Cult of the Lamb is an Indie Masterpiece

gustavo

Indie game studio Massive Monster released a little game called Cult of the Lamb out to Steam on August 11, 2022. It quickly rose in popularity, grossing around $10 million in the first week of sales. Years of toil paid off tremendously to what is one of the greatest rogue-lite games out there. In Cult of the Lamb, you are the lamb who runs a cult and goes on crusades in 4 different areas. Murder, rituals and a charming art style have captivated millions of players with hours of exciting gameplay.

Cult of the Lamb is a roguelike game whic- I’m sorry, Cult of the Lamb is a rogue-LITE game. Rogue-lite games are similar to roguelike games, but while roguelike games are always random, rogue-LITE games have some permanent upgrades the player chooses. Anyway, the game follows the simple concept of go crusading, fight things, get to boss, win boss, go back. However, instead of just a melee weapon, you are also granted a curse, which drains a bar called fervour. Fervour is rewarded when finishing a room, killing an enemy or getting a reward. There are a total of 35 melee weapons and 20 curses. Each type of melee weapon has a special attack that’s called the heavy attack which does more damage but is much slower. On top of that, there is a bird-like creature who hands out tarot cards that range from “x1.25 attack speed” to “enemies drop a fish when they die”. Also, tarot cards can get a chance of being double or triple the original amount of usefulness. Oh no, you have not heard it all yet. Bird boy has two cousins or siblings (I cannot process dialogue) that do their own things. Tarot card bird is red, weapon bird is yellow and crazy lunatic bird is blue. The weapon bird generates two random weapons or curses that could either be better or the same as what you had. The crazy lunatic bird introduces a whole new feature to the game called relics. These relics are like tarot cards, but they can either regenerate or be one use. In Cult of the Lamb, the birds are your friends. You must seek them when they appear. Still, after a paragraph of rambling about birds, I have still yet scratched the surface of this simple, but complex game.

While the fighting part of Cult of the Lamb is a unique rogue-lite concept, the cult part of it is more like Animal Crossing. Members of your cult are almost always rescued, sometimes from monsters, sometimes from spiders who want to eat them. Followers do your dirty work at the cult while you are committing genocide. Unfortunately, you have to give them basic human necessities in order of keeping peace in your community, which is ironically more in-depth than Animal Crossing. You must feed and motivate your followers with food and rituals so that they chop wood, mine stone, tend to crops and pray to a giant statue of you, the lamb. The lamb is the center of the cult. If you increase the loyalty to your followers by treating them nicely, you will be rewarded with a commandment stone. A commandment stone can be broken at a temple to declare a doctrine that can change your cult, and your gameplay or can make a ritual available to begin. The temple also gives you the ability to give your followers a sermon that gives you points that, when they are at a certain number, will advance a weapon skill tree for your crusades. There are a lot of things the game expects you to memorize, which can be hard for new players. However, when it clicks, it clicks. You could go for a week, a month, or even a year and still remember these basic rules. A wiki is not needed to understand everything because all the major things are put in an art style so simplistic, yet so memorable that it calms your brain. The same can’t be said for the crusades, however. If I try to list everything in the Animal Crossing part of Cult of the Lamb, this little article would become a 500-page informational novel, so I’ll keep this short.

The main thing that Cult of the Lamb is remembered for is its charm. At your cult home, all the followers have big, cute eyes and you’re cooking some pumpkin meal for them. During crusades, you are being abused by a giant demon who converted themself into a spider and is hopping around like a small child about to fall over and crack their head open on the pavement. At home, you are farming and inspiring fellow followers while during crusades, that demon I mentioned earlier has possessed one of your followers to revolt against you and eventually slaughter you, so you must slaughter them first. You are rewarded with their flesh and the people back at the cult are (usually) outraged.

Massive Monster has done an amazing job of mixing cute with horrifyingly disturbing. One of my favorite things to do is to sacrifice a follower at the cult, make other followers eat their flesh, but see them become happy because I declared cannibalism as good. Meanwhile in the background are some super chill lo-fi beats to sacrifice to that the Cult of the Lamb musician did amazing on. Give me a second to talk about the soundtrack, because it is amazing. River Boy (The musician) did a phenomenal job of capturing the feel of wild, uncivilized cult living. There are choir-sounding effects and unsettling keys that really emphasize the type of environment you are in. Anyway, now for the storyline. Before getting into the storyline, I want to acknowledge that there are two writers for an indie studio of 18 people. This means that the Cult of the Lamb development group is a rounded 11% writer. Anyway, you are a lamb who is the last of its kind. You are about to be sacrificed in honor of the religion of Old Faith, but a creature called The One Who Waits takes you in and forces you to start a cult in his honor and kill the four bishops of Old Faith. There are four areas that are each the home of a bishop. That is the basic premise of Cult of the Lamb, but it is hidden behind many things of dialogue that nobody cares about. There are heaps of dialogue that each uncovers more lore, but there is too much dialogue. I don’t want to read, I just want to play. Fortunately, a mushroom man who likes mushrooms cracks a joke saying he’s a “fun guy” so the reputation of the game is redeemed.

Okay, I think I wrote a little too much. To sum it all up, Cult of the Lamb is one of the best rogue-lite games out there. It combines the aspects of Animal Crossing and other roguelike games, which makes it pretty fun. The art style is both cute and horrific at the same time and the music is very cool. I don’t have anything, in particular, to say about Cult of the Lamb, but I know that if you are an edge lord, you might like it. Or not. I don’t really know, the crusades are very edgy, but the cult part is wholesome. What I’m saying is that Cult of the Lamb is a cool, fun, entertaining game. FUN.