Cult of the Lamb: I am happy to sacrifice my time for this lamb!

Sheep were my favorite animals as a kid and I had a stuffed animal collection with the little fluffy things that could have filled a box. I liked them back then because they’re fluffy, soft, and cute, and they don’t muddy the waters – but Devolver and Massive Monster pretty much destroy that image and I’m really looking forward to that.

Now I’m finally grown up and when things get a little more mysterious or morbid in games or series, the Gothic enthusiasm in me immediately screams: yes please! What could be more perfect than a mix of creepy gothic lamb and cuddly furry ball with huge eyes?

So the upcoming action genre mix Cult of the Lamb demo was a must-read for me, and one with a uniquely compelling style. You just can’t help but voluntarily submit to the virtual sect.

From sacrificial lamb to artificial lamb

The backgrounds full of deep color contrasts between blood red, dark purple and lush meadow green simply look extremely high-quality and as if they were handmade with love. Then there are also atmospheric lighting effects that play with light and dark, brightly colored cult trailers in the form of rescued cartoon animals and the option of painting the animal subjects as brightly colored as you wish. And there weren’t even all the design options in the demo.

Since Cult… cheerfully mixes the genre of the roguelike dungeon crawler with a kind of development and management game in which you build a small cult headquarters with the materials from the dungeon fights, I’m very curious whether there will still be individual decorations for your own cult site becomes.

After the short demo, I can’t say whether the game will benefit from the genre mix in the long term and whether the fast action battles, which initially only consist of hitting and rolling around, are complex and captivating enough to keep me in the game . But Alex is already playing a longer preview version and will be able to say more about it shortly.

The visuals are right, but what about the humor?

The only thing I’ve liked so far is a little more self-irony and the courage to use macabre humor. I mean: The scenario revolves around an ex-sacrificial lamb who starts a cult of his own with other animals. That would have great trash potential. In contrast to the cute look and the weird scenery, I still missed the humor in the text and story a bit – the dialogues have been quite good and surprisingly serious so far.

But maybe that’s the actual concept and the sheep cult isn’t supposed to be humorous at all, but is a deadly serious matter? But that would be a real pity with this perfectly slanted framing.

So for all the love for the design, the whole thing could do with a little more grim fandango and a little less “cult site tycoon” in terms of mood with a splash of inscryption (sorry, just wanted a better comparison as of the Friday I wrote this not in my brain).

Of course, I can only say more precisely how the setting and humor will develop when the finished Cult of the Lamb is released on August 10th. But I already know that I just can’t get enough of the colorful little pigs, foxes or donkeys who, in their free time, perform blood sacrifices in such a lovingly morbid comic world.

Only one thought has been bugging me since I fell in love with this game design. My sheep stuffed animal collection may have long since been dissolved, but still, Devolver: who or what do I have to sacrifice to the game devil in order to get the eponymous protagonist sheep as a stuffed animal?