Roguelites are now a field so crowded that you need something special to make it genuinely captivating to repeat dangerous dungeons over and over and over again while accruing incremental changes. Cult of the Lamb’s answer to this is to lace the game with irreverent cult humour, add a light city builder/social manager layer to break the monotony and to make every character into a whimsically cute cartoon animal. And what do you know - it’s the most fun I’ve had with a roguelite since Dungeons of Dredmor and stands head and shoulders above most entries into the genre.

I was going to leave the review there but I do have to elaborate slightly on the actual cult simulation side of the game and simply compliment how much fun it is to manage your little flock of faithful followers, controlling their daily lives according to your whims as they spend their days toiling and worshipping (and with the latest content patch, happily sinning) for you. While the action sequences are great, I found the cult simulator sections in-between so engaging that often I found myself more excited to spend more time with my little guys when logging on. The micromanagement isn’t burdensome and can be relaxed to cater to the player’s needs (and I do recommend toggling on the setting to stop time in the village whenever you go into a dungeon) so it never overstays its welcome - and in fact, I could imagine enjoying an alternative version of this game that fully focuses on this aspect in greater detail over the 50/50 split is now. It’s a lot of great fun and nicely breaks the tension between the more intense dungeon running.