Cult of the Lamb on the Nintendo Switch
Start your own cult in a land of false prophets, venturing out into diverse and mysterious regions to build a loyal community of woodland worshippers and spread your Word to become the one true cult.
I don’t remember exactly when I became aware of this game, I want to say that it was in some Nintendo event where they announced a couple of indie games. What I do remember was being drawn to the game’s visuals, the art style, and obviously the gameplay. It looked both somewhat-creepy and adorable. I mean, you are a lamb, an innocent cute little lamb, and you lead an evil cult. So, I put its release date on my calendar and even pre-ordered a physical copy of it, that is supposed to arrive sometime in Q2 of 2023.
Now that is finally here, the gameplay is one part sim and one part action-roguelike, imagine if Hades and Stardew Valley had a baby. The premise of this game is you are being sacrificed by some cult by the Old Ones because a prophecy said that a lamb will be the vessel by which The One Who Waits will return. Obviously, you do get sacrificed and then return to life by The One Who Waits, for you to raise a cult in his name and to destroy the 4 Old Ones in order to break free, just like the prophecy says.
Again, the gameplay is divided between you taking care of your duties, tending to your followers and your efforts to fight your way through the forests of heretics, the rouge like part, and hunt down them Old Ones. Here is like your typical rouge like game, where you enter a dungeon, you pick a weapon, and you fight your way through different rooms. In some rooms, you will encounter some cult member that you can convert and at the end of the run, there will be a boss. These dungeons aren’t super-long, they might take about 10-15 mins to complete. Then you return to your commune with the spoils of your adventure!
In your Cult’s Commune is where you do your sim part of the game. Part of tending to your followers is to listen to them and resolve their issues, you farm, you harvest, you build things. You give sermons and teach doctrines, you can assign jobs and responsibilities to each of your cult members. You also need to do anything and everything to keep their faith from dropping, or they will turn on you. At this point, you can teach them again, throwing them into prison or my favorite, sacrifice them.
You do a zillion things, I won’t list because there’ll be too much, or I probably haven’t even got to do them.
This is definitely a completely unique rougelike kind of game, and I will say, half of it, to me, can be stressful. The action, rougelike part of the game isn’t that hard, granted, I’m playing on easy, and it is where I get a lot of fun out of. The sim aspect of it, well, that is the stressful part, for me. I always worried that I will not attend to every request, that my followers aren’t happy, that I am not building the necessary things, etc.
If you very much enjoy games like Stardew Valley or Animal Crossing, you will love this aspect of the game. I do own both Stardew and Animal Crossing, and I had never been able to get into them, I lose interest quickly.
This is a beautiful, cute-looking game, and it is a lot of fun, except for the sim part, for me, but it is definitely with checking out.
