Cult of the Lamb Review: Satanic Cults and Lovable Creatures

Lamb has been one of the main dishes in the world of video games this summer. Specifically this one we see here, the adorable protagonist of Cult of the Lamb. We have had the opportunity to test it on PC, and it has turned out that creating a cult of animals is as fun as it sounds.

Devolver Digital maintains its guarantee of quality and good taste by distributing independent video games, and Cult of the Lamb was not going to be less. Developed by Massive Monster, we find ourselves before a game that mixes roguelike action, management, and adventure, all accompanied by an adorable design that has us in our pocket from minute one.

Cult of the Lamb: Minimum Requirements

• 64-bit processor and operating system
• OS: Windows 7 or later
• Processor: Intel Core i3-3240 (2*3400); AMD FX-4300 (4*3800)
• Memory: 4GB RAM
• Graphics: GeForce GTX 560 Ti (1024 VRAM); Radeon HD 7750 (1024 VRAM)
• Storage: 4 GB of available space

Cult of the Lamb: Recommended Requirements

• 64-bit processor and operating system
• OS: Windows 10
• Processor: Intel Core i5-3470
• Memory: 8GB RAM
• Graphics: GeForce GTX 1050 (2048 VRAM); Radeon R9 380 (2048 VRAM)
• Storage: 4 GB of available space

The adventure begins with our sacrifice, after which we reach the afterlife and meet “The One Who Waits”, a chained deity who promises to bring us back to life if we kill the rest of the gods and found a sect to honor him. Paints well. He gives us a little satanic hat that gives us entity as a cult leader lamb and we wear it. What could go wrong?

The adventure is based, therefore, on two fundamental pillars. The part about killing the rest of the gods is pure roguelike. We enter four themed dungeons in which we will face different enemies and collect resources that will help us develop our sect. This is established in a meadow that a certain Ratau teaches us, and that, based on constructions and improvements, will end up being the home where you will exploit your followers every day so that they feel a more important part of the sect. What better reason to get up every morning.

The dungeons are based on three movements, physical attack, special attack and rolling on the ground to dodge. You can change the level of difficulty depending on the type of player you are, so it is accessible to everyone, without giving up that it becomes a challenge if we want it (If you are going to leave an indignant comment with this topic, save it , please). It is quite addictive, especially the first hours of the game, why are we going to fool ourselves.

As for the development part of the sect, you will have to collect resources, attract followers and retain them (which, as a very important detail, are adorable creatures as well as many of them, demon-possessed) and build numerous buildings that will make your coercive group (allegedly) is the one that anyone dreams of leading.

The growth of the sect will go hand in hand with your progress in the dungeons. Thus, you will be getting new resources, unlocking constructions and capturing new followers in your sect. These, in turn, in addition to adoring you and working as slaves for you (because they love it, not because you send them to prison or sacrifice them if they do not obey you), will accumulate fervour, a very precious asset to unlock new buildings and improvements, in addition of advantages to fight in the dungeons.

You fight like a lamb

Weapons and special attacks appear every time you start a new run, randomly, and throughout the dungeon a second option will appear in case you want to change any of the attacks. We see little variety in terms of weapons and attacks. Of the first, just an axe, a claw, a couple of swords and a hammer so slow that, personally, I got a little desperate against fast enemies.

As for the special attacks, we have some in the area, others in which you will have to aim at the enemies, and others that will chase them without you having to do much more. I have to confess that, on occasions, I completely forgot about these types of attacks and made the dungeon almost complete based on physical attacks.

One of the resources that you will get in your runs are the bones of killed enemies, which will serve as raw material to carry out rituals, very important in the day to day of your sect. With the devotion of your faithful, in addition, you will unlock doctrines that will mark your philosophy. You will have to choose between two options, normally one of them will be more oriented towards treating your followers well and, therefore, they love and respect you, and another one that tends more towards exploiting them and fearing you. Thus, for example, you can choose between venerating the deceased or becoming cannibals and eating them. Or that they eat poop without question. It’s a matter of being practical.

A detail to be thankful for is that, to get out of this routine of leading a sect and facing diabolical creatures (how hard it is to be a lamb), you have some additional scenarios to do actions such as fishing, buying plans or challenging different characters to a minigame of dice (something quite common in recent times).

The Little Fall of the Cult

Earning devotion is a relatively slow process early in the game, so the upgrades you opt for require a bit more strategic thinking to see what interests you most to achieve certain goals. But there comes a time, around the time you complete the first two dungeons, when you get so much devotion, almost without realizing it, that building unlocks happen haphazardly, just because.

After a hectic start, full of things to do and decisions to make, suddenly and almost without realizing it, most actions become a mere formality. You start to stop worrying about many things that at the beginning of the game were the essence of the development of the sect. Also, during your dungeon immersions, the unlocks become only cosmetic items, which, depending on your player profile, may matter to you more or less. In my case, I put the decorations that some missions required and practically no others.

In addition to this, the sect practically starts rolling on its own (except for some actions such as the mini personal sermon for raising loyalty), and if you have enough followers and you spend a little more time than necessary in the other places (fishing, Knucklebones, etc.), or a dungeon drags on, you can arrive and find yourself with so much pent-up fervor that you can unlock 3 or more upgrades.

Something that caught my attention during one of my excursions outside the sect, is that you receive notifications about what is happening with your followers (if someone falls ill, dies or there is something new in general). The problem is that these notifications go by so fast that, as several accumulate, you can barely get to read them. So there’s a good chance that when you arrive you’ll find hungry (or outright starving) adepts or even a small rebellion to deal with.

Conclusions

Cult of the Lamb gives us an exciting beginning full of things to discover, with an adorable aesthetic that falls in love and that contrasts with the satanic vibe in a way that has us in our pocket from minute one. However, approximately halfway through the game, the pace slows down and the frenetic becomes something more routine, which stops surprising and makes everything a little more repetitive. Despite this, it is a more than recommendable title, and we look forward to more content that will make us spend more hours of fun with, probably, the most charismatic leader of a sect.

Cult of the Lamb is available for PC (Steam and GOG), PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo Switch for a price between €22.99 and €24.99, depending on the platform.