It’s a beautiful and bright morning. I just returned from a brutal yet rewarding night out hunting down a false god. I throw the head I took as a trophy of my dominance on the ground and it rolls to the feet of my dozens of loyal followers. They pause for a moment just before raising their hands to the sky and undulating a joyous, weird, cute, and foreign sound. I decide to take it easy for the rest of the day by picking pumpkins from the farm, feeding my most loyal follower Johnny his favorite bowl of poop, and sacrificing Sally to the One Who Waits.

This is Cult of the Lamb.

Yes, it’s as crazy as it sounds. Cult of the Lamb is a roguelike-simulator mashup that provides a rather unique experience from the marriage of the two genres. It surrounds a cute little lamb given a second chance at life in exchange for servitude to an ominous god of death. To repay your debt you must start a cult and slay the four false gods to release the god of death that revived you. Yeah, it’s dark. It pushes the envelope with demonic and dark tones. Depictions of sacrifice, rituals, murder, extortion, and other wild things are littered throughout this 20-hour game. Oddly enough, the team over at Massive Monster manages to take the edge off of all of it with its cute and playful imagery.

Let’s start with how a game so saturated in cult-related themes, gets away with being one of the most praised indie games of the year. One of Cult of the Lamb’s strengths is its presentational aspects. The character designs, animations, environments, and even music all strike the perfect balance between cute and unsettling. The dark themes are overt and obvious but are completely disarmed at the same. The developers even mirror this in the gameplay. When you fight a boss it is depicted in its most demonic and vicious form, only to be transformed into some cute cartoon that looks like it was pulled straight out of the show Gumball. On the flip side, you encounter a lot of goofy-looking NPCs that seem playful at first, but actually have a rather morbid story associated with them. The quirky dark energy this game gave off game never got old to me, and honestly was one of the main things keeping me engaged with what was going on.

The core gameplay of Cult of the Lamb also works quite well. Half of the time you’re going off on dungeon runs to further the story and gather resources for you cult and the other half you’re building structures and tending to the needs of your followers. For me it was a dangerously addicting cycle. Sometimes I would find myself trying to squeeze in one more run during my free time and other moments I would promise to only tend to a few more tasks at the cult before putting the game down for awhile. The team at massive monster nailed the loop. It’s not too long, it’s not too complicated, it’s not too frustrating. It has what I would like to coin “goldilocks gameplay”. It’s just right. The fact that the game has a well defined ending helps with that. Collecting better equipment for runs or new rituals for cult enhancements didn’t get stale because there was a clear end in sight. If the game had gone on for 20 hours longer I think I’d be singing a very different tune here.

Although I had a great time with Cult of the Lamb, it is not without its faults. The biggest shortcoming of Cult of the Lamb in my opinion is its depth. It is very much “what you see is what you get”. I really wish the game went deeper on the story and characters. They had such a strong framework to work on that I have no choice but to feel a little let down that they didn’t go further than they did. There are a few moments that are really cool, like the random events that happen during dungeon runs, or the interactions you have with your followers in your cult, but by the time I finished the game, it all felt too surface level. The game hints at a lot of interesting questions and side stories going on in this world that always just exist as teases. There are side areas you can go to visit NPCs that just feel like dressed up shop areas. I would have loved secret boss fights like in Death’s Door, more interesting cult random events, or even just deeper lore with all of the NPCs.

The other major issue was the performance and bugs. I played this game on Switch and let me tell you, after playing this I am never buying another 3rd Party game on the Switch. They will all be purchased on my future Steam Deck. The game always froze for multiple seconds anytime a new day started or I was saving the game. The heavy action segments almost always had some lag or frame drops. I even had my game full on crash once or twice as well. In some ways, this is a testament to how much fun I was having because the game had a high level of friction in almost every way. In addition to the performance issues, there was also a litany of bugs. I had random structures disappearing, random artifacts popping up on screen (at one point which I thought was a play on the devilish cult theme), and effects not working as they should, it was a mess. I imagine with time the game will be patched and performance will be optimized, but I can only review my experience. The one thing I can say from my experience is DO NOT BUY THIS ON SWITCH if you have the choice.

I want to be clear The Cult of the Lamb, a game made by a developer consisting of 3 people, is awesome. It merges two genres and in the process makes them extremely approachable. It features a great soundtrack, a unique art style, and a fantastic gameplay loop. I have been anticipating this title for quite some time and it delivered. It being as good as it was is also the reason I’m a bit disappointed. With a few tweaks and a little more depth, this game could be swinging in the big leagues. Unfortunately, it just fell short when it came to the storytelling and technical performance. Nevertheless, this will be a create milestone for Massive Monster and I can’t wait to see what they bring us next. I’m giving The Cult of the Lamb an 8.