If you play a bunch of these sorts of games, I can see how plenty of my minor issues could become glaring flaws. Aside from the initial environment, the combat arenas are pretty aggressively hard to get a read on and that's often compacted by enemies that have imprecise animations and/or hitboxes. Likewise, the cult simulator side of the game hints at a lot of interesting ideas before, much like its feel-good cousin Spiritfarer, seeming to try as hard as it can to obfuscate how much time you're wasting trying to maximize cult efficiency. While I've admittedly played just a handful of either type of game - more combat than homesteader, also - I can see that neither half of this game is a definitive example of the form.
But the soundtrack is killer, the writing is often just clever enough, there's something fascinating about the game's commitment to feces as a resource (not since Conker...) and more than anything the art style throughout is undeniably immaculate. Because the rogue-like half only ever wades in difficult waters and the cult building half is kind of inconsequential overall - if you want to become an OP little lamb as quickly as possible it's got a rhythm to it, but otherwise the stakes are quite low - Cult of the Lamb is the weird, comforting sort of game that spends five or six hours piling concepts and mechanics on top of you only to be totally cool with you ignoring or forgetting most of it.
In a year that seems to be full of games that have their One Big Thing - and that Thing often being "a shit ton of bugs" (worth noting: it took a few patches for console versions to get optimized) - it makes sense Cult of the Lamb stood out late in the summer. While the game falls short of each expressed ambition save "look real good", the advanced weapons and later bosses are just neat enough that the game remains compelling for the 15-20 hours you'll sink into it.
That's not even entirely fair: Cult of the Lamb's actual secret weapon is its heavy contender for soundtrack of the year, a tidy collection of bangers and vibes that keep the momentum up through each consecutive loop. Sometimes I found myself spending another half hour with the game just to get another couple tracks in as much as advance the game itself.
Low-key best shit: all the supporting characters serve very specific functions and never move from their one spot, yet all of them are memorable without feeling tied to their gimmick - no small feat when most of their dialogue is some kind of riff on said gimmick.
But the soundtrack is killer, the writing is often just clever enough, there's something fascinating about the game's commitment to feces as a resource (not since Conker...) and more than anything the art style throughout is undeniably immaculate. Because the rogue-like half only ever wades in difficult waters and the cult building half is kind of inconsequential overall - if you want to become an OP little lamb as quickly as possible it's got a rhythm to it, but otherwise the stakes are quite low - Cult of the Lamb is the weird, comforting sort of game that spends five or six hours piling concepts and mechanics on top of you only to be totally cool with you ignoring or forgetting most of it.
In a year that seems to be full of games that have their One Big Thing - and that Thing often being "a shit ton of bugs" (worth noting: it took a few patches for console versions to get optimized) - it makes sense Cult of the Lamb stood out late in the summer. While the game falls short of each expressed ambition save "look real good", the advanced weapons and later bosses are just neat enough that the game remains compelling for the 15-20 hours you'll sink into it.
That's not even entirely fair: Cult of the Lamb's actual secret weapon is its heavy contender for soundtrack of the year, a tidy collection of bangers and vibes that keep the momentum up through each consecutive loop. Sometimes I found myself spending another half hour with the game just to get another couple tracks in as much as advance the game itself.
Low-key best shit: all the supporting characters serve very specific functions and never move from their one spot, yet all of them are memorable without feeling tied to their gimmick - no small feat when most of their dialogue is some kind of riff on said gimmick.