 players2026-09-20 08:00 — 29 players2026-09-21 15:00 — 28 players2026-09-22 23:00 — 27 players2026-09-24 06:00 — 13 players2026-09-25 14:00 — 32 players2026-09-26 21:00 — 38 players2026-09-28 05:00 — 18 players2026-09-29 12:00 — 18 players2026-09-30 20:00 — 28 players2026-10-02 03:00 — 21 players2026-10-03 11:00 — 35 players2026-10-04 19:00 — 45 players2026-10-06 03:00 — 18 players2026-10-07 10:00 — 22 players2026-10-08 18:00 — 32 players2026-10-10 01:00 — 28 players2026-10-11 09:00 — 27 players2026-10-12 16:00 — 33 players2026-10-14 00:00 — 27 players2026-10-14 16:00 — 27 players
Concurrent players, hourly average, last 30 days (census samples).
7720Apr 2023Aug 2026Apr 2023 — avg 77 · peak 114Jun 2023 — avg 40 · peak 70Aug 2023 — avg 29 · peak 49Oct 2023 — avg 30 · peak 59Dec 2023 — avg 29 · peak 47Feb 2024 — avg 41 · peak 78Apr 2024 — avg 29 · peak 53Jun 2024 — avg 28 · peak 46Aug 2024 — avg 28 · peak 52Oct 2024 — avg 28 · peak 52Dec 2024 — avg 24 · peak 74Feb 2025 — avg 38 · peak 73Apr 2025 — avg 34 · peak 58Jun 2025 — avg 32 · peak 61Aug 2025 — avg 26 · peak 50Oct 2025 — avg 26 · peak 50Dec 2025 — avg 21 · peak 38Feb 2026 — avg 24 · peak 40Apr 2026 — avg 23 · peak 47Jun 2026 — avg 20 · peak 36Aug 2026 — avg 23 · peak 54
Monthly average players (source: steamcharts.com) — history via steamcharts.com; live census sampling since Aug 2026.

Price history

$19.99$5.002018-11-112026-07-092018-11-11 — best price $5.002023-03-31 — best price $19.992024-05-13 — best price $15.992024-05-20 — best price $19.992024-06-27 — best price $15.992024-07-11 — best price $19.992024-12-19 — best price $15.992025-01-02 — best price $19.992025-05-26 — best price $15.992025-06-02 — best price $19.992026-06-25 — best price $15.992026-07-09 — best price $19.99
Lowest recorded price across tracked stores, per day (census snapshots).

Attention

452772026-06-02 — 107 pageviews2026-06-06 — 86 pageviews2026-06-10 — 101 pageviews2026-06-14 — 118 pageviews2026-06-18 — 86 pageviews2026-06-22 — 452 pageviews2026-06-26 — 109 pageviews2026-06-30 — 109 pageviews2026-07-04 — 95 pageviews2026-07-08 — 143 pageviews2026-07-12 — 80 pageviews2026-07-16 — 140 pageviews2026-07-20 — 104 pageviews2026-07-24 — 130 pageviews2026-07-28 — 124 pageviews2026-08-01 — 156 pageviews2026-08-05 — 145 pageviews2026-08-09 — 176 pageviews2026-08-13 — 127 pageviews2026-08-17 — 170 pageviews2026-08-21 — 184 pageviews2026-08-25 — 143 pageviews2026-08-29 — 118 pageviews2026-09-02 — 130 pageviews2026-09-06 — 156 pageviews2026-09-10 — 147 pageviews2026-09-14 — 127 pageviews2026-09-18 — 141 pageviews2026-09-22 — 135 pageviews2026-09-26 — 160 pageviews2026-09-30 — 145 pageviews2026-10-04 — 145 pageviews2026-10-08 — 113 pageviews2026-10-12 — 111 pageviews
Daily Wikipedia pageviews (attention proxy, census-recorded).

Completion

39
achievements tracked
55.7%
earned "Die"
5.5%
median achievement earned by

Global achievement rates from Steam.

Details

WindowsLinuxSingle-playerSteam AchievementsSteam CloudFamily Sharing

8 supported languages: English, Spanish - Spain, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese - Brazil, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish - Latin America

Console footprint

PlatformPlayers trackedCompletionTrophies/achievements
Steam (Steam)2700%39

Players tracked by Exophase (achievement/trophy trackers) — a sample of the player base, not total sales.

Player tags

2DRPGAliensHorrorModernSci-fiSandboxZombiesModdableSurvival

Census log

Computed from census-recorded observations only — dates are observation dates.

Recent updates

Players also track

Life is Feudal: Your OwnMiscreatedSavage LandsRising WorldHow to Survive 2Dead AgeDying Light 2 Stay Human: Reloaded EditionForce of Nature

Similarity via IGDB.

Official site ↗Wikipedia ↗Reddit ↗Discord ↗