Cult of the Lamb may very well be the best game I played at PAX East 2022 – and I played a LOT over the course of four days. The latest from Massive Monster – developers of Never Give Up and Unicycle Giraffe – Cult of the Lamb is a fiendishly adorable action title where players will start a cult in a land of false prophets, and build a loyal community of woodland worshippers. Now, doesn’t that just sound like the best god-damned pitch for a game you ever read? The Devolver Digital-published title (because of course that’s the publisher) garnered an unreal amount of attention at PAX East 2022, and rightly so. Cult of the Lamb’s combination of devilish roguelike hack n’ slash action, along with the recruitment of cult members and building up of your cult’s base of operations makes for a fun and fresh gameplay loop – and it just might be your next favorite game.
From the moment the demo begins, I – as a hapless and nameless little lamb – am forced to walk a path towards my inevitable demise. With my tiny lamb hands bound behind my back, I eventually come face to face with a council of twisted-looking dudes ripped right from the pages of H.P. Lovecraft. I am to be sacrificed to prevent some sort of prophecy from being fulfilled, the horrid creatures say. And with one quick swipe from a grotesquely-sized executioner’s axe, I find myself in the afterlife, very much dead, and extremely pissed off. It isn’t long before an ancient deity charms me with promises of sweet revenge, and imbues me with his dark gift. Armed with a dagger and the ability to convert fuzzy forest critters into loyal cult members to do my bidding, I return to the land of the living with adorably murderous intent.
Gameplay-wise, Cult of the Lamb is a lot like its top-down roguelike predecessors. There is an ‘Attack’ Button used to kill things, a ‘Dodge’ Button, used quickly roll out of harm’s way and avoid becoming a killed thing, and a ‘Special’ Button, used to execute a relic-specific technique to kill things a whole lot faster, or kill many things at once – depending on the relic. If you have ever played Enter the Gungeon and/or The Binding of Isaac, then you will feel right at home with Cult of the Lamb. The controls are simple, ultra-responsive, and behave exactly as you would expect. As I played the demo, I came across a handful of weapons which appear to be randomly generated, like any roguelike worth it salt. On one run I was able to find a dagger that caused poison-damage with each blow, which another run found me wielding a blade with vampiric-qualities, and sapped enemies of their life to restore my own. I was also fortunate enough to come across a ‘card vendor‘ of sorts, who sold me cards with various stat-building buffs such as granting +2 Hearts and Increased Damage. There are also the aforementioned relics – special items which allow you to unleash a powerful magic attack. The ones I came across were a Fireball, which is exactly what it sounds like, and a Putrid Acid Grenade, which leaves behind a pool of noxious, life-sapping goop.
All of these elements work incredibly well together and help satiate Cult of the Lamb’s addictive gameplay loop. You constantly want to push forward to get better weapons, more useful cards, and dope-ass relics to craft a ‘perfect’ build. I also noticed a number of other customization options/abilities that were coyly hiding in my lamb’s inventory screen, but all of them were locked out for the demo. As satisfying as the moment-to-moment, dungeon-crawling gameplay was, what really surprised me about Cult of the Lamb was its whole cult-building aspect.
Early on in my run, I came across a cuddly creature in need of rescue. After a bit of room-clearing bloodlust, I was able to free the little guy and recruit him to my cause. From there, I was able to warp back to my cult hub-world, and assign my new convert with simple tasks, such as chopping down trees for wood or mining rocks for stone. These resources could then be used – in an RTS-style fashion, by the way – to build a fire pit for cooking. Food is apparently what your converts crave and keeping them fed will also keep them happy and loyal. Once the fire pit was built, I was able to use a handful of freshly-harvested berries to cook up a quick dish and feed my little dude. An icon just beside your Magic Meter indicates your cults level of hunger so maintaining that will keep your flock from running astray. While I was only able to recruit and manage one cult member, it looks like keeping your clan of cultists busy by assigning them with things to do, and adding bigger and more extensive structures to your tiny town will be a huge part of the gameplay. It honestly excited me more than running around and killing things, and is a welcome change to pace to the standard roguelike formula. I really cannot wait to see how deep some of these mechanics go and just how big my cult can grow.
The demo ended with a taste of things to come: a fast and nasty boss fight with a gruesome and deformed woodland critter. After making short work of him, I was genuinely surprised that I was able to recruit him to my cult. It makes me wonder if all bosses will be recruit-able…
Massive Monster has a massive hit on its hands; Cult of the Lamb is an irresistible little title that spoke to my inner dark side. The comical contrast of cutesy and satanic is diabolically grin-inducing. It’s as if Happy Tree Friends and The Wicker Man had demonic love-child. Its happy-go-lucky art-style and rockin’ soundtrack tied the entire experience together and I really cannot wait to get my hands on the full game when it’s released on PC and consoles later this year.
