Welcome to our review of Cult of the Lamb, a dark, dark game about leading your own cult, sacrificing your followers and slaughtering your enemies, all while being a lamb?
Cult of the Lamb casts players in the role of a possessed lamb saved from annihilation by an ominous stranger, and must repay their debt by building a loyal following in his name. Start your own cult in a land of false prophets, venturing out into diverse and mysterious regions to build a loyal community of woodland Followers and spread your Word to become the one true cult. Collect and use resources to build new structures, perform dark rituals to appease the gods, and give sermons to reinforce the faith of your flock.
Explore a sprawling, randomly generated world, fight off hordes of enemies and defeat rival cult leaders in order to absorb their power and assert your cult’s dominance. Train your flock and embark on a quest to explore and discover the secrets of four mysterious regions. Cleanse the non-believers, spread enlightenment, and perform mystical rituals on the journey to become the mighty lamb god.
Cult of the lamb is a very dark game, very very dark and I wanted to come at you from 2 completely opposite sides. First off, the horrible side, being a merciless cult leader that slaughters infidels in his flock, murders older followers to gain more belief in your cult. Add in feeding them the corpses of the demised, making them sick and just letting them sleep to get better, it is a truly disgusting point of view.
Now also consider it from this side, as their merciless leader, you are also getting them all jobs, you are providing food, though with experience comes better food and dishes that once made everyone sick, suddenly become reliable sources for nutrients. Your followers will come to you with missions that help you raise your fidelity. You end up building them sleeping beds, then sleeping buildings, and so on. Despite being a ruthless leader from one point of view, you are also in the business of making your followers care for you.
Outside of the cult, you are killing everything in sight, with 4 big bosses that are responsible for emprisoning your master. The idea is simple, get your skill tree as high as possible with numerous upgrades like how some weapons suddenly get you zombie powers and others end up raising your divine powers, leading to even more power-ups.
Now imagine this, you perform a demonic ritual in front of your flock, preventing them from dissenting or even losing faith. Now abuse that inability to lose faith, kill off some infidels, and instead of losing faith, you just perform their burial, the accompanying ritual to worship their demise, and then get leveled up for being a great cult leader? It sounds awful when I write it down, but damn, this is fun to play.
I did not have this feeling from the start though, at first I was more distant because of the shock effect of the game. I shit you not, there is a certain level of perverseness to truly enjoy this game or to go for your first kill of one of your flock. Once you get past all the decency you may have as a human being, you are left with an amazing game really. Tend for your cult, get them food, get rid of infidels in the most inventive way, like imprisoning them and when everyone is asleep, you go in for the kill. All about not letting your flock lose faith.
It is kind of funny that when I played this game, I kept thinking of how realistic the entire flocking to someone is, we all remember the orange guy and what he made his followers do. Plenty of Netflix documentaries about famous cult leaders in the past and so much more, thankfully this is just a video game or I would have been a very good cult leader with a maniacally trained flock behind me.
In conclusion, Cult of the Lamb is so much more than just a dark game, it is a sneak peek into the darkest side of your soul.