Few games make such a strong first impression as Cult of the Lamb. It had us gripped within a minute, and we were captivated by the game for most of our roughly 20 hours. It’s a title that often delights, with a catchy tone, gruesome gameplay and an arrogant approach to taste and decency. Only a handful of minor complaints hold it back from bona fide greatness, but we have no qualms about recommending the game to anyone with a taste for the freaky or the macabre.
The art style of Cult of the Lamb is really striking. It is an unholy mishmash of the pure and the profane. The Lamb is an immediately likable character, both because it’s cute and because of the great animation that gives it a perpetual bounce, unlike many of the cartoon characters from the early days of animation. But then the world the lamb inhabits is one full of grotesqueries and creepy creatures, and the game teems with pseudo-satanic imagery.
It’s a game that we found ourselves engaged in during our time. We really just mean looking thereby – looking across the screen at the details and gazing gleefully at the forest creatures of our cult going about their daily lives, performing tasks that are sometimes healthy and sometimes repulsive. The balance between the charming and the repulsive is at the heart of Cult of the Lamb, not just in its aesthetics, but pervasive throughout its story, gameplay, systems, and decisions you have to make.
The game begins with guiding the lamb to the slaughter. It waddles and is terrified and as we discover it is also the last of its kind, with all the other lambs already being sacrificed to appease four vile, bloodthirsty gods. The ax-man comes and our lamb is sent unceremoniously to the great afterlife where it meets a fifth god, betrayed and imprisoned by the others, and enlisting your help in striking back those who have wronged you both in a most unsavory way.
You are resurrected by the fallen deity on the condition that you start a cult in his honor and kill each of the four gods so you can both be free. From this point on, divide your time between managing the cult and fighting your way to the gods you’ve sworn to kill. There’s also a little exploration of the island you’re on, and a few minigames you can take part in, but the meat and potatoes of Cult of the Lamb are succinctly presented to you in these opening minutes.
The battles in the game are simple yet challenging. You have a weapon and you can hit things with it. You can also roll to dodge. As you progress, you unlock magical attacks, and the weapons become stronger or contain various extra properties such as poison or transform the enemies you conquer into ghosts that then attack your enemies. You make your way through dungeons fighting all sorts of monstrosities before finally reaching a boss and then moving on to the next.
While the combat is certainly engrossing and a mite more difficult than we expected, the lack of variety in the weapons and the limited options available to you means it never seems to really progress. Sure the enemies will fire more projectiles and your sword or hammer is stronger, but basically on hour fifteen you do exactly the same as on hour one. It’s certainly not bad, but a little more variety wouldn’t hurt.
Whether you succeed in a dungeon or face a sticky ending, either way, you’ll be transported back to the cult afterward. If you were killed in battle and then resurrected, some of your cult members will be discouraged, but otherwise there isn’t much of a penalty for death. While you’re on the crusade, your cult members will do their best to keep things going, but once you’re back, you can take things more hands-on.
You have a piece of land to work with and you can build on it however you want. Your cult starts out small, and first you need to mine some rock and cut down some trees to give you the materials to build a handful of rough structures. Later, you can automate the process with mines and sawmills. You need farmland, toilets and a place for your cult to worship.
Later, you begin to unlock doctrines and rituals that help shape your cult, and oftentimes you will have to make a decision to choose one direction over the other. For example, you can introduce the idea of a ceremonial burial to your flock in case one of them sniffs it, filled with tombstones for the survivors to mourn and even funerals. Or you can just tell them to make a stew and eat their recently deceased friend. Don’t waste don’t want to.
The management side of the game is simplistic and it runs out towards the end of the game once you build a big cult following. It’s never too onerous, and if one of your cult members gets out of hand, you can always just have them killed. Speaking of the cultists, when you start out, you might be tempted to create a follower that resembles a cat and name it after a beloved pet. In a word: don’t. We made this mistake, not anticipating that we would have to beat little Colin to death when a cruel god manipulated him to turn against us. It was grim.
Conclusion
Cult of the Lamb is a game that is much more than the sum of its parts. Taken on their own, neither the combat nor the cult management would be strong enough to carry the title, but together they form a compelling whole that is further enhanced by the delightful art style and penetrating sinister tone. It’s bad and wonderful and more than a little unhinged. It is also one of the most impressive games of the year.
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