Cult of the Lamb (2022) [PS5] review

“Praise the Lamb, conduit to great power, promised liberator of the One Who Waits below.”
-Clauneck, Cult of the Lamb

I really enjoy roguelike games such as The Binding of Isaac and Hades. The feeling of adventure every time I start a new dungeon run, a little bit stronger and more knowledgeable than the last time around keeps me coming back for more. I also take pleasure in creating a home (or farm), building relationships, and even catching fish in life sims games like Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Between those four games alone I’ve probably amassed 500+ hours on my gaming clock. Then a game like Cult of the Lamb comes around, smashes together those two worlds and does a fantastically!

Cult of the Lamb is a roguelike dungeon crawler that has the player growing and nurturing a cult of followers alongside battling through four different procedurally generated dungeons, encountering innumerous fiends and friends along the way. The Lamb aims to defeat the monstrous deities in each dungeon to free its god, The One Who Waits, who has been trapped for thousands of years by its once-friends, the bishops.

Leading a Lamb to Slaughter

Half of my game time in Cult was finding my way through small dungeons to defeat one of the bishops that lie at the end of the line. Each dungeon is a procedurally-generated top-down isometric hack’n’slash fest as I battled through multiple rooms chock-full of a variety of enemies. 

A dungeon run rarely took longer than 20 minutes which made jumping in for a quick session very easy. I will however, admit that more often that not, these “quick” sessions tended to a run a little longer than intended. This may be due to what some could perceive as a riveting good time with a side of naive hopefulness that the morning wouldn’t bring forth the impending workday quite so quickly as the clock threatened (don’t tell my boss).

At the start of each dungeon run I was granted a weapon, which ranged from a dagger, an ax, sword, hammer, or a blunderbuss (very old gun for you young ones out there). I was also granted a curse, which generally came in the form of a magic projectile or powerful close-range attack. Each curse and weapon really felt unique to me and I quickly found my strength with the likes of hammers and projectile curses while struggling with the short range of daggers.

Each dungeon is made of branching pathways that allow the player to choose from fighting sections that contain multiple rooms to battle through, shops, material harvesting and random “?” rooms which could lead to encounters with friends, foes, or treasure.

Every area must be completed multiple times, defeating a mini boss at the end, so that I could eventually unlock a magic (more likely demonic) seal at the end allowing me to open up the path to challenge the dungeon’s main boss. 

Along the way I also collected relics which are special abilities that gift the lamb with extra health, stronger weapons, or a rechargeable attack. I could also acquire a variety of tarot cards which could have benefits such as revealing the map, boosting the Lambs attack, or giving you a status-inducing slime trail when you dodge roll to name a few. Cards and relics could be found and bought around the world, some with clever procurement conditions that tested my wits and some with such convoluted requirements that I’m glad the internet exists.

A Cult Following

When I wasn’t out crusading to release my master from thousands of years of torturous imprisonment, I focused on building the best demon-worshiping cult a lamb could wish for. 

I grew my cult by saving lost souls I came across in dungeons and accepting vagabonds that showed up at my door looking for a place to call home. Having more cult members allowed me to build up devotion, which works as a form of currency to unlock more buildings for the cult’s plot of land. And there is a lot here to unlock! Farming plots, a clinic, monster statues, crypts, and demonic summoning circles are just a few structures I eventually unlocked by harvesting enough devotion from my followers, which allowed me to sculpt my unhallowed utopia.

The game runs on a day cycle where I had to plan out each day to make sure I was feeding my followers, leading daily sermons, building and decorating, and even cleaning up their poop. Every cult member can eventually take on a designated job from tending to the farm, mining rock, harvesting wood, worshiping for devotion, and leaving on missionary trips for various commodities. All of these helped alleviate some of the time sink in mundane day-to-day tasks, but there was never a lack of things to get done around the cult or members giving me little side quests to build their affinity towards the occult.

I was also able to utilize the cult to empower me for future dungeon runs by using Shrines that cult members could pray at giving the Lamb boosts such as health or increased weapon damage for the next crusade. Fleeces were also unlockable at the Temple Altar. These could be equipped by the Lamb and had a host of different bonuses. I preferred to live life dangerously and used the Gold Fleece almost exclusively, which increased my damage output every time I killed an enemy without being hit, but at the cost of taking double damage.

The beat-to-beat gameplay of Cult of the Lamb had me concerned not only for my followers while in a dungeon but also drove me to yearn for the thrill of adventure while keeping my followers well fed and happy.

The Family is Growing

The developers of Cult of the Lamb, Massive Monster, also didn’t want its player base to go wanting, as they have released (so far) two free updates: Relics of the Old Faith and Sins of the Flesh. These two DLCs add more follower skins, buildings, and quests to complete on top of the original games already large pool of activities.

Relics of the Old Faith, released in 2023, adds post-game questlines, a challenge run area called Purgatory, new Fleeces for the Lamb, NPCs, and a whole lot more. Sins of the Flesh, which was just added in January of 2024, adds the Sins system, which acts as a second form of currency alongside devotion. Various other add-ons like new buildings, new weapons, and rituals were also added with this update.

In February of 2024 Massive Monster also said that even more DLC is in the works and it’s probably safe to assume any future updates will also be free. I didn’t jump into Cult of the Lamb until late 2023, but with the sheer amount of content this game had me glued to it almost every night for months as I grew my cult through the main game and its massive DLCs. With possibly even more content coming, this 2-year-old game is still full of life and ripe for your indoctrination.

PIXEL PERFECT

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TigerCastle spends his days thinking about the next RPG or platinum trophy he can tackle. His nights are spent making YouTube videos and hosting a couple podcasts, First & Last (a TV podcast) and Mega Potion (a podcast that attempts to talk about video games). You can also find him on the highest peak spreading the good word of the Suikoden series.