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Cult of the Lamb
Cult of the Lamb’s blend of combat in mysterious regions and cult management has a clear appeal if you enjoy building a community between fights. At $8.15 from 
GOG, this is the site’s tracked low, not a regional Steam record. Single-player and local co-op for two give you the choice to head out alone or with someone else.
Full controller support on Steam PC suits either approach. Keep in mind that exploration and combat are core parts of the game, alongside managing the cult. The confirmed interface languages, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, English, French, German, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese-Brazil, Russian, Italian, Arabic, Dutch, and Turkish, help you judge whether the game fits your language needs.
Loading store offersAll-time low ~ $9.99across Steam & third-party storesat the recorded all-time low
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Price History
Past 36 months · Updated dailyHistorical Low~ $8.682026-07Current Low Across Stores~ $8.15GOGAt its historical low now
Prices cover Steam and 39 authorized stores; only legitimate offers are counted. The chart shows weekly market-wide lows and Steam's official price across the past 36 months.
01About Cult of the Lamb
As a possessed lamb, explore mysterious regions, fight enemies and rival cult leaders, and build a cult. Gather resources, construct buildings, perform rituals, and preach to strengthen your flock. Steam player rating: 95% from 113,058 reviews. Release date: August 11, 2022.
Credits
Developer
Massive Monster
Publisher
Devolver Digital
Lowest recorded in 36 months
$8.682026-07-30 · KinguinBase game · same records as the chart above; USD history, not a regional Steam low.Language support
| Language | Interface | Subtitles | Audio |
|---|---|---|---|
| Simplified Chinese | Yes | Yes | — |
| Traditional Chinese | Yes | Yes | — |
| English | Yes | Yes | — |
Show 11 more languages
| Language | Interface | Subtitles | Audio |
|---|---|---|---|
| French | Yes | Yes | — |
| German | Yes | Yes | — |
| Spanish | Yes | Yes | — |
| Japanese | Yes | Yes | — |
| Korean | Yes | Yes | — |
| Portuguese-Brazil | Yes | Yes | — |
| Russian | Yes | Yes | — |
| Italian | Yes | Yes | — |
| Arabic | Yes | Yes | — |
| Dutch | Yes | Yes | — |
| Turkish | Yes | Yes | — |
Steam PC edition data · 2026-10-20
02Before you buy
Modes and controller
The Steam PC version lists single-player and local co-op for two players, along with full controller support.
Language
The interface supports 14 languages, including English. Subtitles are listed for each supported language; English full audio is not specified.
03Frequently asked questions
Does it have co-op?
In local co-op, one player is the Lamb and the other the Goat. The campaign can also be played solo.
What do you do in the game?
Alongside combat against enemies and rival cult leaders, you gather resources, build structures, perform rituals, preach, and grow your cult.
Are expansions described?
Yes. The description names free content expansions with new abilities, buildings, challenges, and other additions.
8.0
Overall Score
Graphics9.5
Audio8.5
Gameplay9
Story7
Content6.5
“One hand on a roguelike dungeon, one on a cult to run, two loops locked into something you can't quit, all wrapped in cute-meets-creepy art”
Our Verdict
Pull the six sections together and Cult of the Lamb reads as a high-finish indie with sharp strengths and no fatal flaw. It isn't the savant that perfects one system; it's the all-rounder that wins on fusion, style and long-haul care.
Standing: a bona fide indie smash
The market numbers are striking. It shifted a million copies in its launch week back in 2022 and crossed 4.5 million within two years — a bona fide indie smash. The critical reception is unusually consistent across platforms, too: an 82 Metacritic media average, an 84 Top Critic average on OpenCritic, and a 95% Overwhelmingly Positive rating on Steam off more than a hundred thousand reviews. A score profile that converges this tightly, with no glaring soft spot, tells its own story about the overall craft.
What's rarer still is that those numbers didn't sag after four years of live support — if anything, the steady free updates and later expansion held the heat.
For an indie to manage that kind of long-tail life, it leans on exactly that "two-genre fusion plus heavy stylisation" combination, and to this day no second game has truly pulled the same trick off. Imitators have borrowed the cute-meets-grim look or the management hooks in isolation, but nobody has fused the whole package with the same confidence.
Zoom out and the significance runs past "a fun game." It proves a point: an indie team doesn't have to match a major studio on budget or bulk. Find one creative intersection nobody has worked before, weld it shut with a fiercely unified style, and you can still post phenomenon-tier numbers. In an age crowded with sequels and remakes, an original willing to staple "cult management" to "roguelike dungeon" deserves to be remembered for that alone.
Who should buy it, who shouldn't, which version to grab
So who is it for? If you crave roguelike thrills but flinch at being walled by a pure-hardcore action game; if you love homestead nurturing and the satisfaction of raising a cult brick by brick; if you're simply drawn in by that cute-yet-sinister look — it is practically tailored to you. The friendly difficulty, the addictive twin loop and the sky-high recognisability let that kind of player settle in and relax.
Two crowds should tread carefully, though. One is the hardcore action-roguelike player chasing pure combat depth, because that side genuinely trails a specialist like Hades. The other is the player after large-scale, deep management, since the sim here leans manual and light and turns repetitive late on. Work out which camp you fall in before you commit, and the experience reads a lot smoother.
On versions, the Definitive Edition folds in the base game and most of the DLC, making it the most painless, best-value way in; if you only want a taste first, the standard release paired with a later sale does the job just as well. Whichever you pick, the core you get is the same: a round little lamb, a dungeon in one hand and a cult in the other, fusing cute and creepy into a dark fairy tale you can't quit. All told it earns its 8.0, and it earns the title of a model case for creative fusion in recent indie games.
Popular Steam reviews
Native-language selection · 10 reviewsSelected helpful reviews in this language show both recommendations and criticisms. This selection does not represent the overall positive rating; opinions reflect the version reviewed.
RecommendedSteam player
After fighting a boss in the early game I was given the option of berries, stone or big gift. Naturally I chose the big gift. I received 1 coin. - 10/10Show moreShow less
1 hours at review1,631 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
This is a tough one. i REALLY want to be able to recommend this game, because for the first few hours it felt like one of the best indie roguelikes I've played, with an amazing theme and cute artstyle. Combat feels enjoyable and the fusion of a cult management sim is a wonderful combination. Unfortunately once you pass those first few hours you begin to realise how truly shallow most of the systems are. Doctrines and individual skill trees are literally thrown at you early on, which results in a massive influx of new toys to play with and progression, and then everything just grinds to halt after a few hours once you get the grip of everything. To the point where the only 'choice' in the game will be choosing between two doctrines - and some are just outright better than others to the point where they just completely break the game (Looking at you, Grass Eater and Ritual of Enrichment) which results in you either throwing balance out the window or deciding to intentionally gimp yourself. Every choice comes down between two options and that's it, most outcomes being completely useless anyway. Your cult skill trees means nothing when it is literally inevitable that you cap out and unlock everything likely before beating the final boss - which begs the question, what's the point? Why would you ever play the game more than once when there will likely be zero difference between your first cult and your second. It's the equivalent of Borderlands having the level cap be 100 and just allowing you to eventually take every point on each Vault Hunters skill try - why would you want that? That spells the main problem with the game. There is zero opportunity cost in any of your decisions. Zero variety of any 'builds' for your cult, followers, or combat style across the whole game. Followers are disposable since there's always more of them, the individual 'traits' they each get are laughable at best, the amount of days that pass mean absolutely nothing (it would be cool if enemies got tougher the longer time went on, in order to force you to budget your time and weigh risks etc, ala XCOM), weapon and curse variety is god-awful. And if you make the claim that combat is only a 'small' part of a game that's meant to be a cult management sim, then I ask: why are both parts of the game just as shallow as each other? All bosses, and minibosses, save for perhaps the boss of the third area, are ridiculously easy (including the final boss sadly) This unfortunately means once you've beaten the game...that's it. You've...beaten the game. And a second playthrough would be just that - doing everything a second time, the exact same way. No post-game, no new game+, nothing. My theory is this game will quickly go from 'Very positive' - as it is now - to either Mostly, or even mixed, as time goes on and more people begin to finish the game and realise there's nothing more to it. That doesn't even mention the bugs. For a title like this, the amount of game-breaking bugs this game somehow has is insane, insta-fail quests, invisible and invulnerable summoned enemies bricking my crusades, constant micro-stuttering in dungeons, enemies in cocoons that refuse to come out for 5+ minutes and more - are all things I experienced in my short time with the game, and other people have had far worse things including several ways of getting softlocked and completely bricking your save. That's of course not to say the game is terrible - it's absolutely not. I had my fun with it, and the soundtrack, visuals, and dialogue were all very good. But after finishing the game in just 17 hours, that means that for the price I paid (£19.49), that equals out to less than an hour of playtime per £1 spent - does that seem worth it to you? Think of the amount of hours you can squeeze out of Issac, or Hades. I feel like this game needs a big overhaul to justify its price tag, and perhaps some DLC for post-game content. Which I really believe can be done, this game has a brilliant base to build on, but there's just no meat on the bones yet, for lack of a better term. I really do hope I can come back in the future and change this review to a positive one, but for right now I just can't recommend this.Show moreShow less
17 hours at review1,723 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
Pros: + Responsive roguelite adventure game, with base building that is interesting (despite having some flaws). Your character's ability to dodge cancel is a godsend, and every swing of your sword or shot of a curse feels weighty. + One of the most well crafted and executed visual styles in an indie game I've played to date. The game weaves a mix of cartoonish cutesy and eldritch horror in everything - the scenary, characters, and monsters especially. You can't help but smile at everyone's expressive reactions, or the cute way they 'talk'. Also, Cult of the Lamb's Interface design, and overall design style, is sharp and responsive as well, with no fat whatsoever. + Some pretty solid writing and world building, between the five brothers and the gods they have become. Crows will convey some deeper details if you're curious for them, and creatures of all walks of life and sizes will talk about your journey. + Solid music that leaves an impression and changes depending on the stage. I loved the base theme, in particular, which had a nice carefree vibe that paired well with the vibe of cutesy animals working hard or doing horrible things. + Customization and base building are HUGE focuses that are very fun to involve yourself in. Your cult's name, your follower's names and forms, the way they interact with each other - you have a great degree of control over these things, and it can be fun to mess with this for quite awhile. + There are multiple difficulty options to choose from, making the game very accessible. On normal, I clocked a solid playtime of around 22 hours. I could easily see most people hitting a playtime of 16-20, with more or less depending on your preference on the game. Cons: - Core Flaws: The game is the definition of "so close". So many of its systems (weapons, curses, cloaks, abilities, cultist perks, base building, rerun mechanics, Tarot cards) are wonderful takes on the roguelite genre that, unfortunately, are only scratching the surface of their true potential. For example, the game is plagued by the "the right choice" problem, whether its combat (where the gold cloak is objectively the best choice when compared with useless alternatives) or upgrades (Ritual of Resurrection vs Funeral, one of many bad choices). Another example is that often many of the rewards feel pointless or lackluster, including many of the Tarot cards (poison immunity when poison is so infrequent, heart upgrades that feel meaningless, etc). ANOTHER example is that base building has weird uneven terrain, or that you cannot extend your flooring to the edges of the map. And finally, perhaps the worst example -- rerunning levels is limited to only 3 runs, and has no real point of replaying them because inevitably your runs will largely look the same. You'll start to see more cracks in the game the more you play, until, inevitably, you will think "Ah, that sucks that it isn't deeper. It'd be cool if..." and get lost in thoughts about ideas. It is a crying shame how much of this game could be so much better. - Followers: I love this system, but man, they got to be incredibly annoying to manage, and it really sucked that the design philosophy around them was encouraging the player to see them as disposable. Getting attached to a follower is expensive and outright impossible, whether it's because of old age, being betrayed, or needing to use them as a resource of some kind, particularly if you want to get 100% of all follower unlocks. - Annoying enemy design: Often the only thing that ever hurt me was the smaller enemies that are unpredictable, usually because the dense foliage hid them from my sight. The first stage is still my least favorite to play because the archers and bats can very easily hit you without you even noticing. - A bit buggy: The game is plagued with small, but annoying bugs. Some people apparently get softlocked on tiers of upgrading, or stuck in a room. There is a particularly annoying bug where the game resets your flooring to the first state you ever put down. - Misc: Snail Form is too hard to obtain, and is the only unlock I have left to find. I've run so many full runs and haven't gotten a single snail drop. I'd recommend allowing the fish merchant to sell the object, or alternatively, making them a guaranteed spawn in a certain room. Overall: Cult of the Lamb's visual style is flawless. The gameplay is very fun, and the writing is well crafted and enjoyable. It is a good time well worth every cent I paid for, with a solid ending that tied everything together nicely. If you're looking for a cute, endearing game that will make you laugh and challenge you, please, buy this game! That all being said: Cult of the Lamb it is not a flawless experience. It falls short of becoming the absolute best version of itself. It can learn so much from games in its genre - Enter the Gungeon's diverse selection of upgrades and weapons, Binding of Isaac's meaningful unlocks and gameplay modes, etc. Not every game has to be this way, of course. Cult of the Lamb could exist as it is now and it would still be, at least, a great time. But it's capable of so much more, and I genuinely hope this company commits to nurturing it. I could easily see 20 hours becoming 200+ with the right work being done on it.Show moreShow less
21.5 hours at review1,551 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
I'd choose a middling review if I could. Cult of the Lamb has a lot of promise but fails to deliver on a couple fronts. Here's what I liked: - the soundtrack is excellent - the art style is fun and cute - the idea is good at its core - managing my cult was addictive and kept me up past my bedtime Unfortunately, that's not enough to carry the game. Cult of the Lamb suffers from serious shallowness. The combat is really poorly executed -- targeting and frames feel unreliable. There's also no depth to combat. You are given a random weapon and a random right click cast ability each dungeon run. The only difference between the weapons is their attack rate/animation and damage. You can upgrade weapon damage and special effects as a whole from your cult base, but it doesn't add depth, just numbers. The same is largely true for the curses. Combat movement is all just rolling and attacking, no special moves or attack combos. Enemy mobs aren't very unique. They wind up and slash, spit orbs, jump and land, the usual stuff. I'm about 3/4 of the way through the game and haven't found a particularly innovative or unique boss or mob yet. Every dungeon run feels basically the same, it just lacks any real complexity. As for managing your cult, it's extremely fun at first, but soon becomes a slog. Once you have 10+ cult members you're not going to want to go around blessing each one for faith improvements. It soon becomes apparent that base upgrades aren't actually game-changing or interesting. In fact, many of them just automate tasks that you shouldn't have to do from the start. For example, your cultists can chop wood and mine stone and plant seeds, but they can't harvest crops or clean up their own ♥♥♥♥ unless you build the right t3 building for it. Yes, you need a t3 building just to eliminate the slog of harvesting crops. The other decisions you can make at your cult base are equally bland. Changing your cult doctrines isn't as interesting as it could be -- the doctrines are usually negligible or have one choice that's clearly better than the other. Honestly most of the doctrines haven't changed my game at all. So my followers get a faith bonus when I upgrade their homes -- completely meaningless since their faith is maxed out most of the time anyway from just doing basic upkeep and care. There's no real sense of choice or strategy when building your cult. You can unlock all upgrades, and you will -- quickly. I was almost finished with all the tech trees halfway through the game. You don't really build your cult per se -- it feels pretty on rails. Sure you can choose where you put buildings, but there's not much else by way of agency. Also, the game is stuffed to the gills with decoration bloat. You're supposed to be jazzed to unlock new blueprints but they're all just meaningless decorations that you're not gonna waste much time on anyway. You don't need them, they grant no bonuses, and they just clutter up the base. I would be more interested in customizing and building out an aesthetically pleasing base if I had any real agency over my cult. All told, this game is shallow as it is now. I would recommend buying it at $15 if it goes on sale to that price level. Right now $25 is too steep -- the game just hasn't delivered on its idea in-depth. The game could benefit from the devs revisiting combat to make it more complex and challenging, or to give it some additional strategic depth and uniqueness between crusades. As for the cult management, certain processes should probably be automated from the start. It would also be nice to see more actual choice in terms of the direction your cult goes in, and the impacts that has on your playstyle. As it stands now, impacts from cult choices are minimal to nonexistent. All told, I'd give the game a 6/10 right now. The first several hours are addictive as hell, but you'll soon find yourself getting bored and a little sick of picking crops and cleaning up ♥♥♥♥.Show moreShow less
10.1 hours at review893 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
The s*x update came out and it's wildShow moreShow less
1 hours at review1,527 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
Completed in 11 hours on Medium with all boss no hit achievements. Cons: -Economy is broken (fishing) and (selling food) -Cult mechanics are shallow and almost serve no purpose (statue upgrades) -Abusing sacrifice speedruns the game, showing the cracks in concept due to a rather poorly made roguelite system. -Roguelite elements are lacking and game has absolutely zero replay value. -Game is too easy and harder difficulties are uninspired (higher enemy hp and lower player hp) , also difficulty changes are unclear. -Food is useless, i fed the cult grass for 50 days with no drawbacks. -Final boss is a joke and I'd confidently say most attacks on other bosses and or mechanics are more difficult, i first tried it with only 2 hits taken. -Dead Cells like weapon system runs the game into the ground, every run is identical and tarot cards are either basic or are really bad (ex: 1.25x damage) (ex:Bomb drops upon roll every 10 sec) - Too many useless or unnecessary statue upgrades - Introduction to "upgraded" materials is unnecessary and adds nothing besides grind - If you wish to help build with your 12 other guys on a project, gtfo becaus the prompt doesn't appear - Hideously bad building system with controller controls seemingly swooped onto PC (if it wasn't obvious with the Controller Recommended prompt at start of game, thanks devs), placement is super floaty and does not stick to a specific tile, BUT UPGRADES DO LOL. - Winning the game goes something like: Sermon, Sacrifice (repeat 10-20x) max level upgrades and kill everything in seconds (including bosses), while this removes the boring tasks, there really is no more depth to this game, the cult does not have a purpose other than being a swap for upgrading your stats and gear through for example enemy or boss drops, etc. (classic perma upgrades) - Cult members are too replacable, any sort of connection with your cult is severed with this. - Real talk, if the game didn't look like this, it'd be an utter failure, as the soundtrack and visuals made this game a rather good experience, I can't imagine I would enjoy it if it didn't have a fantastic art direction as this. - Weapon aiming is done both with keyboard and mouse cursor direction (WTF?), you'll have tons of moments where you click on an enemy, preemptively already hold A to dodge in said direction, but your character will have diarrhea and spasm frantically left and right 100 times a second, whiffing your slash to the left and getting yourself hit, BRAVO VINCE (option to disable keyboard targeting would be great, thanks) - Golden Fleece which gives +10% damage on kill (infinite scaling) but take double damage is exteremely overpowered due to enemies generally being too easy to fight, I did an extended run with 2 back to back runs (this is a feature in-game allowing consecutive runs without leaving) and eventually had +1350% damage on every hit, one shotting even bosses. Although most you'll get in a normal run is 400%, which is still too much if you manage to do it. - Heretic Heart perma upgrades are shallow and when I viewed them felt like afterthoughts, especially a recall to base one being locked behind a singular boss (again, why?) - Some fleeces are too underpowered and others overpowered. - Fishing loot increase ritual seems to be bugged, says double rewards but actually becomes quadruple and sometimes even quintuple. - Comically long about 12 second animation when picking up a decoration that's unskippable showing where it is in the menu (again, wtf?). Problematic due to there being about a hundred or so of these (rip speedrunners) - Plot of land you own is kind of uneven and a lot of things end up non-symmetrical and is aggravating. - No way to send back followers who have bad traits - Speaking of bad traits (or good ones), nobody cares and this is a very underdeveloped concept because all your cult members die to old age rather quickly, again deepening the wound of replacable cultists and feeling disconnected from them in general. - For a game with a magnificent artstyle the Knucklebones screen left a lot to be desired. - Some weapons and some curses are beyond awful, resulting in picking the same items everytime because usually there's also the opposite effect, weapons that are always really good. - Artificial nuisance created by locking basic things such as "cleaning up after your own feces" behind nearly mid-game statue upgrades - Most upgrades simply automating things you had to do manually before, adding no depth to the game and simply pushing you faster towards maxing out crown and afterwards having no use for them entirely, ended with 500+ stones and lumber for no reason, effectively wasting my time! - Weapons have barely any variety besides attack rate and damage, only exception being the heavy hammer which attacks in an AoE - Teleporter audio bug occasionally causes the audio to loudly loop infinitely till full game restart, since reloading save has it occur again. - Faith sometimes simply does not increase due to some reason. - Faith increase shown (before and after on for example ritual screen) is misaligned and does not reflect true stats. - Same with food, screen is incorrect sometimes and occasionally the bar does not fill up and resources are wasted. - Bug when opening a new area to be permanently stuck on the crown light up animation. (reload fixes) Pros: Game looks good. Combat feels perfect, minus mentioned cons. Soundtrack is great and sound design is outstanding. Characters are nice and strike a decent balance between goofy and somewhat serious. All pros I have are fundamental game mechanics, delve into any more deeper and you start to see a meriad of problems that all scream painful missed potential, if this game had another 6 months in the oven with heavy focus on quality of life and a way to make cult interactions more meaningful, the entire cult system turns quickly into a checklist and speedrun for max crown upgrades for the strongest weapons. FINAL NOTE: I do not hate the game, words may be harsh but I do not mean them in a hateful manner, these are written in frustration due to seeing the impressive and unimaginable potential in this new mix of genres, but never reached that for me. Thank you developers for the game and risk you took regardless of result!Show moreShow less
11.4 hours at review855 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
This game made me realize that the place where my parents left me at age of 10 was in fact not a summer camp.Show moreShow less
0.8 hours at review1,119 people found this helpful
Received for free
Not recommendedSteam player
Short version: "this game understands that Binding of Isaac did some good things, but not why it did them." I played the game right through to the end. Took me about 15 hours. It has two halves, the city building simulator half where you construct stuff for your cult and the roguelite dungeon crawler where you fight through the lands of the corrupt Old Faith. I would say the majority of the time I spent in this game was spent in the city builder half, simply because that's actually the part of the game that has the most negative consequences for failure; you actually need your cultists healthy and happy to level up your character. Once you get to a certain level of power - and it comes surprisingly quickly - the dungeon runs become trivial, but your cultists WILL starve or poop themselves to death if you leave them alone for too long. This counter-intuitively disincentivises you from exploring too much. Basically, a lot of things in the cult settlement aren't automated that should be. For instance, followers can plant, water and fertilize crops after a few upgrades, but they can't harvest them until much later, and they can NEVER cook meals for themselves. Even once you get the upgrades, they'll plant seeds that you give them, but they'll never put seeds they retrieve after a harvest back into the seed bank; you have to do that yourself. You can build them outhouses so they don't stink the place up pooping in the bushes, but they'll never clean out the outhouses and transport the poop to the fertilizer silo. You always have to do that yourself. The city-building is both very labour intensive but also very shallow. I feel like I'm doing a lot of busywork, collecting things and putting things in places in a way that should be automated. I'm leading a cult, for gods' sake, can't I just tell a follower to cook me a meal? The settlement half's need for constant attention seems to clash with the dungeon crawling half. It's quite telling that one of the abilities you unlock quite early in the game is the ability to just teleport home while out dungeon crawling to deal with settlement crises. But the dungeon crawling half is where things get... really weird. Comparisons with Binding of Isaac are very warranted, because the game is notable both in what it copies and what it doesn't copy, and how that changes the experience. The game straight-up lifts Binding of Isaac's red/blue/black hearts system with essentially no change whatsoever. Red hearts leave empty containers when depleted, blue hearts vanish, and black hearts vanish after doing damage to everything in the room. Binding of Isaac had a maddeningly specific meta as to which type of heart was more useful in a given situation, and learning it was a key part of skill progression. In Cult of the Lamb you always play the character and there essentially aren't any passive items, so there's almost no meta. The only thing that differentiates the hearts at all is that black hearts deal damage when you lose them. Since there are no equivalent to Devil Deals and there doesn't seem to be much consequence to losing red hearts, there's no longer a meaningful distinction between them. Blue hearts drop just about as often as red hearts do. They still go "in front" of red hearts, but that doesn't seem to mean anything anymore. The core gameplay IS a bit different to Binding of Isaac - your attacks are melee, and you can dodge roll. Enemy attacks are telegraphed, although how well varies by enemy. Your weapons go dagger, sword, claw, axe and hammer, each being slower but more damaging than the last. There are various spells that give you ranged options, or a more damaging melee attack. You start with a small selection, but can unlock more through progressing your settlement, and you can also raise the level of the weapons you are randomly assigned at the start of a run. This random assignment is another issue. If you get a hammer but don't like the way the hammer works? Tough, either go home and start the run again, or deal with it. I don't like this at all. This is a bad application of RNG. This is another thing that CotL has lifted from BoI and tried to apply without actually understanding what it did or why: Binding of Isaac had random item drops on non-random characters. You always chose your character and this to some degree determined their playstyle. You generally knew roughly what you wanted to be doing when you chose a specific character - what sort of items you wanted to pick up or not, what tarot cards you'd use or not use, how exactly you'd approach fighting, etc. When I start the game in Cult of the Lamb and it offers me either a dagger (very fast attacks but pitiful damage and a lower attack range than other weapons) or the hammer (crushing AoE attacks but with a massive attack delay) I just want to restart the run. What's maddening is that at the very end of the game, just before the final boss, it offers you a much larger array of possible weapons to choose from, almost as if the devs KNEW that the random weapon assignment was going to mess with players. The dungeons themselves are *very* small and *very* linear - usually small clusters of 9-10 rooms, separated from each other by a map screen that sometimes offers you single-room set pieces instead of a dungeon layer. Overall, the dungeon crawling feels very shallow in comparison to BoI which it's clearly trying to emulate. What's frustrating is that despite this, the dungeon crawling is the only part of the game that doesn't feel almost calculated to waste your time. As previously mentioned, other than its weapons and spells, the game has no random item drops, so you don't really have the fun of making incredibly weird or broken builds like in Binding of Isaac. There is a tarot card system that gives you passive buffs, but most of the tarot cards are locked at the start of the game. To unlock them, you have to build up your settlement and do quests for various NPCs you find in the wilderness or in other nearby settlements. There's a variety of minigames and quests associated with this. These sidequests and minigames are usually not bad on their own, but they split your attention even more ways between the city building and dungeon crawling. Every time you pick up a blueprint or tarot card, there is a LONG animation sequence - at least 5 to 10 seconds. Remember how in Starfox Adventures, there was that 17-second long, unskippable animation and fanfare whenever you picked up an item? It's like that. Acquiring Devotion from the shrine at the centre of your settlement requires you to hold down a mouse button or key on your keyboard for anywhere up to 30 seconds. I can't envision a situation in which I'd EVER want to NOT take all the devotion at once. It doesn't decay once you hold it. There's also certain situations where when you're depositing or withdrawing items from a building, you can't even hold down a button: you have to click it repeatedly. All in all, the game is a shallow, frustratingly labour-intensive city builder that actively gets in the way of the shallow, frustratingly random dungeon crawler, painted over with some truly excellent writing and graphic design and some passable music and sound design. I don't think it's impossible to merge city building with roguelite dungeon crawling, I just don't think this game did it elegantly. I enjoyed this game a little bit, but not enough to justify what I paid for it. 5/10, must do better.Show moreShow less
15.5 hours at review558 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
Didnt have enough food for a bit Convinced followers they were fasting 10/10 gameShow moreShow less
2.8 hours at review1,067 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
A novel fusion-genre game with outstanding style, which is ultimately held back by lack of depth and replayability. I will begin by saying that the presentation of this game is phenomenal. The music, artstyle, and overall concept behind it stand out as the high note of my time with it. If that's all you care about in a game, then it might be worth it for you. At the beginning of the game, the dual Roguelite/Base Builder concept is quite novel. You have a small cult at first, but as you venture deeper into the dungeons you can bring back more followers and resources to grow stronger. You gain new perks and abilities that help your character venture deeper. That gameplay loop worked really well for me in the first 5 or 6 hours. I actually couldn't put the game down. But after that point, when I'd beaten the first dungeon area and had a base of 10 or so followers, the tedium began to set in. On the surface, the amount of upgrades and skill trees that you have seems deep and engaging. But when you really break it down, for the most part everything for your character is just a passive upgrade you have no control over. For your base, the essential buildings have been created in those first few hours and most things afterwards are aimed a bit more at efficiency and automation. That would theoretically make you have more time to spend in the dungeons, right? Well, yes...but not really. Turns out you just don't have enough automation to actually leave your followers unsupervised for long. Maybe in the hyper late game you do, but until that point you still have to return to base to manage waste, crops, fishing, rebuilding buildings, and so on. Many of the upgrades that help you do do these things are lower priority than resource generation or making your character stronger. so they have to be sidelined. Collecting devotion, holding sermons, performing rituals, none of these can be automated and so you are forced after every dungeon run to essentially click through a checklist of stuff before you can get back out there. It's especially frustrating if you die during a run, you want to jump back in immediately but instead have to spend the day managing your followers. This is to say nothing of how, once you reach around that 10+ follower mark, their unique passives start to feel meaningless and managing them to optimize their traits stops being a good use of your time. This is made worse when followers never seem to stay assigned to one job and constantly hop between different tasks. At the end of the day everyone feels like the same, generic cultist. Maybe this is some clever meta narrative by the devs but it certainly doesn't make for engaging gameplay. Then when we take a look at the dungeons, a similar tedium applies. The upgrades that you unlock from worship are almost totally passive buffs that increase damage or give more types of weapons. Most of the upgrades that you get during the runs are simple passives that you forget about and don't fundamentally change the moment to moment gameplay. There are only 5 unique weapon types, and most of the curse spells, even though there are lots of them, perform similarly. There is very little variation run to run, which should be drawing point of roguelikes. The gameplay itself is not interesting or innovative enough compared to other recent Roguelite games to hold my attention. It mostly amounts to swinging your weapon at the right time and sometimes dodging. Most enemies do not have unique gimmicks or attack patterns; for the most part everything runs at you to hit you in melee, or launches a few projectiles at you. Once you get the hang of the combat and have the appropriate upgrades, it also gets easy pretty quickly. As I progress through a game, I shouldn't have to turn the difficulty setting up to continue to feel challenged. Overall, I'd say this game could be worth it for you if you can go in with the understanding that you may only get 6-8 hours of enjoyment out of it. If you are not happy with that amount of content for a $25 pricetag, I would say either wait for a generous sale or skip this one.Show moreShow less
11 hours at review389 people found this helpful
Source: original Steam user reviews. Helpful votes are an archived snapshot, not live data. Last collected: 08/14/2026.