Cult of the Lamb Review – Follow The Leader

I loved Animal Crossing: New Horizons back in 2020, but its premise wasn’t enough to keep me engaged over time. It was a lot of fun to design my island and keep the villager happy. But after only a dozen hours I realized that I wanted a different type of gameplay. Cult of the Lamb, an eclectic mix of cute creatures, animals and creatures, solves this problem with an extensive action-combat system. The combat provides the same satisfaction as base building, but I wish it could provide that level of pleasure. While I initially wanted to design a cult visually, the game forced me towards resource management. This was a far better option than the other fun. Building your cult from the ground up and designing its headquarters is fun, but you’re soon pushed into using your cult as a means of manufacturing in-game currencies and resources, and this sometimes gets in the way of actually making my cult feel like home. 

Cult of the Lamb’s premise is simple – you’re a lamb sacrificed to four gods. After your death you will find a fifth god. These gods grant you another lease of life. You just need to start a Cult under their name to get it. And that’s where my journey in Cult of the Lamb began. I was able to roll credits almost 20 hours later with the cult that included more than 20 of The Pearl’s followers. They were there to keep me (the leader) happy, strong, and equipped with all I required. While the story of Cultof the Lamb kept me going was sufficient to sustain my efforts, it doesn’t take the place of everything else. There’s lore to glean from run-ins with the gods you encounter mid-dungeon, and NPCs will reveal some backstory too, but gameplay comes first here. This is a great reason. 

Combat is slick and crunchy, with each attack carrying weight as you battle through randomly arranged dungeons. You might find one room stuffed with spiders and killer caterpillars as well as cloaked assassins. Using my lamb’s dodge roll, I can escape incoming projectiles and dagger slashes and then counter with my blade, which also has the chance to heal me upon killing an enemy. I close out the dungeon using combo-heavy claws against a boss, relying on the weapon’s randomly-assigned necrotic ability to fling dead enemies back at the boss as projectiles. 

Weapons, like the rooms I found them in, appear at random, keeping combat fresh. Curses, magic-like attacks that typically amount to a projectile or close-combat area-of-effect damage, are random too, but I relied on them a lot less to succeed in the game’s four main dungeons. Because they are dependent on Fervor being dropped by enemies, curses have limited utility. However, by the end of the game, between pick-up tarot cards that grant special bonuses and other lamb-specific traits, I seldom worried about running out of curses. Curses were not something I used, as they could be disruptive to my flow and cause me to lose my concentration. I relied instead on my dodge roll to win battles. 

I also had to hone in on the progression of my base, which is where my followers worship and work for me, all to make my lamb stronger so that my next dungeon run, or crusade as it’s dubbed in-game, would be easier. I started small with a shrine where worship devotion was collected and a temple to perform beneficial, but dangerous rituals. My base was not enough to be successful. Every system builds upon the other and every system functions because of another game system. I started to see my cult more as an instrument that was meant to empower and worship me than to be a platform to show my inner cult designer. The importance of resource management, as well as the stress of managing cult members’ happiness by keeping them fed, completing their quests, and ensuring their loyalty, often stole the time out of each in-game day. It was difficult to create a cult that looked beautiful, which is something I’d have preferred. 

And that was fine – it’s clearly what developer Massive Monster intended of these mechanics – but with so many cosmetic items thrown into the formula, I was disappointed by how rarely I was afforded the time to focus on them. My cult wanted to look and feel just like mine. But the pull of resource management kept me from my goals. 

Each follower was named and designed to look just like me, my cat or dogs. However, it was only a few hours before I became less interested in the simulation. Instead, my focus shifted to the completion of the next level and the upgrade of the next building in our cult. That said, running through dungeons and improving my cult compound was satisfying, and I found plenty of enjoyment in Cult of the Lamb as a result, even when I felt more like a ruthless boss than a leader. 

In the post-game cleanup, I’m only now engaging with the aesthetic-serving aspects of Cult of the Lamb. I’m finally making my cult feel like mine and not one I’m sure every other player will at some point make to cultivate as many resources as possible. In my 19 hour journey, I wish I felt it sooner. Still, everything I did leading up to it, from the fast-paced dungeon combat that never grew stale to the factory-like base building that nailed the stress of resource management, was enough and then some to keep me engaged and indoctrinated.