Animal Crossing meets Lovecraft in this adorable rougelite. Deep dive with us into one of the most unique occult games ever released!
Cult of The Lamb…. Where to even begin? It’s an absolutely adorable #rougelite action/adventure game with a large side of Animal Crossing. You play as a cute lamb who takes care of his large group of “friends” by slaying monsters, gathering resources, farming, and sacrificing their souls to “The One Who Waits”… “What?! Sacrifice?! I thought you said this was a cute, adorable game just like Animal Crossing?” Well yes, but mostly in the sense that it’s super cute and adorable.
Like all great games (I’m looking at you Skyrim) Cult of The Lamb starts off with a sacrifice. Your adorable lamb’s head is thrown on the chopping block. But this time, a dragon doesn’t swoop in to save you. Instead, you die and are plucked from your trip to the afterlife to the holding place of “The One Who Waits.” A deity who has been imprisoned by his fellow deities for his heretical ideas.
Give your cultists’ tasks such as farming, gathering resources like wood and stone, building new buildings, or worshiping the shrine of you in the middle of your land. You know, Animal Crossing stuff.
He offers you a choice, serve him, start a cult in his name, free him, and he will resurrect you. You, of course, get to make a choice: either “Yes” or “Absolutely!” From there, he returns you to the land of the living, where you unalive the #cultists who attempted to send you to your afterlife and begin your own cult in the name of your patron.
This is where we get into Animal Crossing territory. You are given a few cult members to start off. You can change their names, change their form to another type of cute and adorable animal, and change their fur color (If you stream on #Twitch, there is built in Twitch integration where you can raffle off this character creation portion to your twitch followers; the cult member’s name gets changed to the winner’s Twitch username). You then give your cultists’ tasks such as farming, gathering resources like wood and stone, building new buildings, or worshiping the shrine of you in the middle of your land. You know, Animal Crossing stuff. At this point you continue to build your cult, find new followers, upgrade your buildings, upgrade yourself and your crown with new powers to help you on your rougelite action/adventure quests.
The second part of this game is the #action rougelite. You leave your cult temporarily to go out on missions to further your goal of releasing “The One Who Waits”. You are greeted by 4 doors as soon as you leave the cult area. Each one can be unlocked by your followers, and they progressively cost more each time. You step inside the doors and fight through procedurally generated rooms where
you fight demons, rival cult members, and pick up resources and new recruits for your cult. The
fighting is super simple, one button to attack, another to dodge, and another to use your crown
ability that you can pick up along the way. Each run is different, the levels change, the power ups and weapons you pick up change, everything changes. To complete an area, you must complete the area 4 times, each time with a different boss at the end until you finally meet one of the four deities you’ve been tasked to destroy.
All in All, Cult of The Lamb is an incredible game with quite a bit of replay ability. The two sides of the game tie together very well, with each one contributing to the other. The “voice acting” is incredible, reminiscent of the Sims and Animal Crossing, where they are speaking complete, hilarious, gibberish. My first run though took about 17 hours, but your time will vary greatly depending on how much you want to get into each side of the game. I got heavily into the cult building side because honestly, it was super fun.
At $25, I cannot recommend this game enough. It is worth every penny! Before you get into it though, I do have some #tips to help you throughout the game.
Unsolicited Advice
That’s it, play the game. 10/10 would recommend.
Our rating: MUST PLAY!
What do you think?
- Must Play!
- Give it a Shot
- Don't Play...
If you disagree with our rating, comment below! We’d love to hear your opinions!
Bookmark our blog and follow the tag #Gaming for more content like this! Check in with us to see what the world of IT has to offer you!