Review – Cult of the Lamb

I recently played through Cult of the Lamb, a satirical take on the concept of running a demonic cult. It turns horrific things like sacrificial rituals, cannibalism and straight up gaslighting abuse into hilarious amusements by filtering everything through its cartoonish lens. You are a sheep, after all, and all your followers are sycophantic anthropomorphic cute woodland critters. It’s very silly and very fun.

The gameplay itself is a mix of strategic management and roguelike dungeon crawling. When you’re at your cult’s home base, you build your followers’ beds, places to work like farms, mines and lumbercamps, and various other culty structures. You perform sermons at your temple, which generates a steady flow of “faith” for your followers, which converts to loyalty, essentially increasing their level. As they level up, they get better at performing their tasks, generate more faith and generally help continue your slow ramp of power. 

Another resource, devotion, allows you to unlock new buildings and abilities, with a tree of unlockables that feels enticing without ever feeling overwhelming. Standard stuff for this type of game, sure, but implemented here with good pacing to create a satisfying loop.You’re always moving up the tree, and every new day feels like progress towards your ultimate goal of reincarnating The One Who Waits, a cartoonish banished god who is determined to use you to resurrect himself so he can destroy the world. 

So how is the dungeon crawling? It’s fine. It’s in the same vein as games like Binding of Isaac and Hades, with a tongue-in-cheek approach to its storytelling, a heap of silly characters you meet along the way, and four looming bosses waiting to be dispatched at the end of each of the main dungeons. You get a random choice of weapon at the start, before hacking, slashing, dodging and magical-zapping your way through a small series of interconnected rooms, dispatching enemies and collecting loot in the form of resources and money to use back at your cult.

Returning to your base after a dungeon run nearly always ended up with a moment of panic for me, as my followers were often fighting, dying or lazing about – all of which I found highly entertaining, rather than frustrating. Each follower has a random array of personality traits, unique visuals which you can fully customise based on a choice of various animal faces, and you will grow attached to them as they age and level up. After a seemingly random set of days, each follower eventually matures to old age, after which they no longer do any work, but roam about the camp with a walking stick. Depending on your choice of Doctrines, which are like passive cult rules that your followers must follow, having a bunch of old cultists roaming the camp can be a boon – in my playthrough, I chose the “Respect your Elders doctrine, which gave me a boost to my faith every time a follower reached retirement. The alternative is they make for good sacrifices.

The presentation is excellent. Its vibrant and colourful 2D animations compliment the overall goofy vibe, and all of the music is catchy as hell, sure to get stuck in your head. Harvesting your stockpile of resources from your storage chests and totem poles is accompanied by a very satisfying series of clunks, clacks and dings. I played on PC with a gamepad, so navigating the world is as simple as walking around with the analog sticks, and the action controls feel responsive and crisp. 

Progressing to each new dungeon requires you to have a certain number of followers in your camp, and this leads me to my only real criticism of my experience with the game. Since your followers age and die, you constantly need to be refreshing the pool of your workforce. There’s numerous ways to get new recruits, but I found the requirement to reach the final boss of the game to be annoyingly high. I averaged about 12-14 followers throughout, but the final boss requires 20, which was such a leap, I ended up quitting there as I just couldn’t justify sinking any more time into the game by then. I feel very happy with my 25 hours of playtime (That’s the base game, I haven’t bought the Woolhaven DLC, but hear it’s more of the same, which is probably a good thing). I don’t like reviewing a game until I’ve finished it, and I’m well aware this is a subjective criticism that won’t apply to everyone, but my reality is that being a new father makes my precious gaming time so limited, and I still have a huge backlog of games I want to play! In this case, I still have no hesitation in recommending you play it for yourself.

Having spent time with people who have had the misfortune of getting involved with a real life cult, I am confident that some of the activities you get up to in Cult of the Lamb feel quite on the nose, and the game does a fantastic job of satirising the entire concept of cults and their evil, if charismatic leaders. The fact it does this with a silent protagonist that happens to be a sacrificial lamb who doesn’t say a single word, and yet still manages to charm an entire flock of loyal followers to do all of your dirty deeds, is simply hilarious. It’s a really solid rouguelike, overflowing with charm and a well thought out core concept threaded through every inch of its design. 

Get it on Steam, which is also where all these screenshots were taken from.