Cult of the Lamb made me one of those despicable cult leaders you hear about and I loved it – throwback

When I think of running a cult (which I’m sure everyone does), I think of the “perks.” You know getting ridiculously rich by cheating on my loving followers. To be served day and night by the most dedicated Yes Men. Live out the luxury life without actually lifting a finger. The idea of ​​cleaning up poop to prevent my fellow cultists from getting sick and dying never really crossed my mind.

Enter Cult of the Lamb, the first high-profile game from developer Massive Monster and the latest in a long line of high-quality indies from publisher Devolver Digital. Cult of the Lamb takes the idea of ​​running a cult and really puts it all in your hands. It’s all about convincing innocent anthropomorphic creatures to worship you like a god and it’s one of the best games of 2022.

The everyday life of a cult leader

Cult of the Lamb is impossible to pin down with a single genre descriptor. As you build your cult, it can feel a little like some macabre Stardew Valley. They frequently upgrade buildings and solve cultist problems to keep them fed, sanitized, and most importantly, believing that you are the greatest being in their universe worth giving money to.

This half of the game is immersive and puts you in a near-constant loop of shredding resources, then constructing new buildings, which then produce even more resources, and so on, until it’s all mostly automated. You will complement this by delivering a daily sermon where you can give your character new powers or enact new groundbreaking doctrines that give your cultists new traits. You can even hold your very own ritual to do all sorts of helpful things, like level up an elder or hypnotize your cultists with the power of mushrooms so they have complete faith in you for several days.

In advance, this may sound like a dizzying array of options that can easily become confusing. Luckily, Cult of the Lamb does a good job of slowly getting you into its routine, giving you plenty of time to learn. Also, if you accidentally lose a few cultists, it’s not like there aren’t any more willing souls ready to join your party on the battlefield.

Speaking of the battlefield, that’s the other half of this game. It’s kind of a combination of Hades and The Binding of Issac. You’ve got a gun in one hand, a curse in the other, and a nasty dodge throw to get you out of harm’s way. There are also tarot cards that give you special upgrades and different types of hearts that give your character new ways to stay alive. Again, it’s a lot, but Massive Monster keeps it breezy. You always feel like you’re making good progress as you work toward your ultimate goal of cult domination.

While Hades is an easy point of reference, I wouldn’t put Cult of the Lamb’s combat at that level. It’s a lot easier (although you can always up the heat with higher difficulties) and feels more like a way to build your cult while advancing the story. Each run lasts about 10 minutes and ends with a boss that’s just a stronger version of the enemies you’re already facing in that level. However, when you come across any of the four main bosses, things get exciting.

These bosses are much tougher tests of your skills and require some real work. They’re far from impossible, but the developers did a great job infusing the big bosses with traits of all the enemies you faced in their world at once. While the smaller bosses take an aspect, these tie it all together to give you a real challenge. It’s a shame I couldn’t find a way to combat these beasts with some sort of increased challenge. That said, the focus is always on your followers, and that’s where I really fell in love with Cult of the Lamb.

I would do anything for you

The overarching plot of Cult of the Lamb is a tale as old as time. You are a young sheep about to be sacrificed to four gods who have their own cult. At the last second, a fifth god saves you and puts you in charge of your own cult. As mentioned above, you must then build your cult to take on the four other gods and free your new master, presumably letting him wreak havoc in the world with you by his side. You know, the old thing.

The real thrill comes from the stories you tell yourself. Will you be a death cult sacrificing your elders, or will you turn them into fertilizer when they die and return them to the earth they were born from? Will your followers become grazers that can feed on grass, or give them the trait that allows them to eat their fellow cultist’s poop with no negative side effects?

These are the choices that Cult of the Lamb offers and you can go in the direction that feels right for you. For example, early in the game I decided to have a hierarchy that governs how my cultists are allowed to die. Hard workers were allowed to rise to a higher level and give everyone else something to work towards. Those who weren’t as helpful were sacrificed to increase the cult’s power. And everyone lucky enough to be my spouse received a proper burial in case my whims decided I wanted to bring them back from the dead. This strategy is strange writing it down, but I’ve tried to embrace the cult as best I can.

I quickly lost track of the time I ran into the living room to tell my wife about the latest developments in the cult. She’s met stalwarts like Eligos and Baazlebub as well as I have, because a game like this needs someone to talk to. It’s all so ridiculous and over the top that, much like your nascent cult, keeping it to yourself would be a crime.

Cult of the Lamb has a few issues. Most notably, the post-game content is a bit boring. You can keep building your cult and revitalizing old areas, but like I said above you can’t fight big bosses again, which is disappointing. I also think some progression systems ran out of steam before I rolled any credits. Again, it’s not terrible, but we do pick nits here. Despite these minimal issues, Cult of the Lamb is one of the must-play titles of 2022 in my opinion.

The judgment

Cult of the Lamb blends Stardew Valley’s base building and economy, the fight against Hades, and a heaping dose of Lovecraftian horror into one of the biggest brews of the year. It’s cute and terrifying, with player-driven stories to share with your friends. The post-game content is a bit disappointing, but that’s not nearly enough to take away from the shine of the game.