Cult of the Lamb received generally positive reviews from critics upon release, with praise directed towards its gameplay and replay value. It received three nominations at the 19th British Academy Games Awards, including Best Game.
Gameplay
Cult of the Lamb is centered around a lamb, controlled by the player, who is tasked with forming a cult in order to appease the deity "The One Who Waits". Having saved the player character's life at the start of the game, it instructs them to embark on roguelite-style "crusades" by venturing out into one of the game's four regions in order to defeat various enemies (so-called "heretics"). There they can find or rescue other captured or lost animals in order to create and grow a cult following dedicated to the player.[2][3] The randomly generated world contains resources to gather, perks and weapons to collect, enemies in the form of rival cultists and non-believers to fight, and other animals to rescue; these animals can be indoctrinated into the player's cult. They have appearances that can be changed and both positive and negative traits, which can affect how they act in the cult or how they react to the player's actions regarding the cult.[4]
The player can manage their followers in their team's village. Followers can be assigned tasks at the base such as gathering resources, building structures, worshipping, sending them to assist the player in battle, or sacrificing them, which can affect the player's abilities and the team itself.[4] The player must ensure their followers' needs are met by performing sermons and rituals to reinforce their faith, cooking food for them to survive, providing them with shelter, and ensuring the village is clean and sanitary.[5] Otherwise, the followers can turn against the player, spread dissent, and eventually leave the cult with other followers; to prevent this, the player can provide for them, give them gifts, reeducate them, or detain them in a pillory until they stop dissenting.[6][7]
Twitch integration
The game has Twitch integration via the "Companion of the Lamb" Twitch extension.[8] Viewers can customize their follower by entering via a "Follower Raffle", which (when chosen at random) will have their username displayed above their character at all times.[8] Other features include the "Twitch Totem Bar" which lets viewers contribute channel points, resulting in a random reward for the player, and a "Help or Hinder" event where they can vote to either help or hinder the player's progress.[8]
Plot
In a land of false prophets, The Lamb, supposedly the last of their kind, is brought before The Four Bishops of the Old Faith, and is sacrificed before them. Upon dying, The Lamb is brought before "The One Who Waits", a strange deity who is imprisoned in chains. The One Who Waits tasks The Lamb with starting a cult in its name, gives The Lamb a demonic crown, then resurrects it.[9]
Assisted by Ratau, The Lamb's precursor, The Lamb settles at the ruins of a temple and establishes a cult on behalf of The One Who Waits, in order to defeat the four other Bishops – Leshy, Heket, Kallamar, and Shamura – and free it. After settling down into their cult, The Lamb adventures off on crusades, defeating each of the Four Bishops while simultaneously expanding the cult with followers, increasing its influence and The Lamb's powers. With the death of each Bishop, one of the four chains holding The One Who Waits breaks, ultimately freeing the deity. While crusading, the Four Bishops and The One Who Waits speak to The Lamb in different encounters.
As The Lamb progressively gets closer to their ultimate goal, The One Who Waits informs The Lamb that the Four Bishops had betrayed and imprisoned him, and that he intends to ultimately rule the cult and the world while remaking them in his image. During The Lamb's crusade against Shamura, Shamura reveals the identity of The One Who Waits: "Narinder". Shamura informs The Lamb that Narinder was the Fifth Bishop of the Old Faith, and their brother and equal, having ruled over the realm of Death. Shamura laments to The Lamb, confessing that millennia before, Narinder had grown ambitious and was discontent with his role as a Bishop. Shamura, blinded by their love for Narinder, had tried to help him by teaching him ideas of change, although Shamura's teachings were "most unnatural" for Narinder, as Shamura stated. Ultimately, Narinder betrayed the Bishops, which forced Shamura and the others to imprison him. Before the final battle, Shamura warns The Lamb that Narinder will come for them when all of the Bishops are dead.
After Shamura is defeated, The One Who Waits instructs The Lamb to visit him in his realm to return the demonic crown and to be sacrificed in his name. The Lamb opens the final gateway and goes before The One Who Waits. The Lamb is instructed to kneel and be sacrificed, so that The One Who Waits can retake his crown and obtain his place as god of the world. The player is given the option to sacrifice themselves to fulfill the prophecy or reject doing so. If the player accepts, The One Who Waits is freed, and subsequently tortures The Lamb before killing it, ending the game.
If the player refuses, a final battle ensues between The Lamb and The One Who Waits's followers, Baal and Aym. Once the followers are defeated, The One Who Waits attempts to kill The Lamb himself. After the first defeat, The One Who Waits taunts The Lamb and transforms while pulling The Lamb into a hellscape, attempting to kill them in front of their followers a second time. If The Lamb defeats The One Who Waits again, it is stripped of its powers and transforms into a follower-like creature named Narinder. Narinder admits defeat and resents The Lamb, and the player is given the option to spare Narinder or murder him. If the player chooses to kill Narinder, Narinder claims that The Lamb is no different than he was before he is subsequently killed. If the player chooses to spare Narinder, Narinder can be indoctrinated into the cult as an immortal follower, and insults The Lamb for being weak. Either option results in The Lamb's followers being rescued and The Lamb returning to their cult, and the game ends.
In the post-game, the Lamb encounters an entity that calls itself the Merchant of Eternity and the Meter of Gods. The entity asks to face the bosses again and release the Bishops into the afterlife to indoctrinate them. He asks for items called God Tears. For each freed Bishop he reveals to the Lamb the past of the gods. After resurrecting them all he gives a statue or follower to the Lamb.
Cult of the Lamb is developed by Massive Monster, an Australian independent game development studio that has created The Adventure Pals,[10]Never Give Up, and Unicycle Giraffe. Much of their early work had been commercial failures.[11]
Because of the cute art style used in these games, there had been a perception that the studio was catering to children, and opted to go in a different direction for their next game, looking towards themes of horror and the occult. They planned to make a roguelite dungeon crawler along with base building, but the premise was uncertain and evolved over the course of development.[12] It originally featured a lamb god who had been kicked out of a pantheon over a lack of popularity, and had to rebuild his following on earth. The next revision featured the lamb running hell, but the team did not want to include torture as a theme too heavily. The premise of the lamb instead running a cult proved more popular with the team, and this line of thinking secured the publishing deal with Devolver Digital.[11]
Additional funding for development was provided through VicScreen's Victorian Production Fund.[13]Cult of the Lamb was announced at Gamescom in August 2021 and was released on August 11, 2022.[14][15]
Post release updates
After the game's launch, it received several major content updates. These were sometimes billed as DLCs or expansions in marketing material, though they were all free updates.[16]
Blood Moon Festival (October 24, 2022) added the blood moon ritual and various cosmetic items.[17]
Relics of the Old Faith (April 24, 2023) added a post-game storyline with a crusade campaign, a photo-mode, and additions and enhancements to the game's combat and cult management mechanics.[18]
Sins of the Flesh (January 16, 2024) added a sin mechanic, more doctrines, a new blunderbuss weapon, more cosmetics, and a breeding system.[20][21]
Unholy Alliance (August 12, 2024) added two-player cooperative play to the game, with the second player playing the Goat alongside the Lamb. The update also expanded the game's weapons, powers, and buildable items.[22]
Pilgrim Pack (August 12, 2024) adds a digital comic book and numerous cosmetic items related to the new story.[26]
On March 12, 2024, a graphic novel adaptation of the game entitled The First Verse was launched on Kickstarter, written by Alex Paknadel and Troy Little, published by Oni Press. The crowdfunding target was reached in six minutes.[27]
Soundtrack
The game's original soundtrack was composed by River Boy, and was made available for purchase on the Steam page on launch day.[28] It is also available on River Boy's Bandcamp page.[29]
On October 21, 2024, an extended play (titled Hymns of the Unholy) was announced by Massive Monster containing metal remixes of songs from the soundtrack by Pick Up Goliath, featuring current and former members of Light the Torch, Trivium, While She Sleeps, Polyphia and more.[30]
Cult of the Lamb received "generally favourable" reviews, according to review aggregatorMetacritic.[32][33][31][34]GameSpot praised the combat, calling it "fast-paced, fluid and fun" while also being surprised by the amount of customization and player-choice which in turns makes the game "very replayable".[39]Nintendo Life liked the variety present in the dungeon crawling, writing, "New layouts and equipment loadouts keep every run unique, while its intense and chaotic battles demand your full attention".[41]Destructoid felt the game tutorialized its mechanics properly, "Again, for all of the elements that come into play, Cult of the Lamb presents everything in a digestible way".[35]PC Gamer compared the game to the Animal Crossing series, saying it's like "if Tom Nook craved power instead of money", and enjoyed the ways in which the player could manage their cult, writing that it could be complicated, "but it never threatens to be overwhelming".[42]IGN praised the way it balanced macabre themes with "cutesy cartoon vibes".[40]
While enjoying the premise, Game Informer criticized how difficult it was to find time to customize the cult, "with so many cosmetic items thrown into the formula, I was disappointed by how rarely I was afforded the time to focus on them".[37]The Washington Post disliked the combat, feeling that it often devolved into a jumbled mess, "the game's 2.5D perspective would make it difficult to gauge where you are even if you weren't constantly sliding all over the battlefield".[10]Polygon liked the characters that the player could find in dungeons, saying that they were "genuinely interesting, with their backstories mostly obfuscated and enhanced by their charming picture book-esque designs".[9]Eurogamer praised the art style of the game, noting that it looked like "the best New Yorker cartoon".[5]
The ongoing cultural success of the game led to a "Cult of the Lamb Temple" to be built at the PAX Australia gaming convention in 2024, which hosted two legally recognised marriage ceremonies under the "cult" with hundreds in attendance. The developers revealed after the event that they had received "hundreds of applications" from couples wanting to marry at their temple. Additionally, the game's composer River Boy, held a rave at the temple during the event.[48][49][50]
Sales
Cult of the Lamb sold one million units within its first week of release.[51] As of October 2024, it has sold 4.5 million units.[52]
