Cult of the Lamb has been one of my most anticipated games of 2022 since it was announced. Devolver Digital has a way of picking out gems to publish and working with Massive Monsters on publishing Cult of the Lamb was a stroke of genius on their part. While the limited-time Blood Moon Festival event is still ongoing (at the time of writing) I wanted to finally give a full review of the Switch version.

Cult of the Lamb is a hybrid Roguelike/Management game that puts you in the role of The Lamb, a being who becomes the servant of a god-like being known as The One Who Waits. You take control of a magical crown that lets you wield the power of The One Who Waits, in the hopes that you can destroy the Bishops of the Old Faith and free The One Who Waits from imprisonment.

The game takes place in two main segments/ideas. There are the Roguelike sections where you traverse the Lands of the Old Faith, fighting enemies, collecting resources, rescuing potential followers, and defeating bosses. Then there are the Management sections. In between each “run”, you’ll be back at your Cult, and will have to steadily upgrade and build it in order to strengthen yourself and keep your followers happy and loyal.

Your followers have needs, such as food, cleanliness, shelter, etc. Not providing the things they need can cause a variety of problems, including illness, death, or (sometimes worse) causing your follower to dissent and even leave your cult completely. You’ll probably spend most of your time managing your cult, rather than repeatedly diving headfirst into The Land of the Old Faith. In fact, you’ll really only be doing new runs in order to get resources such as food, gold, lumber, or stone, assuming your followers can’t get those things themselves at that given moment.

Exploring the lands ruled by the Bishops is also how you get new followers. You can kill bosses and convert them into followers, purchase followers from a rather frightening merchant, and even encounter some along your journey. There are also a number of NPCs that you will meet along the way, including some that unlock areas outside of your home base. These areas are where you can find all sorts of side quests and content like fishing, the dice game Knucklebones, and more.

Time passes in a day and night cycle, regardless of whether you are in the middle of a run or out amongst your followers. Each day you can perform a sermon to raise faith and gain devotion. Devotion is used to upgrade your cult via divine inspiration, as well as your Lamb’s capabilities as a leader. Additionally, as you progress you can choose Doctrines that affect how your Cult treats topics such as death, work ethic, sustenance, and more.

These doctrines can drastically change how your Followers respond to things like the death of a fellow cult member, or even dissenting cult members. Death is an inevitability in Cult of the Lamb. Your followers will grow old and die, or you can sacrifice them for power, the choice is yours. However, there are opportunities to ensure that death is not the end for them.

Through rituals, you can use your cult members to work all sorts of supernatural feats. From making rare fish spawn more regularly, to even bringing someone back from the dead, nothing is impossible for your loyal cultists. As you interact with your cultists and give them gifts, they become more loyal. This will give them a higher rate of devotion and even makes them more efficient in various tasks.

There is so much involved in Cult of the Lamb, and it is astoundingly easy to lose hours and hours in it. The characters are quirky and interesting, the visual design is superb, and frankly, the combat and gameplay itself are engaging and fun. I also applaud the team at Massive Monsters for adding difficulty options that affect not just the combat difficulty, but also how demanding your cultists can be.

I’m not great at time management or games involving taking care of things (despite loving the genre) so it was nice that I didn’t have to stress as much over how needy my cult might be. Though I could see people wanting to play on a harder difficulty just for the challenge of balancing everything.

At its core, Cult of the Lamb is just a well-crafted experience. Everything has its purpose and is curated to a startling polish. The Nintendo Switch version had a small framerate drop here and there, but I never had any problems with crashing or anything beyond a very mild stutter occasionally. Anything else I could complain about would be nitpicking, especially since the developers are currently hard at work on more seasonal events and the first major (free) content update, which will be coming at some point in 2023 I would imagine.

If you’re a fan of Roguelikes or you enjoy games that ask you to manage a colony or city, but you want some combat thrown in, I think Cult of the Lamb is perfect for you. Even if you’re new to the genre, I think Cult of the Lamb has a very accessible difficulty curve that anyone could dive into and enjoy. I cannot recommend Cult of the Lamb enough, it is definitely one of the better Indie games to release this year.

A Nintendo Switch review copy of Cult of the Lamb was provided by Devolver Digital for this review.

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Cult of the Lamb

$24.99

9.5

Score

9.5/10

Pros

• Engaging Gameplay
• Fun Visual Design
• Accessible Difficulty
• Easy to Understand Mechanics

Cons

• Switch Version Occasionally Lags/Stutters