Cult of the Lamb – Review
Snappy roguelite dungeon-crawling action meets bizarre animal cult base building and management in Cult of the Lamb, and the result is a crazy and intoxicating blend.
It might be risky to merge two very different genres, since you have to make sure that both parts are enjoyable on their own while still contributing to the whole. Those guys at Massive Monster, who worked on it, really nailed it. Right immediately, you can see that this is a world worth exploring because of its unique blend of twisted, evil, and somehow adorable elements. The central “slice and build” cycle intrigued me more than I had anticipated.
We’ve all played those roguelites that eventually get old. Our combined time spent on city-building video games totals in the dozens. Cult of the Lamb, surprisingly, doesn’t try to achieve more than it can handle.
This is the kind of game that can make hours disappear in a flash if you’re not careful. On the other hand, Cult of the Lamb has an exceptional level of regard for your time as a player with a busy schedule.
After a brief but powerful introduction that lays out the stakes and introduces the four big bosses, you’re free to begin forming your own cult. You will indoctrinate animals as a dubious but dedicated leader while playing as a literal sacrifice lamb who is brought back to life by a frightening figure known as The One Who Waits. You’ll get even with your mysterious benefactor by exacting revenge biome by biome and bishop by bishop. It’s great that the story’s general direction is set right away.
At your new base of operations, you will have to do everything from scratch, including gathering materials, constructing buildings, farming, preparing food, cleaning, blessing members of the community, preaching every day, and performing rituals. In the beginning, there isn’t much to oversee, but you’ll have to get your hands dirty chopping trees or digging; later, when you have more cultists at your disposal, they’ll take care of most of the cult’s busywork so you can focus on growth and underhanded decision-making. It is most important that they remain faithful.
You can explore the roguelike dungeons whenever you like, and once you do, you’ll have to battle your way through randomly generated rooms full of enemies using rapid sword slashes and dodging manoeuvres before facing a mini-boss. The average duration of these “runs” is 10 minutes.
You must complete three (increasingly difficult) runs in each zone of Cult of the Lamb before beginning the fourth and final run necessary to dethrone the monarch of that land and free the slaves held there.
For the most part, that’s how things will go in terms of repeating actions. However, if you want to be able to take on these threats head-on, you need to strengthen your foundation first.
For example, if everything goes perfectly, you can expect no less than 16 runs (plus some endgame stuff). It feels strange to present the game in this way, but I think it’s important to emphasise it from the start as a rough estimate for anyone who’s tired of roguelikes. I recommend titles like Hades, Dead Cells, and Rogue Legacy 2, but if you’re expecting a similar grind, you’ll be disappointed. Instead of repeating themselves, the ideas in Cult of the Lamb are distilled into a concise whole.
Gathering gold, provisions, and new members in the field is a natural byproduct of expanding your cult’s influence. Strange people are a possibility, some of whom will unlock new regions of the global map for you to explore; they are always within a mouse click of a fast-travel button. It’s a vibrant place, whether you’re in a quick-fire fishing minigame, a dice-rolling competition against multiple NPCs, or the lair of a gold-obsessed lunatic.
Cult of the Lamb, like any good simulation game, keeps things straightforward at initially to avoid overwhelming you with information. This gradual introduction persists throughout the game, ensuring that players never feel overwhelmed. Until a topic is properly introduced and discussed, you will never be “on the hook” for it. So, while you’ll inevitably become the leader of a dozen or two animal cultists, the road there is relatively easy.
And when it isn’t, well, that’s part of the fun, too: when a bishop curses your flock with sickness and they poop all over the town while you’re dungeon-running; when an elderly person dies and you forget to take care of the body; when a dissenting snake in the grass emerges and you forget to imprison and “re-educate” them. Despite all of those setbacks, my cult was never in serious jeopardy. There will be a lot of humorous Tamagotchi references.
The in-game week is shorter than real life, and neither eating nor sleeping is required of you. Preach a sermon, prepare some food, clean up any messes, attend to any minor requests from the villagers, issue any necessary construction orders, and collect the group’s harvested or generated resources before departing town. (Many of them will spend the day in prayer.) Several branches of technology are available to the Cult of the Lamb.
The town’s tech tree is the largest one and features many unlocking construction plans made possible by the dedication of your followers. This is the beginning of the end for manual labour in your cult. In addition, your lamb can progress via a skill tree, which improves their initial weapon statistics, grants them to stronger randomised weapons, and grants them access to rechargeable combat powers.
There are also ideologies and rituals that can be unlocked but have a cooldown (that are permanent for the playthrough). Dark “miracles” such as restoring everyone’s confidence in you, resurrecting the dead, and filling empty stomachs are all possible through rituals. Even marriage is an option! A number of times over! Interesting dilemmas can be found in the game’s doctrinal choices, which are character attributes that can be unlocked for your villagers but which present a “either this or that” choice, each with potentially game-changing consequences. Do whatever you want for as long as you like; the game doesn’t care. As my feelings towards my cult members (each of whom you can identify) deepened, I made an effort to curb my hatred.
Again, Cult of the Lamb makes all of the relevant factors easy to understand. The content on your screen will not be overwhelming or pre-rendered. While you should be monitoring the activities of your cult on a regular basis, you won’t be severely penalised if you become sidetracked by the roguelite elements of the game or if you decide to spend an entire day catching every fish in the game in rapid succession. When I was having one of those “oh shit, I should definitely run home” moments, the base-building element of the game never ever felt stressful.
Instead, stress often shows out as rebellious behaviour. Although there are varying degrees of challenge, I found “Medium” to be the most appropriate designation. (So do the programmers.) I think I wiped four or five times during runs in Cult of the Lamb before I made it halfway through the game. Planning ahead greatly increases your chances of achieving your goals.
Preaching can increase your health, and completing specific multi-part NPC missions can reward you with various fleeces that suit different playstyles, in addition to increasing your raw attack power and the variety of weapons in the randomised pool (my fave is a big slow-hitting hammer). Wearing a tunic that handed me four random cards at the beginning of each run was preferable than acquiring temporary tarot cards on runs (for things like a greater crit chance or better chests) (and prevented me from finding any more). There are other dangerous but potent tunics available.
A few good ideas from The Binding of Isaac are incorporated into the game, such as permanent and non-permanent hearts and optional artificial intelligence “demons” that follow you into battle and aid you with their own unique set of skills, but don’t go looking for insane snowballing item combos or anything like that. The fighting is straightforward, quick, and effective. To avoid harm, you probably just keep dodging your opponent’s swipes and projectiles while you’re not actually attacking. The skeletons, spiders, assassins, and other enemies can quickly overwhelm you, so it’s often a race to eliminate the most dangerous ones and clear certain destructible parts of the environment to make more room.
To avoid getting too many papercuts, go cautiously. The bosses in Cult of the Lamb are much more challenging than the standard enemies or the base-building strategy elements. The bishop fights involve concentration and quick reflexes, despite the fact that the opponents in each area serve as a warm-up for the mini-boss and the mini-bosses foreshadow the boss of the biome.
Every time I’ve ever bombed a run, it’s been because I was up against a bishop. However, the penalty on your accumulated resources isn’t too severe, and there are ways to dodge death; would you sell a cultist’s life for yours? We live in a harsh world, yet I still felt responsible.
I like how the gameplay is streamlined, but towards the end I was exhausted from all the fighting (even with the optional side quests for resources and unlockable outfits). For my purposes, that was plenty of time. If you’re looking for a wide variety of playable personalities, you might want to look elsewhere. A steady stream of new unlocks in the village simulation section kept things interesting for me throughout. Thirteen hours were spent writing the final draught, then I spent a few more hours researching hidden meanings. There isn’t much reason to linger around after the credits roll, aside from standard mop-up, but you can if you want to, and post-game material seems to be in the works.
In terms of unique foes, weapons, and abilities, the roguelike action could have used a little more depth. However, it is clear that some thought went into the design. Cult of the Lamb is great as is, especially considering how absurdly fast the runs feel, and isn’t designed to be played indefinitely. The rapid progression is ensured by the ability to quickly traverse rooms. The only real issue I have with cult-building is that it may grow quite congested, which can make it difficult to interact with specific NPCs or items. If the worst came to the worst, I could just press the fast-forward button and let the crowd pass me by as I sat quietly thinking.
Cult of the Lamb is a great combination of two genres that I enjoy immensely—roguelite action games and city builders. It takes many of the most interesting parts of previous genres and sets them in a new environment while following a streamlined plot of its own design. The end product is quite engaging. You can confidently suggest this game to a large audience despite its grim subject matter and the possibility of player fatigue. Sure, get the word out.
