Introduction
Cult of the Lamb is greater than the sum of its parts. It doesn’t quite achieve rogue-like or base-building legendary status, but the overall package is elevated higher than its reach.
Story
You’re a lamb sacrificed by four gods named “the bishops of old faith.” Upon death, you meet an imprisoned fifth bishop named “The One Who Waits.” The One Who Waits provides a crown embued with godly powers, tasks you to start a cult in his name, and kill the other four bishops.
The story is a simple one, but I never felt I wanted more. It’s a solid foundation for satirical humor, and the religious references are funny and land often.
As things progress the game rewards you with little tidbits about your origin and place among the bishops. It’s all light fare and works well.
Gameplay
I didn’t know I needed a genre blend of rogue-like, bullet-hell combat combined with the progression of a base-builder, but it’s a beautiful balance.
Combining these genres creates a nice pace where you do a dungeon run to collect resources and hurry home to take care of your followers. The flow is reinforced by a daily timer prominently displayed at all times. I also appreciated how your cult’s base progression advances combat strength. Outside of combat and base building is a variety of minigames, including fishing, a gambling dice-based game, and other cults to visit and exploit.
Base Building and Your Cult
The gameplay is fun and addicting but never very deep.
There are familiar elements like resource gathering to build new structures and you can refine resources to create more advanced structures.
You need to farm to feed your growing cult and use their feces to fertilize new crops. If followers get hungry or unhappy for any reason, they will dissent and start spreading ant-gospel to everyone else. You can then imprison them until they learn to behave or sacrifice them for meat to feed followers.
Followers level up, and you can send them on adventures to get resources or bring back new people to indoctrinate.
There is the ability to customize every follower’s appearance and there are endless unlockable decorations to personalize your base.
The base-building gameplay loop is tied to the cycle of a new day. Each day resets cooldowns like sermons and rituals. Both sermons and rituals boost cult morale. However, rituals have special effects like making everyone feel full for a couple of days, motivated to work tirelessly through the night, or building extra devotion by marrying a follower (wed multiple if you want but they’ll get jealous when they witness you smooch another.) You can then extract devotion to level up combat abilities or unlock new structures.
Base progression is well done, and I liked how advanced structures automated farming and other mundane tasks. I was growing bored of some repetitive tasks right around the time I unlocked structures that let my cult do it for me. Nothing is overly complex or overstays it’s welcome.
Adventuring and Killing in the Name of Your God
As with base-building, the combat part is also pretty simple. There is a spammable weapon attack, a dodge-roll, a resource-based magic ability, and a charge attack that uses the same magic resource but at a slower rate.
There are several weapon types, such as daggers, swords, axes, and heavy hammers. The only change in gameplay from weapons is attack speed, damage, and how long you’re left open after an attack.
Weapons can also have a single modifier type. There is nothing too crazy here with the usual assortment of poison, crits, health-leeching, or the chance to spawn a little ghost that will attack a nearby enemy. All the modifiers play the same and only add more random damage that the player doesn’t control. The crit weapons always give the most bonus and make other options feel trivial.
Enemies range in size, speed, and attack patterns. They flash a moment before they attack. You can dodge-roll at any time and even when charging up your own attack. Other enemies spew projectiles on the screen in bullet-hell fashion.
Your first priority is to avoid damage. Watch for the spew of bullets and enemy charge attacks. Next, get in as much damage as you can. Each weapon has a combo string, with the final hit doing a nice bit of extra damage. The slower the weapon, the shorter the string. There are also charge attacks, but I never found them to be an efficient use of your magic resource.
There are a bunch of magic cooldowns with various ranges and functionality like AOE pushbacks, long-range seeking missiles, and temporary invincibility. The resource requirement is well-tuned, and abilities feel powerful but not overpowered.
The combat loop is fast and fun, if rarely challenging for the seasoned player of these genres.
Graphics
Cult of the Lamb lives on its presentation and deservedly so. You can’t go wrong with cute animals and satanic overtones. Every sprite is lovingly crafted and often hilarious. The animations are excellent, too. I never grew tired of watching Lambert open his cult bible, hover in the air, and extract every bit of devotion from his followers.
There is a large cast of characters and places to see other than your own base and the procedural dungeons. One favorite was a town where the cult leader was obsessed with gold and all things shiny. All his followers were dipped in melted gold and could only shake to acknowledge his presence.
Sound
The music is catchy and memorable. I liked the sound effects, too. With any base-building game, you’re bound to hear the same blips and beeps over and over. The effects were always crispy and satisfying. There is no voice acting, but the animalese-like chatter is themed to each character. The spider has a SssSss to his voice, and the fish has an underwater blooping to his tone. The voices always made me laugh.
Conclusion
Cult of the Lamb is a smart game with tons of features and ideas going for it. That said, it plays things safe. The base building is approachable but too simple and one step away from greatness. The combat is good but never as exhilarating as some of its rogue-like peers. However, the presentation and humor are excellent and make Cult of the Lamb feel special enough not to be missed.
Pros
- Genuinely funny
- Great pacing and blending of genres
- Fun, addicting, and doesn’t overstay its welcome
Cons
- Combat would benefit from more variety
- Base-building remains essentially the same from hour one to hour thirty
Challenge
I played the game on “Very Hard.” There are several levels of difficulty that adjust how much health you have, how much damage you take, and how quickly your followers get hungry or sick. I found the game relatively easy and desired a bit more challenge. The final encounters were fantastic and a great example of what’s possible within the game’s framework; I just wish there was more of it.
Hardware
Steam Deck
Time Played
26 hours.
Final Score
8/10
My genre 10/10 benchmark to asses my final score is Hades for the combat side. I don’t have much base-building experience, and this is one of the best games I’ve played in the genre.
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