And already the 2022 Game of the Year season has begun, not with a bang, but with the whimpering bleat of a cartoon sheep. Yes, action management game cult of the Lamb is excellent – an intriguing creature from the island’s video game boutique Dr. Moreau wrinkling her delightful nose at all strictly defined genre concepts.
Released last week for consoles and PC, cult of the Lamb is as derived as it is dizzyingly original. Maybe you’ve seen it compared to animal crossing, for his responsibility for the micromanagement of anthropomorphic animals. or maybe to The Binding of Isaac, for insisting on sending you to the dungeon. or maybe to Hades, because that’s the yardstick by which all indie games are measured these days – a fitting comparison given that both have flashy, painterly art, are essentially roguelikes, and are steeped in exploration of mythology. They also quietly took the gaming world by storm.
Holy shit, this game rules.
cult of the Lamb opens with your death. You, the last living titular lamb, will be murdered on a sacrificial altar. But a lost god revives you and tasks you with killing the other gods who chained him earlier. For half the game, that means navigating procedurally generated isometric dungeons and smashing occult-themed enemies with swords and spells. For the other half, you build a small town, recruit citizens (acolytes), and build facilities to keep them happy while maintaining a sense of personal facility. The catch is that everyone in your village is an animal. Oh, and you’re a cult leader. (Do you understand? They are your flock!) These two core principles flow together in an inseparable way.
There’s a lot going on, and you’ll learn most of the game’s key systems in a very short amount of time. Within the first, oh, 30 minutes, you’ll be taught about faith and crusades and doctrines and hunger and sickness and rituals and sermons, which are some of the many systems you need to keep in mind to keep your flock happy. You’ll learn about important resources like wood, stone, bone, grass, and gold, and how many things you can build with them.
It’s a lot to digest, but the game’s irrepressible charm will force you to navigate any confusion. cult of the Lamb feels alive in a way that few of his contemporaries do. Text bounces over speech bubbles to give certain words an emphatic effect. (You can turn this off in the game settings.) The animals are procedurally generated, right down to their names. (You can change these if you wish.) Jokes abound. (There is a carnivorous spider called Helob, an obvious nod to the Lord of the rings
At the start of each run, you’ll be given a randomly chosen weapon – a sword, dagger, ax or similar – which makes the fights feel fresh. Combat has it all: every time you deal or receive damage, the screen shakes, similar to last year The Door of Death, a similarly awesome dungeon crawler with an occult theme about animals. So far I haven’t come across a weapon or ability that lets you block or parry. Instead, the focus is on dodging, giving fights a fast-paced, frenetic zest. Usually, when you die in a roguelike, you lose everything and have to start over. but cult of the Lamb is generous: upon death, you can keep a full 75 percent of the resources you find or, you know, sacrifice a follower to steal its life and move on.
This is a kindness as you don’t usually come back with everything you need to build everything you want to build. Then you have to make difficult decisions such as: distribute your grass and gold to build up farming plots to avert long-term starvation for your herd? Or use this weed to cook tasteless meals to satisfy immediate hunger? Each run also results in you making at least some progress on those (many) systems I mentioned earlier, so you’re constantly unlocking skills, attributes, weapons, and other abilities. Then, at home, there is a devotion to milk from your followers in a variety of ways, which in turn opens up more opportunities to improve the town. There’s a grind here, but it’s almost completely free of friction – another part of the game that forces repeat play.
Whenever I’ve fought heretics, I itch to return to my flock, feed their hunger and pick up their shit. (You have to play for a while before you unlock an outhouse.) Whenever I’ve been meticulously monitoring my village, I’ve always wanted to go back to the dungeons to do…dungeon stuff. No component of the game was a chore – at least not yet.
To be clear, I haven’t defeated all the bosses yet, nor have I fully built my little village. And sure, there is the vanishingly small chance cult of the Lamb could fumble the ending with disappointment. But I already feel confident recommending this game with my whole chest, even if it ends up biting my ass. Isn’t that the meaning of cultic belief?
