Indie games have been getting more and more attention in recent years and with good reason. Triple-A games have been having a rather noticeable decline in quality lately, many being downright unplayable due to the number of bugs and glitches that can be found at the time of release. It makes sense that players are giving more attention to indie games instead. Cult of the Lamb, a 2022 release by Massive Monster and Devolver Digital, is one such indie game. Despite its simple premise, Cult of the Lamb has a lot to offer its players, with new updates being added constantly to keep things fresh.

In the game, you play as an unnamed lamb, the last of its kind after all others were hunted down and killed by the four Gods of the land, Leshy, Heket, Kallamar, and Shamura, to prevent a prophecy. The prophecy claims a sheep will become the chosen vessel of the God of Death, freeing him from where the other four Gods have imprisoned him in the afterlife. After being executed in the game’s opening sequence, you appear before the God of Death, known as the One Who Waits, who informs you that you are the sheep the prophecy spoke of, gives you his crown and some of his Godly powers, and resurrects you back to the realm of the living to slay the other  Gods and build a cult in his name.

The game is rather unique in that its gameplay is split between two genres: City Builder and Roguelite. In the Roguelite half of the game, you complete dungeon runs through randomized maps, defeating enemies and gathering resources. In the City Builder half, you create and manage your cult, attending to the needs of your followers and keeping faith up. Depending on their preference, one might be tempted to ignore one half of the game and focus solely on dungeon runs or managing their cult, but doing so would quickly result in a game over. Without making dungeon runs to acquire money and additional resources, the story doesn’t progress, and your cult will fall into disrepair, but with the introduction of the faith bar, you’ll find that you can’t ignore the City Building aspect either.

The faith bar essentially tells you how loyal your followers are to you, and in addition to the fact that support from said followers is how you unlock upgrades to your character, it is the main reason you can’t ignore them. When you lose too many dungeon runs in a row, deny or fail to fulfill follower requests, or decline to keep your base clean and followers fed, your faith drops. When it gets too low, your followers dissent against you, rebelling and eventually stealing some of your gold and running away if something isn’t done to stop the dissenting. If you run out of followers completely, you have two in-game days to find at least one new one before you get a permanent game over.

The Rougelite side of things is typical of the genre. I’d compare it best to the game Hades, as it has a similar approach to in-game deaths and combat. Each dungeon map is randomized, as is typical of the genre, with you entering a room and defeating a swarm of enemies before collecting a reward and proceeding to the next room. This cycle repeats until you reach either a boss or mini-boss, and you return to the cult after you either kill the boss or die. If you do die, you will lose some of the resources you collected and re-spawn at your base, resurrected once more by the One Who Waits, though your followers do lose faith every time you die.

Overall, I find the game to be very enjoyable. Roguelikes and Roguelites are classic and almost always a fun time when made well, and by adding a City Builder element, Cult of the Lamb manages to take a classic concept and breathe new life into it. That isn’t to say the game is without flaws, however. The main and most obvious complaint is how easy it is. As you play the game, raising faith becomes incredibly easy if you choose the right doctrines and rituals, making the penalty for losing dungeon runs rather obsolete. In addition to that, once you reach the part of the game where you unlock the offering chest, where you can sell items you don’t need for gold, by that point in the game you will be able to produce almost every resource you need at your base. This leaves you with little reason to do dungeon runs at all other than the desire to finish the story and defeat all the bosses.

The game does try to circumvent this problem in some ways, there are special encounters and lore to be unlocked on dungeon runs, as well as achievements to be earned, but not everyone cares about those things. The other problem regarding the ease of the game lies in the combat. The enemies and even bosses of the game are all fairly simple to defeat. I defeated all but the final one on the first try. I had focused on fully upgrading my cult over beating bosses and had done so by the time I reached the second one. Because of this, I had no reason to try and memorize the boss’s attack patterns. As long as I had a decent weapon, all I had to do was spam attack and stay close to the enemy, defeating them by the time I reached my last bit of health. The only reason this didn’t work for the last boss is because they moved around too much. That being said, standing next to an enemy and mashing the attack button isn’t nearly as challenging or fun as trying to dodge attacks, so I can’t say I recommend this style of gameplay to others.

Overall, Cult of The Lamb is a fun and unique game, with an active community and Developers who are constantly looking to improve their product and add new things to do. Just last August a local co-op mode was added, as well as many other things, including new quest lines and an interactive comic. Cult of The Lamb is one of my favorite games, its lore and story are fascinating and its gameplay is thoroughly enjoyable, but the topic of difficulty can’t be ignored. I recommend the game to anyone who enjoys Roguelikes/Roguelites and city builders, but you might have to crank the difficulty up a bit in the settings if you want a real challenge.

Four out of Five stars