Move aside, Lampchop! You’re no longer everyone’s favorite lamb. Now, we prefer this cute little lamb who is the leader of a satanic cult. Seriously! Imagine a cult full of adorable cartoony animals that you provide with shelter and food, only to eventually sacrifice their bodies so that your little lamb can become more powerful and rich. An adorable little wolf joins your village but you sacrifice it to turn it into a pile of bones and meat. In Cult of the Lamb, you’ll have to decide if you’ll use that cute little wolf’s meat to feed your remaining cultists to keep them satiated and potentially turn them into cannibals. You’ll also use the wolf’s bones for future satanic rituals or to build bone walls in your cult village.
Cult of the Lamb is pretty much Animal Crossing for dark minds. The farming sim elements aren’t nearly as deep, but in this game you’re still cooking, fishing, farming, building homes, decorating your village, caring for the sick, and doing quests for your villagers called “followers”…
Any dissenting followers can be jailed and re-educated on the doctrines of the cult. You can also feed your followers bowls of poop, meals that will increase their loyalty, or cook the bodies of sacrificed followers. The Lamb you play as can extort money, inflict fear to raise devotion, or perform rituals that makes everyone work without sleep. It’s really sick and twisted, but also really adorable.
I’m not even a person who typically likes farming sim games. What kept me engaged in Cult of the Lamb (aside from the cute satanic aesthetic) is it’s not just a sim game, but it implements rogue-like, dungeon crawling elements. There are 4 dungeons you unlock once you get enough followers and each dungeon has 2 mini bosses and a main boss. These dungeons aren’t just important for the main story, but also to gather resources and gain more followers to build your village. The village continues to function while you’re dungeon crawling as the followers continue to work, get hungry, and age.
The combination of dungeon crawling and farming sim building was extremely addictive. It kept someone like me, who doesn’t typically like farming sim games, really engaged. I spent hours staying up late and going through the motions. It was as if I was a follower under the spell of this satanic lamb’s cult.
If you’re someone who is in it just for the farming sim elements, you may be wondering if the dungeon crawling will turn you off. The mechanics are simple and satisfying enough to get you through, and there’s a variety of cool weapons and curses you unlock. The weapons could be quick poison daggers or a giant freeze axe coupled with a curse that can do a giant AOE attack to knock back enemies or a projectile that seeks enemies out. Each dungeon is randomly generated, so the weapons and curses that spawn will also be random. You’ll revisit the dungeons for side quests, to gather resources exclusive to that dungeon, or if you failed to complete it the first time; hence the rogue-like features.
The only thing about Cult of the Lamb that I can imagine being a turn off for hardcore farming sim fans, is the building is very limited. I 100% the game, unlocked all decorations and upgrades, found all the different follower skins, and completed all the core quests in less than a week. Although at this point I was done with the game, you can still continue to do repeat fetch quests, redecorate your village, and revisit dungeons (though at this point, I didn’t feel there was any good incentive to continue). I was more than satisfied ending my time with the game after 100% completion, but it may fall short for those looking for a substantial farming sim experience. It was perfectly structured for me though and I really loved my time with it.
The only real complaint about Cult of the Lamb— it’s very buggy. Too often the game would lag or freeze if there was too much going on in the screen. I could’ve had a perfect dungeon run with a God weapon, good card perks, and a strong curse; but it all went to shit if the game bugged out. Unfortunately, you can only save progress in the village, so any dungeon progress will be lost if it bugged out. Thankfully the dungeons are short and simple enough to run through again. The most frustrating bug that I encountered is that I couldn’t edit some things I built, thus removing my autonomy over my village aesthetics. I believe the developers Massive Monster are aware of these issues and working on fixes.
Cult of the Lamb isn’t really a story-based game, but I was still surprised to see story twists and choices that made me go on You Tube after beating the game to discover alternative decisions and their outcomes. Even some core side quests leave the cute little lamb to make some sadistic decisions. I really enjoyed the simple, but good story. I totally vibed with this games aesthetic and that’s partially due to the music being an absolute bop. You sacrifice your villagers, slay enemies, and impose your doctrines to this chill low-fi music.
Another element adding to this game’s success is the Twitch integrations, but this was limited to PC versions only. If the Cult of the Lamb Twitch extension is enabled, a streamers viewers can have one of the Lamb’s followers be named after them. Twitch viewers can also contribute to the totem to increase the streamers devotion and money. It’s a really cool engagement tool that only adds to the games experience. I just really wish the developers found a way to enable this integration for other platforms. Massive Monster created a gem with Cult of the Lamb. They combined genres together and made it work in a way that is extremely addictive. This rogue-like, dungeon crawling farming sim is absolutely one of my favorite games of 2022 so far.
4/5 Bibles.
-Dee Assassina
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