Coming into Cult of the Lamb, I expected a very silly experience. I’m getting that, but I’m also getting attached.
The sweet babes over at Massive Monster and PowerUp (shouts out, I love you guys) decided to give me a sneak preview of Cult of the Lamb, because they could clearly see me going absolutely bonkers over it.
So that’s exactly what I’ve been playing, and while I did complete the Darkwood area made available in the preview, I simply couldn’t stop taking care of my cult after that. While the full game isn’t out just yet, I can’t comfortably put out a review of the game.
However, I desperately want to talk about it which is why I’m co-opting for this: My first impression of Cult of the Lamb.
It’s time to start a nice little cult
After you get sacrificed by some real ugly fuckers, you are saved by an all-powerful mysterious guy. Said guy decides that the only way you can truly thank him for saving your life is by starting a cult dedicated to his divine power. This seems like an incredibly reasonable trade-off, and I would probably do the same thing in real life if that happened to me.
There are two main gameplay modes in Cult of the Lamb, the cult management simulator and the dungeon crawling. I’ll start with the former, as it’s probably the most relevant to the title.
The cult management aspect of the game is both amazing and stressful. I found myself spending a lot of time at my cult, making sure everyone was well fed, well rested, and absolutely obsessed with me. I recruited Sonic the Hedgehog and Sully from Monster’s Inc., as well as a host of other animals and freaks.
Unfortunately, Sully became a dissenter and started trying to turn people against me, so we eventually had to do a ritual sacrifice on him for the betterment of the community. Nobody missed him, he was a loser and a fake!
When you’re out fighting beasties, your cult will worship you, collect supplies, and take shits all over the place. Don’t be gone for too long or they will all die. It is so stressful but I also love the stress.
Fighting beasties to make besties
The combat system is your standard claustrophobic dungeon crawler, enemies come at you with hate in their hearts, so you simply must dodge roll and destroy them.
To add insult to injury, you also proceed to destroy and harvest their bones too, which you’ll need for cult rituals later. Good lord, how twisted!
The big bosses, on the other hand, do not let you destroy their bones. Instead, they go from being horrific ugly beasties, to scared little potential besties.
The combat is pretty reasonably challenging, with dodging being essential and the only way to get stronger being through raising the loyalty of your cult as well as collecting tarot cards through each dungeon area.
There’s all types of things to level up, like yourself, your church, your cult, as well as areas outside of your cult and the dungeons to keep an eye on. A dice-based mini-game and a fishing mini-game made an appearance in the preview, and we all know that fishing mini-games are an indicator of something real good.
I’m having an absolute ball with Cult of the Lamb, and continue to play well beyond the bounds of the demo (although I can only currently access the one dungeon due to this). Massive Monster and Devolver Digital have absolutely knocked it out of the park with this one.
The full game comes out on August 12th, and you can pre-order it now. If you’d like to try it for yourself as well, you can give the demo a try!
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