It’s becoming clear, that 2022 might be going down in the gaming record books as another great year for indie games. I personally played and loved Nobody Saves The World, which was available on Xbox Game Pass earlier this year. We’ve also had Tunic which was received fairly well (also on Game Pass) and Deaths Door, (that came to Game Pass later) one that I personally didn’t enjoy but could see the appeal too.

So it comes as no surprise that 2022 delivers up another example of why you shouldn’t limit yourself to playing only “AAA” games in the form of Cult Of The Lamb. Developed by the team at Massive Monsters (@MassiveMonsters on Twitter) and published by Devolver Digital (@devolverdigital on Twitter)

Devolver Digital seems to have a keen eye for these brilliant little games that come out of nowhere including some of their upcoming titles; The Plucky Squire, Skate Story anAnger Foot, which all look great in their own right.

Gameplay

Cult Of The Lamb serves up a beautiful blend of community management/rogue like type game play. You play as a possessed lamb who is brought back to life by a god-like creature who is known as “The One Who Waits” and you are tasked with starting a following in his name to repay your devilish debt.

Right from the start I was pulled into a cute, gorgeous but deadly world that I didn’t want to step away from, even to do those much needed chores. Instead, I’d find myself patrolling my cults village, tending to followers and running errands in-game when I wasn’t out on runs, engaged in combat, trying to gather resources or recruit new followers.

(Within The Village)

At it’s core, you’ve got what looks like a basic community management sim, but it plays a good role within the overall game. Here is where you will be tending to your flocks needs, making sure they’ve got food, water and shelter. The developers do a really good job of making you feel like the decisions you make and the actions you take, actually matter, making a difference to your loyal followers. The flock can become unhappy, get sick and even die from the actions you make. Ultimately, the goal when tending to your village is to make sure the flock is happy, so that they can keep providing you with that ever important “devotion” which is key to helping you level up and progress within the rogue-like portion of the game. “Devotion” is used at the shrine to upgrade buildings within the flock, to provide a better quality of life, which grants more Devotion the more you can upgrade.

It’s a simple game-play loop. Go out into the dungeon portion of the game, kill enemies and scavenge resources to build better things back at the village and upgrade, which helps bring you more Devotion, thus bringing you better upgrades and so on. It’s simple yet oh so effective, addictive, too!

The followers of your flock are here to serve YOU! So don’t be afraid to utilise them in whichever way the game allows, from conning them out of their hard earned gold coins to sacrificial rituals – you can bend them to your will and use them as you see fit. The village is brought to life extremally well, from the audio cues when making improvements around the base and interacting with different buildings, to some very cute and cool animations whilst in a 1-on-1 chat with a follower. Cult of The Lamb  manages to ooze originality because of this and creates its own unique path to “stand out” among a sea of indie games.

Many devilish rituals can be performed from the chapel. Use these to help you navigate certain days within the game (as this game uses a day/night cycle). If you find yourself lacking on the food supplies, you can perform a feast for the flock, raising their hunger level to full for a certain period of time, allowing you to go back crawling through dungeons, picking up food supplies along the way. In Cult of The Lamb you might find yourself needing to make some much needed improvements around the village and quick. If required perform a building ritual and any buildings placed (but not yet constructed) will be completed afterwards. It will prove very useful to utilise these rituals, they don’t allow you to “skip” grinds or anything of that nature, however they do of course come with cool-down periods, some lasting longer than others, so use them to your advantage, but use them wisely.

(Outside of the Village)

Now, this is where you will be able to find some action, if you’re itching for it. Once you leave the confines of your flock, you’re met with 4 doors, which are seemingly holding a 5th, much larger door shut. Gaining access to each door requires a certain amount of followers and you’ll  find these on your travels needing rescuing, or tied up by a spider called Helob, available for purchase. As you enter into a doorway, you’re greeted with a melee and ranged weapon to start, but can find more powerful or faster ones as you progress through depending on how lucky the game wants to be.

Within your travels, its key to smash everything and collect as much stuff as you can. Grass can be turned to fertilizer, bones are used for rituals, seeds are used for growing crops, so be sure to collect as much as you can and make your village work to help you on your travels and vice versa. Enemies are different and there’s a nice level of variety between them. Engaging in combat never feels like a chore, even when you get knocked down a couple of times.

In Cult of The Lamb you will also meet other friendly characters as you traverse through different rooms, who will invite you to play a friendly round of “Knucklebones.” What’s that? You don’t know what that is? Neither did I, yet after a few rounds, it quickly reminded me of Gwent from The Witcher 3 (mostly due to how obsessed I became with ignoring everything and playing Gwent instead). It is only a side activity, but its some solid fun and its very easy to get distracted from your cult leader duties and play some Knucklebones instead.

Knucklebones boils down to a game of chance using dice, but it really is a great game and when you happen to run into Ratau and he invites you to the Lonely Shelter, maybe you should take him up on that offer and find out for yourself. Again, these interactions with characters are great mostly due the the audio cues, sound and animation being so well thought out and presented.

There’s multiple areas to visit, all boasting different activities. At the Lonely Shack, play some Knucklebones, but down at Pilgrim’s Passage you can engage in some fishing, which is great for stocking up on those earlier mentioned food supplies. You can also take a trip to the Spore Grotto, among a few other places too, but i wont spoil it and I’ll leave you to find out what these places have to offer if you decide to jump in this cracking game for yourself.

One thing i will say is that each place, usually contains some kind of merchants, which sell blueprints for buildings/decorations to build around base, different follower forms or, tarot cards. These tarot cards bring the conversation back to combat, in which these will help aid your struggles as you take on enemies. Some boast damage boosts, health boosts, a possibility to resurrect if killed and so on. You’ll need to make sure to check every room whilst crawling through these dungeons as you wont want to miss the tarot card merchant. Outside of the dungeons is where you need to add these cards to your collection, but within them is where you bump into the merchant and are given a choice of 1 out of 2 cards that you hold within your collection.

Verdict

Massive Monsters have done a fantastic job managing to blend a rogue-like with a community management sim in a very creative way that works brilliantly together. My only criticism so far is the bugs/glitches I’ve ran into. Now, I’ve spent a fair amount of time with this game but at around the 12 hour mark the game decided to softlock me after I managed to defeat a boss, meaning I had to reload my save and do that run all over again. It wasn’t the end of the world and i even managed to bag myself a “no damage boss” achievement due to having to do it again a second time, but still not something you want to have to deal with.

The art style used in Cult of The Lamb is beautiful, the animations are absolutely adorable and just help give the game character.  The Soundtrack for the dungeons flowing and really add to the games atmosphere, and the audio cues when you level up a follower or upgrade yourself or buildings just has a lovely “pop” to it. Overall, I can’t pick much fault with how the game has been presented here, it’s a wonderful Animal Crossing tied up with an evil bow type of game and I won’t be putting this one down just yet.

Currently sitting at £19.99 on the Xbox Store, its most definitely worth the buy in, after managing to convince a few others to jump on-board with me and join the cult, they have been having a brilliant time with it and echoing some positive vibes similar to me. Personally i would suggested you definitely do NOT sleep on this one. Indies certainly are proving once again that gamers as a whole need to broaden horizons beyond just playing “AAA” games.

Do yourself a favour, and join the Cult of the Lamb.

DISCLAIMER: Reviewer has played the entirety of the main game and reached the end credits with a total playtime of around 23 hours at the time of this review. He’s also obtained 730/1000 Gamerscore (30/37 achievements) and is sitting at a 77% completion rate.