I’ve always wanted a cult of my own…

Cult of the Lamb is a great lil indie that I highly recommend! I remember seeing someone call it “Animal Crossing meets the dark arts” or something a ways back—that’s not too far off! 😂

🐑 It juggles action/adventure dungeon crawling with management sim gameplay… it’s a neat roguelike that does an excellent job balancing out the two genres all while introducing new mechanics to further develop and grow the cult.

🐑 The dungeon crawling itself is fun. The runs are short, and the combat is intuitive albeit sometimes a bit finicky. There are different weapons and curses and tarot cards… eventually the runs started to blend together and feel rinse repeat, but I don’t actually think it’s all that bad (unless you’re grinding like I was). The game is well paced!

🐑 The base building is okay! My cult looked like ass, but that’s probably a skill issue. Resource management was difficult early on. Placing structures/decorations/etc on a diagonal “grid” was sometimes frustrating especially when the cursor’s movement wasn’t locked. I’m sure it operates better with mouse and keyboard. All that being said, it was satisfying trying to optimize my cult and my time spent within the cult and with my followers. The systems in Cult of the Lamb are deeper than I anticipated.

🐑 Visually, Cult of the Lamb reminds me a lot of Don’t Starve with 2D artwork over an isometric 3D perspective. It’s effective! The art direction and soundtrack play well into the tone of the game. It’s equally unsettling as it is wholesome.

🐑 I’m glad my physical copy ‘finally’ delivered when it did because it allowed me to dive right in and make use of the content updates (yes, the sex update! my followers were drinking booze, eating poop, and having sex 😭).

I had a blast with Cult of the Lamb (even if the whole experience was a bit disturbing). It was truly unique! 🗿

8.5 sacrifices out of 10 🩸

What a controversial game and launch LOL.. 🗿

I’ve played A LOT of survival games through the years but none quite like Palworld. It really stands alone among the others within the genre.

It’s far from perfect and about as “early access” a game as it gets, but it’s undeniably fun and will continue to succeed so long as Pocket Pair supports it. I hope they do—Palworld has a lot of untapped potential!

Between connectivity issues and crashes, Palworld is buggy (at least it is through PC Game Pass). Progression feels unbalanced in the mid game, and some Pal designs are beyond “questionable”, but it’s still great. The gameplay loop is great. Catching and fighting pals and base building is great. It’s addicting… I shamelessly plugged dozens of hours into the game, grinding resources and exploring; some sessions fell prey to the “oh, I wanna do one more thing before I log off”. One more thing turned into two hours later... 😂

That being said, I don’t see myself returning to Palworld (no matter how much love Pocket Pair pours into it) though dropping off the game isn’t indicative of its quality—I love the survival genre as a whole (Valheim, ARK, Grounded, Dont Starve, etc), but once I feel like I’ve “done everything”, I move on. Truly, the only survival game I hung onto for several years was Minecraft. Minecraft is still king. 👑

Palworld is a good time, and I enjoyed playing it with buds! As a parody, it tests the limits and draws HEAVY inspiration from many games and series, BUT at the end of the day, if you like Ark: Survival Evolved and Pokemon/Monster Hunter Stories, you’ll probably enjoy Palworld.

7 pals out of 10 🔫