Honey, I Joined a Cult – Architecting a prison for the mind

If you asked me what my favourite simulator was a month ago, I likely would have said Prison Architect. There’s something uniquely appealing about management sims where you get to try something like running a maximum-security prison, but what if you took that idea and made it a prison for your mind?

The somewhat dark but humorous question Prison Architect asks is how far you will go to make a profit. Honey, I Joined a Cult, on the other hand, asks you to run an intentionally bogus cult, and it fully expects you to put profits before people.

Picture 1970s America. Cults are all the rage. It seems that someone has caught on, and sees that you can either cash in or leave money on the table.

In Honey, I Joined a Cult, you’re tasked with building an “organisation” that extracts donations from its members. The veneer of being a genuine bona fide organisation is applied so paper thin, you’re really under no pretence. Whether you’re running the Cult of the Worm, the Lark of the Covenant or the Children of Saurus, your mission is to scam people for money, without drawing too much heat from the authorities, so you can totally get away with it.

And you really don’t want to draw the heat — if you expand too fast, make too much noise or generally disturb the public, the police, feds and locals will come and tear down your dreams just like that.

Honey I Joined A Cult Screenshot

Despite being in Early Access, and the fact that it’s being made by just two people, the mechanics here are surprisingly robust. There’s a great deal of customisation for your cult and what they worship, and the base-building mechanic of your cultist HQ works incredibly well. Whether you’re trying to build a Pool of Revelations or a simple games room for your acolytes to kick back in, it’s as intuitive as it is simple.

The Sims-style hunger/toilet/hygiene system is also well-built, with Theme Hospital inspired diseases like sudden baldness or bladder size reduction having an impact on the health and wellbeing of your totally-not-a-cult, all adding fun extra layers to the game.

Talking of layers, this game is as simple as it is deep — there’s a vast amount of research you can conduct to help improve your ‘organisation’, from the basics of upgrading your toilets from simple buckets to actual genuine porcelain, to helping your glorious leader realise their grand plan, whatever that may be.

And talking of toilets, the cultists themselves all have their own preferences — some, for instance, don’t like the idea of squatting over a bucket while staring their friends in the eyes (go figure), and their mood will be negatively affected until you build them their own throne room, as it were. The same applies to bedrooms, showers, or even working in the proximity of the above.

This is just one aspect of the depth of each NPC — given the sheer amount of them and the various ways in which they view the world, it’s a genuinely impressive feat that it already looks and feels this polished.

Honey I Joined A Cult FBI

Is the game perfect? Of course not. I’ve had a couple of graphical bugs and I learned the hard way that expanding too quickly leads to cashflow problems that are almost impossible to overcome. Likewise, there are mechanics that could do with some tinkering, and others that could be a little better fleshed out. But then that’s why the game is currently in Early Access.

What we have at the moment is a charming, funny and well-balanced management sim that is as difficult as it is fun. I have faith that the full release of Honey I Joined a Cult will be the game we’re all waiting for — hell, I’ve already indoctrinated my fiancé, who loves the game more than I do.

I find myself casting my mind back to when Prison Architect was in Early Access, and the excitement that came with each new feature trickled into the game. Honey I Joined a Cult feels very much the same, and if they can pull this off, we may well have the management sim of the generation.

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