Cult of the Lamb is the latest game from Devolver Digital, created by indie studio Massive Monster, previously known for The Adventure Pals and Never Give Up. It's easily the studio's most anticipated title to date, garnering plenty of pre-release interest for its gameplay concept, which aims to mix roguelite dungeon crawling action with town management and an adorable art design. It largely succeeds at these ambitions, though a few missteps hold it back from greatness.
Cult of the Lamb gives players the chance to take control of the titular Lamb and create their own cult of cute animal-people who will serve them in the quest to unseat the villainous Bishops of the Old Faith that dwell in the game's small, mushroom and madness-laden biomes. Resurrected from sacrifice by a dark god known as The One Who Waits, players will need to not only tackle a variety of enemies and bosses, but also recruit an increasingly large roster of Followers to supply them with Devotion. To this end, they'll have to keep their Followers happy and faithful, using and abusing their flock to progress through the game's combat challenges.
Thankfully, Cult of the Lamb's combat feels great right from the outset, as it's one of the first things players will encounter. Sending enemies ping-ponging around the map has a great flow and visceral impact thanks to Cult of the Lamb's audiovisual prowess. While there are regular moments where the patina rubs away to reveal something a bit less grand underneath - such as when the Lamb talks to a Follower directly and the sprite resolutions can't compensate for the camera zoom - these do little to detract from the stellar animation and the colorful, engaging art design. Cult of the Lamb's huge cast of characters consistently shines because of this, and while most of its NPCs are minimized to bit parts, their presence lends the game world an added degree of artistic consistency that's most welcome, backed up by some solid writing and an effective, understated musical score.
Because of this, Cult of the Lamb makes a strong first impression, with a world and story that promise eldritch secrets and drama between godlike figures, but the game has trouble sustaining this over the course of the entire experience. While combat looks and feels great, and can't be described as button-mashy, it lacks the tactical depth of roguelike games like Hades or The Binding Of Isaac. In the case of Isaac, there's simply more that a player can choose from over the course of any given descent (in addition to unlockable characters), leading to interesting runs that still feel different from one another over time. In the case of Hades, each individual weapon changes the core gameplay fundamentally, and there's a diverse array of specializations that can be undertaken as a run goes on, allowing players to feel clever about how they've chosen to progress.
Cult of the Lamb has certainly taken notes on the genre, given that it has many of the same concepts in play, but because runs are shorter and many of the tarot cards (used to unlock skills and upgrades) are more general than synergistic, runs ultimately become an accumulation of power rather than a chance to combine elements in inventive ways. Players are asked to make a variety of choices from run to run, but it almost never feels like one weapon is the right option because of the cards acquired so far, or that a certain card perfectly compliments one's arsenal. Indeed, most runs will see players abandon their primary and secondary weapons multiple times as better, stronger choices become available at shops and stations.
This lack of synergy goes for many of the game's upgrade systems as well, which never feel as though they contribute to an interesting and unique set of choices so much as a gradually snowballing array of equally viable options. More powerful weapons and a larger pool of them add variety and a sense of progress, but new relationships are seldom built between them, leaving some upgrades feeling soulless.
Of course, Cult of the Lamb's cute and creepy core premise is not to be a pure roguelite, but one that also incorporates a fully featured town management simulation inside it, and this is where it does its best work. The joy of watching the cult expand is real, but it also cleverly hooks into the core loop, sending the Lamb back out into the various dungeons to farm for materials and complete quests for Followers. The combo is a fun gimmick that works through a fair portion of the game, and actual cult management allows for a bit more direction and choice in progression. There are many structures to build, cult-wide upgrades to enact, and miscellaneous interactions with Followers, though here, too, the game doesn't allow enough room for individual Followers to feel substantive. They all have positive and negative traits, but these: can't be altered; they're only small adjustments to begin with; and they feel inconsequential since Followers are essentially disposable. It might make the choice of who gets sacrificed next a bit easier, but serves little other purpose.
The fairly simple management sim side of Cult of the Lamb also eventually devolves, requiring little attention in the late game. This leaves cult leaders to simply run around collecting resources, firing off a sermon or a couple of rituals, then cooking a meal and heading back into the dungeon. The tech tree eventually creates a reasonably self-sustaining environment for the cult, so players may find they've outgrown the need for most resources before even getting the last industrial upgrades. Ultimately, the cult itself seems to make little enough difference to the final outcome of the game's events.
To some degree, it's a question of who the game is trying to appeal to. There may not be enough meat on the bones of either side of the game for people primarily interested in one of its two aspects (though the game does an irable job letting the player choose how much to engage with either), so it's those interested in the entire package that are likely to have the best time. A surprisingly large quantity of decorative items allows players to customize their base as they see fit, but it's still not on anywhere near the same level as a game like Animal Crossing, and there's no real mechanical use for décor beyond fulfilling the occasional Follower quest to beautify the base.
Cult of the Lamb is a stunning thing to look at, but its base-building segments can't keep up with its monsters. Boss designs are universally cool to look at, and there are a considerable number of them, but this is another area where the game is let down somewhat by a lack of variety and depth. The bosses themselves don't routinely have any particularly unique mechanics, mostly being variations on a similar template with a jump/stomp/dash attack avoided by rolling, area attacks in the form of lobbed projectiles, and often some bullet hell-style attacks thrown into the mix. Many of them also summon creatures, and while this can make a fight more frenetic and challenging, it's an issue when the Lamb does so much damage that the phases of actually fighting the boss are too short. The major bosses don't suffer from this problem as much as the others, but those represent a small percentage of the game's encounters, making some of these fights more disappointing than the promise of their invariably cool designs.
Cult of the Lamb also isn't without its bugs, though these are thankfully mostly inconsequential. Followers will sometimes inexplicably use the wrong targets for their quests, and buildings occasionally have issues, leaving a Follower in a prison that can't be interacted with or a lumberyard that can't be used. But such issues were resolved simply by saving and restarting the game, so these don't greatly impact the experience overall. Cult of the Lamb's evil roguelike package is otherwise robust, with freely selectable difficulty levels and other welcome accessibility options putting on the finishing touches.
Cult of the Lamb fails to be the masterpiece that it might have been, even with the surprise addition of a world map that opens up new upgrade options and a Knucklebones minigame, but it still offers a lot of fun over the course of its 15 to 30 hours of gameplay. Massive Monster has promised and post-release content, which leaves the end of the game somewhat open-ended, but it already feels like a complete experience as it stands. Cult of the Lamb is a spooky-cute experience worth picking up, even if it can't quite make the final ascent to godhood.
Cult of the Lamb releases on August 11, 2022 for Nintendo Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, macOS, and Windows PC. A digital Steam code was provided to Screen Rant for the purpose of this review.
