Cataclysm Dark Days Ahead & BN User Reviews

Customer Experience

Positive experience42.6% of reviews
Neutral19.1% of reviews
Negative experience38.3% of reviews

~ Based on 47 written reviews from the US App Store.

Is Cataclysm Dark Days Ahead & BN Safe?

Not enough ratings yet to assess Cataclysm Dark Days Ahead & BN.

Is Cataclysm Dark Days Ahead & BN Legit?

Cataclysm Dark Days Ahead & BN appears to be a legitimate app. AppsHunter Legitimacy Score for Cataclysm Dark Days Ahead & BN is 90/100.

Based on 90 of 100 points across 7 verification signals from App Store and developer data.

Top reviews

Great port

So the game is great for the bn version but there seems to be an issue with dda og. Sometimes the game loads with blurry esc text and keybindings menu is glitched can’t bind keys. Bright night runs good altho some crashes here and there. We are doing good so far

Constant crashes

Would’ve loved to give it a higher score but its riddled with bugs that turn the UI into unreadable blocks & crashes that happen from merely opening and closing the keyboard, which is crucial in this game.

Can’t even play after latest version! Constant crashing!

Am a big fan of the game but the current version of dark days ahead crashes a lot. Even on the main menu the game will randomly close. I have yet to find a single cause, it’s pretty much random.

Response from developer

Have you tried to delete your save games and settings? New version refused to even load with older saves and settings.

Most recent update has broken the text

I actually decided to wipe all my saves because I haven’t played in a couple months and thought that maybe I’d changed a setting last time I played that I forgot about, but upon reinstalling I see this is just the updates fault. All text boxes that pop up are unreadably blocky, like the main menu text is fine and the sidebar text is fine but as soon as any text box pops up the text is unreadable. Big disappoint since my subscription still has three months left on it
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Not able to move camera freely like in BN

The game is perfect and I don’t regret spending my money but there are problems, For example I can’t use two fingers to move the camera around my character like in BN and I keep getting a problem where the text goes all glitches in the menus and I can’t select anything, Only in pop up menus like when you press escape thankfully but either way still annoying. And then there’s the crashes, It crashes quite often for me and even when trying to edit world options specifically when pressing ? In the menu. If your one of the devs and you see my review please try and fix these things, I’m currently now playing an older build because I’m not able to enjoy my play through with these problems.
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良い。

DDAの世界の名前を変更しようとしたらアプリが落ちるのと、modが適用出来る様になれば更によい。

Good game, broken now with last update

Great port of a good game. But the most recent update broke it, so whenever you try to create a world it crashes.

Response from developer

Try backuping then deleting settings and maybe saves too. I had this very very issue and it helped me.

Love this! One problem.

It’s by far the best way to play CDDA on mobile but the recent update has caused my on screen keyboard to stop functioning, just for CDDA however. BN works fine please help.

Response from developer

Hey, just checked, everything works just okay. What issues do you have with the screen keyboard?

Needs bug fixes. Constant crashing!

Am a big fan of the game but the current version of dark days ahead crashes a lot. Even on the main menu the game will randomly close. I have yet to find a single cause, it’s pretty much random.

good game but have some bugs

Great game overall. There are still a couple of bugs in the current version. When the on-screen keyboard is open, pressing a key that triggers an in-game popup may cause a crash. Also, using a soundpack can sometimes make the fonts disappear. The game is still playable by using the on-screen shortcuts and avoiding soundpacks. I hope these issues can be fixed.
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Big love

Thank you very much for the game. I love it!!

One issue though… settings and options menu don’t seem to accept keyboard inputs (like key bindings menu or for when setting the volume for sound packs)

Response from developer

Update and its gone! Now it's single purchase, and for all who bought it while it was free+subscription it becomes totally free. Enjoy.

UI Disaster

First off this game has two purchases options 1. $12.99 yearly subscription and 2. $12.99 buy once play forever. However when you download and launch the game only the yearly subscription is offered and the buy forever option is not available in either the pop up or the main menu and I could not find it anywhere else…..no store link was available in either locations or menus….deceptive and shameful behavior from the dev. Especially since the game is community sourced and free to everyone…..the port for the iPhone obviously takes work so it theoretically makes asking for money, for that work, reasonable…except it’s terrible. Read on for more details.

Side note the subscription is advertised as ongoing update support and the game hasn’t been updated in over a year….and the UI desperately needs fixing.

Second I had to spend an hour and a half just resizing the sidebar so it didn’t eat half the screen the option to change the sidebars layout isn’t available in settings so good luck finding it. Also once you find it and select the best layout….its “compact” btw, you will still need to go into settings and change the values on the terminal width and height, doing both of those things from separate menus will let you have most of your screen, to see the actual games environment.

3rd the UI doesn’t work consistently and is clunky. The biggest offender was the quick hot keys and key bindings, they would change what they do or would become non-responsive (this was not a caps lock issue). Example, in combat the quick actions menu has the * key mapped to cycle targets…it worked once but after firing my gun, every other time the * key was pressed in either the quick actions menu or on the keyboard, it instead opened a construction menu from that point forward ….the same happened with the f key, it fired my weapon 1 time and then instead on all subsequent inputs opened an entirely different menu of actions only one of which was combat and when pressing the offered combat key in that menu…..it did nothing but close the menu.

4. Movement…if you ever see an enemy, you can no longer move without opening the combat menu and telling the game to ignore it, then you can move about 3 tiles and then you need to impute the command again….it is exceedingly tedious.

5. There is zero sound in this game, absolutely non. Music and sound effect packs exist for this game and non are included.
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Response from developer

All the gameplay issues (2-5) you mentioned are related to the base game itself and had nothing to do with mobile port. The one-time purchase was there in past, and there is no way to delete it from the app store. There is no such option now: only subscription. And yes, I haven't updated the game for a year. Still it's the latest version available in the app store: the other ones are way older. Hopefully I'll updated it sooner or later.

Why a subscription?

This is a great game. And it would be more than worth purchasing for a flat fee. But a $12.99 yearly subscription is just a bit far fetched for me. I also have a UI suggestion. The UI, here, is good, but I always found the CDDA UI in the really old iPhone CDDA app by Blue Bottle, REALLY good. It looked nicer and for me anyway, made the app easier to use. The Blue Bottle UI was really polished and it’s a shame that it lost support all those years ago. It would be cool to see that UI again.
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Just a scam

You can’t play the game without paying $12.99 a year. It’s just a scam. Don’t waste your time. Really a shame since I love this game so much on desktop.

Response from developer

Just go play on desktop: it's really way better on a bigger screen and with keyboard. Those who REALLY want to play it on iOS don't hesitate to pay a single buck a month for it.

Subscription based. AVOID. A

EDIT:The developer does not care about anyone on an iphone 16 suffering from cut off UI, because he just couldn’t get used to the new, barely shifted, UI. Insane. See the reply.

Not a fan of a yearly sub. one time buy maybe.

The UI is shifted compared to the other ports, and game pad on the bottom left is clipping with the phone making the diagonal bottom left very hard to tap.

UPDATE: The developer seems to not really care as the UI is still misaligned. I would avoid.
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Response from developer

EDIT: I'm playing on iPhone 13 max and just double checked on iPhone 16 max — no difference, works as expected: cannot misclick. If there's something specific with iPhone 16, please, let me know the details. Thank you for your review. The gamepad is there to prevent misclicks. Earlier it was positioned not to clip, but that resulted in multitude of rages when I wanted to take a single step, but misclick led the character somewhere else that led to death. Hence this.

Subscription based.

Not a fan of a yearly sub. one time buy maybe.

The UI is shifted compared to the other ports, and game pad on the bottom left is clipping with the phone making the diagonal bottom left very hard to tap.

UPDATE: The developer seems to not really care as the UI is still misaligned. I would avoid.

Response from developer

Thani you for your review. The gamepad is there to prevent misclicks. Earlier it was positioned not to clip, but that resulted in multitude of rages when I wanted to take a single step, but misclick led the character somewhere else that led to death. Hence this.

Menus have stopped working

I can’t start a new game anymore, because the menu panels have disappeared. Please fix this.

Response from developer

Thank you for your review. Please add more details and a screen shot or better screen record at https://apollov.atlassian.net/servicedesk/customer/portal/1 Also have you tried restarting a coupe of times? Sometimes the menu just hang and restart fixes this.

Would buy with more guarantees

BN 0.9.1 is out and supposed to fix a lot of problems. When will you update?

Response from developer

Thank you for your review. Since this app is aimed to provide the latest versions of both games, it is up to core developers to make decisions about balance and bug fixes. This app updates then to the latest stable version, whatever that means. While it would be possible to contain more than one version of each game inside this app, it would also bloat the size of the app and, I believe, positively influence only some very small amount of players. If it would be some config options in-game or config files that would help tune balance, for example, it would be nice, but please address core developers to implement it.

Would buy with more guarantees

I’ve played DDA and BN for years, and I’ve purchased all of this developer’s other Cataclysm releases on iOS. I don’t mind paying a fair yearly fee to keep them going. But the current DDA build is basically unplayable — auto-eat and drink don’t work at all, and doing it manually through iOS menus is painful. BN runs, but vehicle fragility is brutal; even a composite-armored Humvee falls apart after a few zombie hits. I’d gladly pay if there were stable build options or some assurance of ongoing fixes.
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Response from developer

Thank you for your review. Since this app is aimed to provide the latest versions of both games, it is up to core developers to make decisions about balance and bug fixes. This app updates then to the latest stable version, whatever that means. While it would be possible to contain more than one version of each game inside this app, it would also bloat the size of the app and, I believe, positively influence only some very small amount of players. If it would be some config options in-game or config files that would help tune balance, for example, it would be nice, but please address core developers to implement it.

Menu stuck after saving

When saving a game in Bright Nights, after exiting the app and reopening, the main menu seems to get stuck and the overlay buttons don’t work properly anymore

edit to respond to dev: Yes I have already submitted a support ticket on your website.

Response from developer

Please report more details to https://apollov.atlassian.net/servicedesk/customer/portal/1, I'll try to help. Edit: yes, thank you, I see it and marked it as important, but ATM I have very little time. I hope to take a look at this week. Sorry for the delay and thank you for your patience.