Cult of the Lamb - The World's Sweetest Sect

Everything new is something long forgotten. The idea of Cult of the Lamb seems surprisingly funny and original if you're not a big South Park fan. In season 8, episode 14, titled "Christmas at the Woodsmen," about the same thing happens as in Cult of the Lamb, only without the hubbub of gore and "18+" content. And if you remember this series, then a further review of Cult of the Lamb is redundant for you. In a nutshell, you already have a rough idea of what happens in Cult of the Lamb, and if you don't... ...Please hand me my sacrificial dagger and lie down on that sacrificial altar, it won't hurt... Almost.

Prophecy to come true

Cult of the Lamb tells an ordinary but tightly knit story: A long time ago, in some cartoonish, cozy world, the Gods of the Old Faith lived. The Gods were cruel, and their hunger for worship was insatiable. The Dark Age of Forest Animal Terror lasted for years. But suddenly, out of the blue, the Gods received a frightening prophecy: all the Gods would be killed by a lamb, and one of the Gods would be behind it-a traitorous heretic. There were five Gods. The cruel Gods were very worried about the prediction and chained one of their brethren to eternal imprisonment simply because he posed a threat to the others in the future. It was decided to exterminate all the lambs, to sacrifice them. The bloody harvest lasted until there was only one lamb left in the world. He was caught and led to the altar of sacrifice. The bound, frightened lamb realized that his days were numbered, and his executioner raised an axe over his head. Cold blade, head off his shoulders. The frightened lamb wriggled in suspense, not knowing whether he was alive or not, whether his head had been chopped off...?

...It turned out that they were cut off, but the lamb did not give his soul to the Gods of the Old Faith, his soul was saved by the same imprisoned God. The eternally imprisoned God was angry at the Gods who betrayed him and thought out a plan of revenge: he would not let the last lamb die, he would give him power for temporary use, and in return he would only ask for freedom. The power of the captive God was a crown with an eye, which he gave to the last lamb in the world. To pay for his salvation, the lamb must overthrow the four Gods of the Old Faith.

It's not hard to guess that we will play the lamb. How did the developers and Massive Monster come up with the idea of Cult of the Lamb?

- Let's make a game where you play as a lamb, sacrifice animals, build a cult of your own personality, build a settlement around it and develop your sect.

- That's a great idea! Very relevant these days.

- Just let's create something between rogue-lite and tamagotchi, so players can build all sorts of buildings there...

- Yeah, that's exactly what's needed. Just put down the brown piece of whatever, it smells bad.

- No! It's an integral part of the game!

- Just don't put it in your mouth...oh my God, stop it!

Rogue-lite + Tamagotchi = Cult of the Lamb

From the first moments of the game it is immediately noticeable that Cult of the Lamb was created according to a pre-planned road map, and changed little under the influence of sudden ideas that came to the developers' mind. Since the first trailer Massive Monster hasn't changed anything at all. According to the developers' idea on the faces of the players from the visual cocktail that takes place, a shy smile should come to light. And it works. Indeed in the first hours of the game it is impossible not to grin at what is happening. But as soon as we get a little deeper into the maze of the occult, the once verdant settlement acquires more and more frightening, disturbing colors:

With its unusual visual style and sweet music, Cult of the Lamb falls in love from the first minutes. It falls in love so much that you don't immediately notice the game's flaws, which we'll talk about a little later...

Each animal you meet will willingly follow you, you can give it your own name and face, you can get emotionally attached to it. But as we're playing tamagotchi-rogue-lite, each animal also has a character. It's a matter of luck: someone may be a skilled builder, but a convinced skeptic of religion - such a comrade is not so diligent to pray. And you have to pray! In essence, your followers' faith in Cult of the Lamb is experience points. The happier your minions are, the more Faith resource you get. And if at first this mechanic only works to entice, then after a couple of hours your own minions will start to frankly piss you off. Besides, the side characteristics of the minions don't affect anything. A bad builder is no different than a builder with golden hands. The more brutes there are in the settlement, the less individual they are. The only pleasant surprise in beast management is that settlers age. The mechanics of natural aging change the character of the animals. Senile settlers are useless at work, but, having lived their entire lives under sectarian rule, are more loyal to the lamb. The more devoted the follower, the greater the price of his life...for the sacrifice. That's how Massive Monster cleverly beat the meta-progression: one should not stupidly save up currency, but care about the well-being of one's neighbor.

Another thing is that the minions, though obedient, are very stupid. On their own, they're not capable of doing anything but piling up a bunch somewhere on the street. If your critters want to eat, they will suffer, but they can't cook food on their own. If you make the settlement unsanitary, the critters will get sick and their faith in you will be extinguished. In addition, the critters here are mortal, sometimes suddenly mortal. At some point Cult of the Lamb forgets to be a rogue-lite at all and turns into a babysitter simulator: someone in the settlement poops - you need to clean it up, someone sick - build a hospital, someone misbehaving - a belt is not enough here, you need to build a prison or even more, publicly incarcerate.

If at first the management of the settlement is even pleasant, then closer to the middle you can forget that the game has a combat system. In order to move forward, the lamb has to defeat four deities, but during the dungeon tours the time in the settlement does not stop, but flows in real time. If you have come across the Internet with a video with a terrible mess in the house, where a kid is sitting in the background and soiling the new wallpaper with his hands in paint - in Cult of the Lamb the story is the same...

If you go to the underground for five minutes, you'll feel some grief in the settlement. You'll have to clean up after your incompetent followers by hand. It comes to the point of idiocy: somebody gets poisoned and dies in the middle of the street? The deceased must be mummified and buried. True, this all takes time, which is already sometimes not enough for everything. Each new mechanic - whether it's fishing or farming - just unnecessarily burdens the gameplay. Perhaps it was originally intended, but the longer you play, the more tired you get from the hassle of the animals. Fortunately, the developers have foreseen the moment, that not everyone will want to play the role of a wise and conscientious God, someone will want to be a little Satan...

It's worth giving Massive Monster a thumbs up for the opportunity to make a violent cult. Sacrifice, torture, sadism - no one forbids you to be even worse than those from whom we were supposed to save the game universe...

Sometimes the game oversteps its bounds and plays on the nerves of moralists. The most interesting thing happens in the temple, where Lamb writes the "constitution" of the settlement. The laws in Cult of the Lamb are called commandments and rituals. They can be with innocent content, like this one:

You can also make them quite inhuman. You can order the elderly to be despised, for they are not as useful to society as the young; you can turn your minions into cannibals, so that they eat each other; or you can turn your servants into...coprophiles. Yes, Cult of the Lamb does a great job on the subject of excrement; some of the beasts are very fond of it...

So Tamagotchi or rogue-lite?

Unfortunately, behind the piling up of immersiveness and resource management, Cult of the Lamb forgets that rogue-lite is second on the list of genres. Elements of classic Roguelike are too few. Yes, there is random dungeon generation, randomly dropped items...

...But the items themselves are not much to choose from, only 5-8 kinds of weapons, which can neither be enchanted, nor put on them a powerful spell with the risk of losing the item. There are no original, author's ideas. Death in Cult of the Lamb brings absolutely nothing: it does not move the story, does not change the map, but only penalizes resources. In fact, Cult of the Lamb is only formally rogue-lite, the game would have lost nothing if it had been a normal action or metroidvania a la Death's Door or, God forbid, Tunic.

Bosses... Cult of the Lamb also has problems with bosses. No, the combat system never fails. The control is extremely responsive, and if you play on a gamepad (the game itself recommends a gamepad), then the impression of battles will remain positive. However, interesting bosses are not brought in, and the mini-bosses are just dense, regular, rank-and-file opponents. There is only one interesting, challenging boss in the game, but it still has to wait...

Is Cult of the Lamp worth buying?

Cult of the Lamb is one of those games that perfectly fits the definition of "I'll take it at a discount". The game has good ideas and even successful implementation in some places, but in some places it lacks care about the player and depth of mechanics. Buying for full price is clearly not worth it, even if the game is long overdue for you. Not worth it, because there is no build, no difficulty, no replayability. And that's what's most important for Rogue-lite.