An Australian indie game that shocks the internet with 1 million downloads in one week

Cult of Lamb Review – In just one week, an indie game surprised the world with its cute yet dark-themed resource building and dungeon exploring game. You are a sacrificial lamb but resurrected from the dead by an ominous stranger. You then must repay your debt by building loyal followers, free the stranger from eternal imprisonment, and of course take revenge to the gods (Bishops) who sacrificed you.

Cult of Lamb is a mix of lots of things. The game reminds me of playing Settlers, Harvest Moon, and a few roguelike games in the past. It’s great, it’s fun, it’s cute, and it’s a fresh take on many games’ genre combined.

Cult of Lamb has an artistic design in terms of both visual and audio. Your followers don’t speak English – what you hear is some cute, gibberish words like the Sims (but much less talkative). The facial animations and reactions look adorable as well.

When recruiting new followers, you can choose how they are going to look like (will always be cute, don’t worry) or you can just randomise the appearances and names. Yes, you can name them one by one, something that I found really fun to do in the beginning as I named them with all my friends I hang out with every week. Only later I found out that they will grow old and die – which is a pity. I couldn’t be bothered naming them again since. Sure, they can be resurrected through a ritual (and keep their levels) but they will die again at some point and performing rituals also cost you resources.

As you play the game, you will recruit more and more followers through dungeon exploring, quest rewards, and more. Your followers will grow in numbers and while they don’t have salaries, they need to be well-fed and you need to make sure that their faith stays strong to you. Yes, they will worship you as their cult leader, gift you things, and you can assign them to many tasks on your settlement to grow it: chopping trees, worshipping (which generates a resource), farming, and many more.

Your settlement will get upgrades as you progress and as you gain devotion and loyalty points from your followers. New buildings will appear, along with upgrades to the current buildings. For example, you’ll have to get down and dirty cleaning their poos in your settlement at first but eventually you can build toilets so you can collect the poos in one place (which you can use later as fertilisers), and a Janitor Station so they can clean up their own poos and vomits.

Taking care and upgrading your settlements are not all, though. You’ll explore short-and-quick-to-do dungeons to gather more resources, questing, and ultimately to kill all the gods who are imprisoning your saviour. You will be equipped with a weapon and a special attack (Curse) that requires a resource called Fervour (which you’ll regain as you kill enemies). At the start of each dungeon crawling, you will be given a random weapon (with its own specific stats) and special attack so this means you will experience all the weapons available in game eventually. You can pick your own favourites, though.

As you explore, you will be able to switch weapons and Curses, and these can be upgraded in your settlement as you give out Sermons and do rituals like sacrificing your followers. There are also doctrines, beliefs that your followers will follow (like the Words of God in the Bible). For example, you can set a doctrine called “Cannibal Trait” where your followers believe that eating your followers’ meat is a good thing and they will gain more faith by doing so. It’s twisted and fun.

When you first play the game, you might be overwhelmed by all the things the game throw at you and all the different resources available in the game that can be gained through different things. There are also tons of things to upgrade and I haven’t even talked about Tarot Cards (these are basically temporary stats or boosts you get as you are exploring dungeons, but only last for that dungeon crawling session). But after playing the game for an hour or so, you’ll get the hang of everything and will appreciate the variety of things you can and will do in the game to keep you out of boredom.

Cult of Lamb Review Conclusion

Cult of Lamb is a fresh take on resource building and roguelike games, thanks to its cute and artistic audio and visual design. It is a game well-designed and well-made as you build your own cult and perform cult-like activities like imposing doctrines on your followers, giving sermons, and performing rituals as you feed, pet, bless, punish, and even sacrifice your elderly for the greater good.

The things you can do in the game is life-like in the settlement management part and while the dungeon exploring can feel repetitive, it is a fun approach and the randomness it brings will make sure that every dungeon exploring is fresh and well, random.

I play the game on the PC and while having a controller is recommended, it is not required. I find it good enough to play with a keyboard and a mouse.

The internet made a lot of fuzz about this game and it was why I took an interest to see what the fuss was all about and decided to review the game. I wasn’t disappointed and it looks like this indie game will win the heart of many more, and I believe some awards should be given to this game in the months to come.

Cult of Lamb by Massive Monster, a developer team right here in Melbourne, Australia (and published by Devolver Digital) is available now on PC (through Steam), Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo Switch.

Disclosure: Cult of Lamb review code was supplied for reviewing