Picture this. You’re a cute little lamb taken by an evil organized religion for a sacrifice to their God. You are killed swiftly and sent to the afterlife to find another God tied to chains who strikes a deal with you. Start a cult in his name, and he’ll revive you to stop the religion that sent you to your unjust death.

Sounds wild, right? But that’s the beginning ten minutes of Cult Of The Lamb. Developed by Massive Monster, the game is half rogue-like, half cult management simulator. No, you read that right. Sounds like an idea no major studio would take a chance on. Thankfully, Devolver Digital loves taking risks and picked the game up for publishing. 

But how do these concepts work in tandem? Do the rogue elements do anything unique for the genre? How the heck do you make gameplay around leading a cult? Does the game set out to say something profound about the positives and negatives of organized religion? There’s a lot to unpack with this game. That’s kind of what makes it an unforgettable experience. 

Take Revenge in the name of a new God

As you’re thrown back from the afterlife into the world, the combat and rogue elements of Cult Of The Lamb are introduced first. Immediately, the paper art design captures your attention in its stunning detail. It reminded me back of when I saw Paper Mario & The Thousand Year Door for the first time. It’s expertly well crafted, and everything stands on its own. Some examples are your controlled player to weapons to enemies and allies. You can infer where everything is on the map and whether it’s helpful or hurtful. 

It can take a bit to get your bearings from room to room. Like most rogue-like games, you traverse each level by jumping areas that are randomly generated. Hit detection on enemies and on yourself takes a bit to get used to due to the paper-style art design. But after a while, you start to adapt to it. 

Fight with power and chance

As expected for a rogue-like game, Cult Of The Lamb has elements that you can control and some that are luck based. You can control how strong your character is and what weapons you run into battle with. You can’t control specific buffs or new weapons you find. These are randomly generated world-to-world for you to discover and decide to use. 

An important one is the tarot cards. Each area has rooms with a tarot card giver that changes when you find him. You get to pick one of two each time, but no time do you get the same two. While you can find all 36 cards in the game, it will take time and luck. It’s a refreshing change to see it’s at least possible to get each buff. But I can confirm it will take a lot of patience. 

Other than that, the gameplay is routinely similar to competent rogue explorers. If you like rogue-like games, you’ll love what you find here. If you’ve never gelled with the genre, you might be more interested in the other half of the game.

How to manage a Cult?

Now let’s begin to break down the most intriguing and unique element of Cult Of The Lamb: managing said cult! While games have had you play as a God before, I’ve never encountered one personally where you were tasked with keeping individuals indoctrinated as this game does. It’s a fascinating concept utilized to full potential in the game with a deep system to explore. 

As you explore dungeons, you rescue other potential animals that will be sacrificed like you were. Defeat the enemies in the room, and you recruit them to your cult. The cult campground is where all the managing of your people is done. 

Once rescued, you can put each new devotee to work on a task such as gathering resources, building new structures like Churches or farms, or worshiping in your name. Each job has its own benefits to you and the cult. Building allows for new areas to help the members. Worshiping gives you “diving inspiration” points that give you upgrades to use in battle. So ensuring they are all done by your new devout followers is paramount to success.

You have to be a good Cult leader!

This isn’t as easy as it sounds, though. Each new follower has buffs and drawbacks. A follower could be great at praying but awful at resource gathering. Paying attention to each new member’s strengths and weaknesses becomes a critical factor in decisions later on as more elements are introduced. 

There is also the fact that you need to keep belief up in all of your members. You can’t just let them all live in squalor with poop and puke all around the campground with no food or interaction. You need to show them that you care and that you’re a leader that will take care of them. This is showcased brilliantly through the hunger and faith meters at the top left of the screen. 

When at your campground, those meters need to be kept full by actions you do across the cult ground. Make food, talk to your followers, clean up messes, preach your word, confirming they all get proper sleep. All these factors play a part in keeping the cult happy and willing to do whatever you ask to help you succeed in your journey. And the more they believe, the more perks you unlock.

Upgrades, upgrades, and more upgrades

Cult Of The Lamb has a lot of upgrade systems. It can be a little overwhelming at times. But the more you play, the more everything becomes easier to understand. Take cult managing, for example. One element I didn’t mention above is the rituals. As you progress in the rogue levels and the cult managing, you unlock rituals. These will raise the faith of your followers and unlock more benefits for you. Things such as higher attack power or getting worship points faster.

Utilizing every element of both aspects of the game gets you more upgrades. And to make it to the end with your followers, you’ll need most of them. It does feel rewarding that every upgrade does help you in the long run. Too many games have buffs that feel like filler. This is not one of those as every power-up is noticeable immediately once gained.

Subtlety in messaging done right

Throughout all the fighting and all the cult escapades, there was one subtle aspect of Cult Of The Lamb that I couldn’t get out of my head. Early on, you’re encouraged by the deity that saved you to get your followers to love you as much as possible. Following this speech, you are introduced to the mechanic of sacrificing their lives to give yourself strength. Specifically, he reiterates that the more your follower loves you, the more you benefit from their sacrifice. 

It’s a jarring moment that can take a player by surprise. But the game isn’t kidding. As you do more for your followers, their faith level grows. The higher that faith level, the more buffs, and benefits you get if you decide to sacrifice them. And when you do, they’re happy to oblige for the cult. You saved most of them from sacrifice, only to take their lives yourself for your gain.

It’s a dark and subtle way to show how organized cults and religions can operate in sinister ways. The game passes these moments off without a second thought, much like cult leaders do. But it’s hard as a player to if you have compassion. It’s rough to feel good about the benefits to your character knowing you sent someone who believed in you to their death. 

But, any study into cults or the evils of organized religions gone wrong knows this is common. Leaders will do anything to gain more power. Even at the sacrifice of devote followers to do so. There’s something powerful about a game invoking those concepts and thoughts when you play as a lamb of all things. It doesn’t beat you over the head with the message like other games would do to take the easy route. It stings harder knowing you did it and then having to think about the fact you did afterward. That’s impactful and subtle storytelling through gameplay.

Final thoughts

Cult Of The Lamb juggles multiple concepts, elements, and gameplay ideas to mostly succeed in its goals. While I wish the rogue-like gameplay had a little more unique variety, the cult managing more than makes up for those shortcomings. It’s not only exciting to grow and manage your cult, but it punches you in the gut when you’re forced to make devastating decisions to move forward. 

It’s the rare game that has something impactful to say but doesn’t feel the need to beat you over the head with the point. Whereas some titles when it has a villain monologue on the theme over and over again. It’s an experience I won’t forget for some time. Even with my issues, it still is a must-play title for 2022. Blessed be the lamb. 

Cult Of The Lamb is available now for PlayStation 4/5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X, Nintendo Switch, and PC.