How to play Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead on Mac

PlatformsPlatform, Computer

Game summary

Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead (aka Cataclysm DDA or CataDDA) is an open source survival horror roguelike set in a post-apocalyptic and fictional New England. Unlike most roguelikes, it has no goal: the player is free to explore the procedurally generated map, clear areas of monsters, work with NPCs, and build shelters and vehicles. The gameplay is mainly based on day-to-day survival, and the game tracks parameters like hunger, thirst, morale, illness and temperature which the player must manage to stay alive. Like most roguelikes Cataclysm: DDA follows turn based gameplay. The world has support for seasons and dynamic weather conditions and the season lengths can be modified during world generation. A typical world has cities, towns, rivers, forests, bridges and other landmarks. Cities and towns generally have all the common establishments generally found in real world such as houses, departmental stores, malls, parking lots, swimming pools, hospitals, malls, etc. Exotic locations such as Science Labs, Military installations, missile silos can be found in remote places throughout the whole world. Latest versions have support for experimental 3-D buildings.
First released: Jun 2013

Play Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead on Mac with Parallels (virtualized)

The easiest way to play Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead on a Mac is through Parallels, which allows you to virtualize a Windows machine on Macs. The setup is very easy and it works for Apple Silicon Macs as well as for older Intel-based Macs.

Parallels supports the latest version of DirectX and OpenGL, allowing you to play the latest PC games on any Mac. The latest version of DirectX is up to 20% faster.

Our favorite feature of Parallels Desktop is that when you turn off your virtual machine, all the unused disk space gets returned to your main OS, thus minimizing resource waste (which used to be a problem with virtualization).

Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead installation steps for Mac

Step 1
Go to Parallels.com and download the latest version of the software.
Step 2
Follow the installation process and make sure you allow Parallels in your Mac’s security preferences (it will prompt you to do so).
Step 3
When prompted, download and install Windows 10. The download is around 5.7GB. Make sure you give it all the permissions that it asks for.
Step 4
Once Windows is done installing, you are ready to go. All that’s left to do is install Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead like you would on any PC.
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