Saturday Morning Gaming: Cult of the Lamb

Cult of the Lamb is one of those surprising little gems that somehow manages to successfully rip off several games at once. As I played, I found myself saying stuff like “okay, this part is like Hades… this part is like Stardew Valley… this part is like Slay the Spire” and a *LOT* of “this is like The Binding of Isaac”.

The story kicks off with you having been bound and walking to your execution. The personifications of Greed, Famine, Pestilence, and War (the False Prophets) stand before you and say “you are the last of your kind… with your death, the prophecy will be thwarted.”

And, welp, seconds later you are there in the presence of the (chained) personification of Death. “Those fools!”, he tells you. “They sent you right to me!”

And then the game kicks off proper. He sends you back to start a cult on his behalf. And with the help of this cult, you can destroy those false prophets.

(Without getting into religion proper, the game uses a *LOT* of religious imagery and does so fairly blasphemously. So, if that sort of thing is likely to offend you, know that this game will do a fairly good job of using stuff that it seems to know is likely to offend you.)

The game then has you alternate between the combat phase and the base-building phase.

You run off into combat where you get into fights, gather resources, and, occasionally, you get the opportunity to recruit a couple of folks for your cult.

Combat is where the game reminds me most of Hades. Get a weapon and a curse. There are multiple types of weapons with various trade-offs of speed and damage. The dagger, for example, is the fastest weapon in the game. It doesn’t do a whole lot of damage, however. The hammer is the slowest weapon in the game but, seriously, it’ll get you one-hit kills against the smaller monsters. There’s a bunch of weapons in-between. Swords, axes, gauntlets. You may think “none of those are distance weapons” and you’ll be right. The curses are the things that can hit from a distance. Use them sparingly, however. You don’t get unlimited usage of them. You can use them, like, twice. (At first.)

You get a dodge roll, though. That’ll come in handy. Get you close to the monster, get you away from it, and, of course, dodge the projectiles.

Beat the first part of the map and choose which part of the map you want to take to get you closer to the miniboss. Beat the miniboss and then go back to town.

Now you get to manage your town. Build your followers some sleeping areas. Dig up some ground that you can farm in. Wait, why are you doing this? Start telling your followers to start doing these things. As you get more stone and wood, you can build better structures. With better structures, you can get better stone and better wood. Then you can build even better structures!

Have your followers build a temple for you to give sermons in! Learn new doctrines! Perform rituals! Marry one of your followers and have a wedding! Marry multiple ones! It’s *YOUR* cult! Marry as many as you want! Maybe even sacrifice your followers here and there! Have a funeral afterwards!

You have to tend and manage your followers, of course. They can’t feed themselves so you will have to cook for them. And, yes, a few hours after you cook for them (this is where we get into The Binding of Isaac territory), they are going to poop. And, goodness gracious, they poop *A LOT*. Have them build outhouses.

And then go back and engage in combat some more. Break the seals you need to break to fight the False Prophets themselves. And then, when you’ve finally defeated them all, resolve the deal you made at the beginning of the game.

Now, as you can see from the pictures, the game is cutesy. Cutesy as heck.

It mixes eldritch horrors with cutesy presentation and a double scoop of blasphemy while doing the Hades/Stardew Valley thing. Oh, and there’s a fishing minigame too.

If I have a single complaint it’s that it took me a little less than a week to beat. But, as complaints go, that’s a pretty paltry one.

As for other complaints… well, it’s that you’re given a lot of choices that are no-brainers. Do you want to pick the bonus that helps you out a little or the bonus that helps you out a *LOT*? When you choose the doctrine to teach your followers, do you want the one that will make them happy or do you want the one that makes them REALLY happy?

But that doesn’t really matter, I don’t think. Maybe it’ll give additional depth to future playthroughs.

All in all, this is one of those games that I cannot recommend enough. Even if it is way too short.

So… what are you playing?