Cult of the Lamb Review – A Maleovalently Good Rogue-lite Life Sim

In a packed hall of gamers and developers alike, one of the busiest games at PAX East 2022 was Cult of the Lamb. There were lines wrapped around the Devolver booth, and from first glance, it looked like a stunning game with a gorgeous art style, but I couldn’t figure out why it was so packed. Now I know why.

Cult of the Lamb brings a satisfying roguelite action game mixed in with addicting life-sim mechanics as you try to grow your cult of followers. You’ll need to find resources like food, wood, and metal to keep your cult growing while you try to eliminate the villainous bishops of the old faith. You wouldn’t think it would work, but they blend with each other perfectly.

Game Name: Cult of the Lamb
Platform(s): PS4, Xbox One, Switch, PC
Publisher(s): Devolver Digitial
Developer(s): Massive Monster
Release Date: August 11, 2022

A phenomenal mix of action and life-sim elements

As you build faith among your supporters, you’ll gain new resources like a toilet for your cultists to relieve themselves in or better shelter for when they sleep. It’s super satisfying to see your cult camp grow with new buildings and resources for your cultists to utilize. In addition, you can perform rituals that will help your cult grow more accustomed to your lamb and gain new interactions from acquiring commandment stones. The developer Massive Monster has added a lot of nuance to its game design, making Cult of the Lamb one of the most thought-out games of 2022 thus far.

However, you’ll truly progress through the game by fighting it out on the battlefield. Similar to a game like Inscryption, you’re working your way to the boss through multiple levels. You can pick a chain of the levels as you’d prefer, involving resource-rich areas, bosses, and challenge mini-levels that flip battle conditions, like having less health for more power.

Cult of the Lamb has a simple but intense battle system that gives you two primary attacks; a swing of your weapon and a magical spell of some sort. For example, you can have a slow but powerful hammer, a dagger that strikes quickly but has less strength overall, an all-rounder sword, and so forth. As you progress, you’ll unlock newer weapons with different elements attached to them, like poison or a vampire effect that sometimes gives you health when struck.

While the combat is a bit simple, it hasn’t felt repetitive. Massive Monster adds on new types of monsters every few levels, and the combat is intense as you roll from place to place. However, some of the lesser bosses do feel a little repetitive. They’re challenging, don’t get us wrong, but there are only so many fireballs that can be sent out before it gets old. The developer adds in one little change per mini-boss to add diversity, but sometimes it doesn’t feel like enough.

On the other hand, the major bosses, called the “Bishop of The Old Faith,” do add something new to the table. Leshy, for example, has a mighty set of teeth that it can burrow into the ground around itself, while Heket spits out bombastic flies from its mouth around the arena. They genuinely feel like epic battles, and you’ll likely struggle against them during your playthrough. The stakes get even higher, as if you lose, your followers will lose faith in you.

Something that might cause you to lose a battle is either the controls or the frame rate. The game was running at 30 frames per second when testing the Nintendo Switch version. This made it difficult to land hits perfectly, and when compared to the PC version, I was dying at the early sections of the game on the Switch while I was propelled forward on PC.

Playing Cult of the Lamb with a mouse and keyboard isn’t recommended but works surprisingly well. However, when using a short-ranged weapon like a knife or a sword, I felt it was hard to predict when an opponent would strike me and dodge. It was difficult to tell when precisely an opponent was stunned by my hits or ready to attack again. Despite some complaints, Cult of the Lamb still offers a stellar action experience.

Gorgeous visuals and music

Cult of the Lamb has a stunning blend of 2D and 3D animation, making it stand out among the many roguelites. It all feels like an oxymoron of some kind. You have adorably animated woodland creatures, but that cuteness erodes when you’re performing insidious acts within the cult. It’s kinda messed up to see these adorable characters sending their friends off to death, but it works incredibly well within the mood that Cult of the Lamb is going for.

The lighting is spot on as it turns from day to night, and whenever there’s a grand boss battle, Massive Monster does an excellent job of making them look menacing. The stunning scenery also brings to mind classic children’s books, but with the menacing lighting and atmosphere, they take on a new light (or darkness per sae).

In addition, the music by River Boy, perfectly matches the tone of the game. Back at your base camp, a cozy, charming vibe sounds too sickly sweet for everything to be normal. Meanwhile, battles play out to some shrill vocals and a funky Latin beat. The percussion in each of the battle themes also carries that intense flair as well.

Overall, Cult of the Lamb will undoubtedly be in the conversation of being Game of the Year at many outlets. The combat is spectacular, though we wouldn’t recommend playing the Nintendo Switch version because of your lack of frames — unless the Switch is all that you have. The life-sim elements, on the other hand, are the star of the show as you try to manage your followers and keep growing your cult.