Cult of the Lamb
Devolver
It is not all that often I venture outside of my loot-based, live service endeavors in video gaming these days, but this has been a pretty barren year for releases, which has caused me to get outside my comfort zone, whether that’s roaming around a cyberpunk city as a cat, or now sacrificing farm animals to an imprisoned Lovecraftian god.
That second one is Cult of the Lamb, a new game that arrived this week after some early previews, and it’s without question the most fun I’ve had in months. I’m reminded of when there was so much buzz around Hades I was convinced to give it a shot, and now the same thing is true here, where Cult of the Lamb, with some of Hades’ DNA, is doing the same thing.
Cult of the Lamb is what would happen if instead of building a nice village in Animal Crossing, you crafted a cult compound that enslaved villagers and sacrificed them to a mythical blood god. It’s rendered in cutesy cartoon form, which reminds me of the old Happy Tree Friends cartoons that I have not thought about in probably a decade.
The game is split between Animal Crossing-like recruitment and hometown management, with actual gameplay out in the wild that more resembles Hades and its endless runs through different maps. Combat here is not exactly all that advanced. You slash and dodge roll, mainly, but you get weapons with different powers and you also end up with spells that can do things like fling out tentacles or shoot out homing fireballs. You make your way through maps collecting tarot cards for boosts, resources to take back home, and followers to recruit, which can include many of the bosses you end up defeating on your ”crusades,” as they’re called.
Cult of the Lamb
Devolver
Back home, things get pretty weird. Here, you are responsible for feeding your cult members, giving them somewhere to sleep and keeping their faith in you alive. But they in turn are responsible for praying to an idol of you in the middle of camp, generating one of the game’s primary resources, and listening to your sermons which will help you with combat upgrades outside.
The game also has a series of “rituals” you can unlock that are events thrown for your cult members. These range from pleasant, a nice celebratory feast to fill everyone’s hunger meters, to quite a bit darker, human sacrifice so you gain power, or I just unlocked a fight pit where two cult members will duke it out until you deem that one of them should live or die with a thumbs up or thumbs down, Gladiator-style.
If Cult of the Lamb has faults, it’s that combat can feel a bit basic, and that base management can feel a bit tedious, but the overall loop here is satisfying, and the concept/execution of a murderous cult of cartoon animals is as joyously deranged as I could have hoped for. It seems I am on the way to an ending where I defeat some final boss, but it’s very clear the game is designed so players can build sprawling, elaborate compounds and keep farming in the wild as much as they want. I don’t know how much overall time I will sink in once I beat the main story, but right now, it’s kind of feeling like it may be quite a lot.
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