Cult of the Lamb Preview – A shearling roguelike delight

Time Stamp: April 13, 2022 5:00 AM

Ever wanted to run your own cult? Boy — or lamb, I suppose — do Massive Monster and Devolver Digital have the game for ewe.

Cult of the Lamb is a roguelike dungeon crawler that starts with you being a literal sacrificial lamb, killed by the Bishops of the Old Faith in a bid to end your kind and stop a prophecy from coming to pass. Clearly these bishops have never read a Discworld novel. Or, you know, played a video game.

Death, we all know, is often just the beginning. In this case, The One Who Waits — a being of great power imprisoned behind the veil — makes a snide comment about how they have just helped to actually fulfil the prophecy, gives you a sword, a kickass hat and a mission to start a cult in their name.

Imbued with renewed purpose, you’re sent back to the land of the living to unleash hell. What follows is a surprisingly cute and fun cult management simulator, and a game that instantly clicked with me. There’s just something about the bouncy happy 2D visuals that works incredibly well with what is otherwise a super dark theme.

Cult of the Lamb Combat

And so it begins. You run around the forest, ramming your sword into the bad guys while looking out for other potential sacrifices you can indoctrinate and bring on board. These, interestingly, aren’t just those you rescue from altars out in the woods, but also bosses you beat.

Once you make your way out of the woods and back to your temple, you can set about putting your new followers to work. By getting them to mine stone and chop down trees for wood, you can create everything from cooking pits to homes to feed and house your growing flock.

Feeding your followers is so important you even get a starvation meter, so you know when to forage for food while out on a run. The last thing we want is a repeat of Jonestown…

Cult of the Lamb Management

For those who care about customisation, you can change the names, looks and features of each follower, showing that you’re the kind of generous soul who takes in the disaffected of all sheeps and sizes.

There’s not much else to say at this point, other than the usual roguelike stuff — there are tarot dealers in the dungeons to give you buffs, and weapons and abilities scattered throughout the lands. It seems the idea is that you do enough runs and get enough followers and you can unlock the next area, kill the next bishop and so on.

For now, I am extremely excited to get my hands on the game when it comes out. Will this gameplay pattern be too repetitive, or do we have an indie shearling on our hands? A cull classic? Only time wool tell.

Cult of the Lamb is coming to PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PS4, Xbox One, Switch and PC later in 2022.

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