Cult of The Lamb Review (Nintendo Switch)
Cult of The Lamb Review (Nintendo Switch)
Cult of The Lamb is a mash up between genres including rogue-lite, dungeon crawler and management sim. As a lamb you were sacrificed before becoming a sheep and upon death you meet “the one who waits” in limbo. You are given a second chance to cheat death and come back by taking this demonic deal which requires you to defeat four bishops in four different biomes.
It’s impossible not to see the obvious juxtaposition with the art style and the gameplay. One is a family friendly bright, cheery characters and the other is about murdering cute wildlife, converting others to your cult and sacrificing everything else in between. Here is our review of Cult of the Lamb on Nintendo Switch.
Caretaker of the Lamb
Heading into the game, my assumption was that it was going to be a pretty even balance between the rogue and the management aspect, but instead Cult of the Lamb leans much more into cult management. This isn’t a bad thing, as the cult management is fun, original and well laid out with milestones constantly guiding you. Early on when your cult is smaller, the balance of time is fairly even, but the bigger your cult gets, the more attention it requires and by the end of the game it occupies much more of your time.
The reason the management aspect works so well is because at any time you can give yourself a break and go raiding dungeons. Not feeling up for some combat, try a game of knucklebones instead, the original and addicting dice mini game or go fishing.
Surprisingly, this was enjoyable coming from someone who isn’t the biggest fan of management sims, but there is some secret sauce or it could be your duties as a cult leader are so original and offer many different avenues of how you would like to approach your cult. You don’t have to sacrifice followers, you can re educate them, you don’t have to feed them gruel, you can cook them nice meals, you don’t have to make them work through the night. There are many different ways to approach your job as leader of the cult.
Take Me To Your Leader
Back to your list of duties as Cult leader. There are three basic pillars to keeping your cult happy. Hunger, Faith and Cleanliness and Cult of The Lamb will have you constantly spinning these plates to keep everyone happy.
You will need gather and farm food to make sure you have enough ingredients to feed your followers. After learning a few basic recipes, you will need to expand your repertoire to cook meals with better benefits that require better ingredients.
After that you need to keep everyones faith level up, which can be affected a number of ways including dying in the dungeons as they will then doubt you are the chosen one. To keep faith up you need to give sermons and do rituals like dance around the fire which cost resources.
Finally, its important to keep a clean camp, because things like dead bodies, excrement, and vomit are just a few things that will lead to a dirty camp which will then cause you more problems that will.
Diet Rogue Lite Zero
As for the rogue-lite parts of the game, you explore dungeons to increase your resources to expand your cult, which in turn makes you stronger for future runs. The different biomes, procedurally generated rooms, and the game letting you decide your path in a Slay The Spire style roadmap all add in to a rogue-lite that doesn’t feel like much like a rogue-lite. The underlying theme for the genre is constantly treading water and feeling sometimes like no progress is being made. Most runs average around 10-15 minutes, which is refreshing compared to some recent genre entries that have runs well over the hour marker.
It wouldn’t be fair if we didn’t talk about the gorgeous art direction Cult of the Lamb has. From the obvious overall art style to the attention to detail with things like how your cult members eyes now have flames reflecting in their eyes when praying for you after you upgrade to a burning shrine. These little details are everywhere in the game.
Cult of the Lamb not only looks gorgeous but it sounds amazing too. The sound of each biome feels distinct, the soundtrack, the garbled sound NPC’s make and the dopamine cues you get when a new chest gets opened or a new page gets added to your cult book are pitch perfect across the board.
Nintendo Switch Issues
As for specific Nintendo Switch issues, there are a few areas of concern. Cult of the Lamb tries to maintain 30 FPS compared to the 60 FPS that everywhere else is getting. I say trying to maintain because despite the art style not appearing to be too complex to run, frame stutters do happen from time to time when the action gets going.
The major issue for me, using a OLED Switch was that when playing docked and using a Nintendo Switch Pro Controller, the controls felt clunky and unresponsive, as if the game was suffering from input lag. This is not an issue I have had before or expected to have, if anything, its usually the other way around on the Swtich as performance tends to be better when docked. I have played fast twitch games when docked including Hades, Hollow Knight and Celeste with no issues. Oddly enough, when playing in handheld, the controls felt much more responsive.
Cult of the Lamb comes to a complete stand still for a few seconds when the changeover of days happen but it never crashed at that point. However, the game did crash three times during my 76 days as cult leader. Twice near the bosses which obviously has a lot happening on screen and once back at camp. The worst part about the crashes is that you lose all progress, which is demoralizing but could be alleviated with a quick save system
I Got 99 Problems But A Cult Ain’t One
Outside of the performance issues on the Switch, there are a few minor gameplay gripes. Some biomes can be a little too busy at times to the point of obstructing your view, especially when playing on handheld. Tall grass and rocks that you can interact with combined with the exterior foliage that sometimes doesn’t become transparent can cause issues trying to understand where you are, where you can move and where enemies are. This is amplified by the occasional choppy frame rate.
When heading out to explore dungeons, your first room with always have a curse and a weapon but there is only one of each and few areas to change during your raiding. There have been many rogues over the past few years that have managed this a little better by providing more options allowing you to approach the game as you choose. To my knowledge, there was no upgrade to offer more choices at the beginning.
Back at camp there are some gripes as well. It would be nice if there was a bit more clarity overall. When assigning a cult member to a task and selecting from the list, it doesn’t tell you which member is doing what and this can lead to you removing a member from another job. When building new items for your camp it would be nice to know if it required resources to operate and what kind. After constructing four propaganda speakers, the realization happened that they require gold bars to operate which are the highest form of gold.
The biggest clarity issues is when creating a new doctrine. There are five categories to select from that give you a general idea of what you are about to do including labour or faith but after selecting, you are locked in with no going back. After selecting your category, two doctrine options are provided and you are forced into making one of those choices. Considering how long it takes to earn the necessary means for a new doctrine, this feels sometimes counter intuitive to the way you can customize your cult.
Camp or Prison
Cult of the Lamb is a blend of genres but surprisingly doesn’t feel like any of them. It feels like its own product. Managing your cult never feels like a chore and you are welcome to leave to explore dungeons at any time you wish. Exploring these dungeons never feels much like a rogue lite either, as you are always moving in the right direction and lose minimal resources upon death.
Cult of the Lamb has a very addictive quality and is very hard to put down as there is always one more little job that requires your attention either back at camp or out in the dungeons. Switch performance is rough and is by far the worst place to play but is serviceable. There is a great game underneath these issues and hopefully with a few patches and updates, we will be able to see the game that Massive Monster envisioned.