In Animal Crossing, a fussy neighbor can be mildly annoying and hard to get rid of. In Cult of the Lamb, that sort of talk can get that same anthropomorphized being fed straight to eldritch gods before noon. Even though the two games have different ways of dealing with pests, Cult of the Lamb has some aspects in common with Nintendo’s popular franchise, which it also merges with hack-and-slash roguelike gameplay. It’s an odd mix of tones and styles, but developer Massive Monster has combined it all together elegantly to create one wicked, memorable game.
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Cult of the Lamb is made up of two parts, but it is much more of a management sim. Whereas a game like Hades is roughly 80% combat and 20% town-based RPG mechanics, Cult of the Lamb is about 35% combat and 65% management sim. This unexpected split puts a lot of pressure on those less flashy, action-free elements, but they are made well enough to withstand that weight.
Players are dropped onto a plot of empty land meant to house a cult, which applies to various unlockable structures and the personnel required to run them. More followers mean more potential workers to mine stone and chop down trees, but with every damned soul comes a new mouth to feed and body to clean up after.
Juggling everything is the meat of the experience since there are various meters to watch and things to attend to that a good, well-functioning cult depends on. Checking on everything may sound tedious, but days are only about 10 minutes long so it’s never overbearing and each task is incredibly straightforward. Doing chores is also satisfying since they feed into the well-tuned RPG loop that constantly doles out rewards. Optimizing as the resources roll in and setting up more facilities lends it a natural sense of progression that is easy to see and take pride in, especially as more and more gets automated and it evolves into an elaborate and well-oiled machine powered by sweat, blood, and arcane ceremonies.
It’s easy to take pride in it because it’s also fairly easy in general on the default difficulty. Cult of the Lamb has some pressures that keep players moving — rebelling cultists, decaying corpses, and lots of stray poop — but there’s never too much to the point of being overwhelming. As long as players do a passable job of maintaining everything, it rarely gets too chaotic. Chaos breeds procedural tales and excitement and it’s unfortunate the game doesn’t have more random events that would lead to more of those player-driven stories.
The broad strokes of managing a small city aren’t particularly innovative, but zooming into the finer details shows where it breaks from established traditions and excels because of its personality and premise. The outer wrapper of seeing adorable animals get mutilated, hold a demonic séance, and bow down to a damned lamb is inherently appealing because of the disconnect those two styles have when they’re pushed so violently against each other. The charming, kid-friendly art style and infectious soundtrack also reinforce this tone as they bounce between horror and cutesy at a moment’s notice, but never do so in a jarring way.
That wrapper also gives way for more interesting gameplay mechanics for its management portion. Harvesting devotion from loyal followers is an inventive idea for a currency, which also extends to harvesting the followers themselves. These hapless saps can be used as literal sacrificial lambs to upgrade the church, fleeced for money, and treated as pawns for all types of personal gain. Rituals can also further exploit them in more demented ways by brainwashing them through mushrooms to accept literally anything for a limited time, forcing them to work for two days straight, or convincing them not to eat for a bit. A city-building game that encourages a hostile relationship with those inhabiting it in a unique flourish that matches the game’s unhinged tone and makes it stick out among its saccharine, wholesome peers.
Cult of the Lamb’s hack-and-slash half is a little more typical of the genre, but it doesn’t live up to the lofty standards set by games like Hades or Dead Cells. Slashes have a heft to them and the evasive roll is incredibly forgiving, but it’s not deep enough to withstand more than the 10 minutes each run takes. Players can’t choose what weapons they get and there’s no way to create a synergetic build because the game doesn’t offer the means to do so. Since the ways to customize each run are so limited, battles hardly get more involved than simple slashing and dodging. Dungeon crawls are brisk enough to not overstay their welcome, but that also means they don’t have the time or space to fully develop.
Combat is passable and the town management aspects are pretty solid, but the whole package is a cohesive unit that stands tall because of how it fittingly shepherds the player between its many systems. Moving between farming, holding demonic sermons, building out the camp, fishing, dungeon crawling, and the like so quickly means that no one aspect can get repetitive. Cult of the Lamb respects the player’s time by providing many of the thrills of the genres it houses in a more digestible package. It currently lacks much of an endgame (something Massive Monster will reportedly address in future updates) and subsequently a lot of the replayability roguelites and sim games have, but all the extra wool of this well-kept sheep have been sheared off.
Cult of the Lamb is a twisted and successful balancing act. Even though its combat lacks some nuance, the game balances its roguelite dungeon crawler and management sim halves quite well. Its tone is also similarly composed of two parts, as the game jumps from gruesome cultic rituals to gleeful joy in mere seconds. A lesser game would have mismanaged these drastic shifts, but Cult of the Lamb handles both wonderfully in ways that make it a more varied experience and a cult that’s worth joining.
SCORE: 8.5/10
As ComingSoon’s review policy explains, a score of 8.5 equates to “Great.” While there are a few minor issues, this score means that the art succeeds at its goal and leaves a memorable impact.
