Homeworld: Cataclysm

Homeworld: Cataclysm followed up on the acclaimed space strategy game Homeworld and moved the player several years further into the same universe, this time seen through the crew of the mining ship Kuun-Lan, which becomes the first victim - and also the hope - against a mysterious alien infestation called the Beast, capable of infecting and reprogramming even the player's own ships to its side. This concept brought a new, horror-tinged element of tension to the space RTS genre, since losing a unit in battle could mean that very ship would soon turn against your own fleet and have to be destroyed by your own hand.

In terms of gameplay, the game built on the three-dimensional battlefield of the first Homeworld, where the player commands a fleet of ships in fully maneuverable space unrestricted to a single plane, complemented by new units, ship upgrades, and tactical options for countering the infestation's spread before it consumes the whole fleet. On Windows 9x PCs, the game ran on an improved version of the original Homeworld's engine and offered atmospheric, darker graphics and music that heightened the feeling of isolation and mounting threat deep in space, far from the home planet.

Although development was handled by a different team than the original Homeworld, Cataclysm retained the predecessor's quality, controls, and atmosphere, and many players still rate it as a fully-fledged - and in some ways even darker and more tense - sequel, thanks to its theme of an infestation turning allies into enemies. The entry expanded the Homeworld space saga's story with another chapter, and for genre fans it remains a valued, if somewhat overlooked, part of its history. The motif of an infestation gradually consuming your own fleet gave an otherwise purely strategic game a psychological and horror dimension rarely seen in real-time strategy games of the late nineties, and it's precisely this that sets Cataclysm apart from most other space strategy games of its time.

Why play it: For fans of space real-time strategy games looking for a darker, horror-tinged sequel to Homeworld, in which an infestation gradually turns your own fleet into the enemy.