Cult of the Lamb is the one of the few games where I managed to get 100% of all the Steam Achievements. I bought it a while before the official release of the Woolhaven DLC and I can see how the game got its cult following. I mean, it convinced me to get the DLC a mere few days after release. So, what does the Ram think of the Lamb?

The Ups

The gameplay loop

The gameplay is very easy to grasp. Your cult always exists and you have to ensure its wellbeing even when you are not looking. Keep people alive and happy while you are busy fishing, gambling or accelerating depopulation of creatures with different beliefs. That said, while the rules are easy, making sure they are followed is not always the case. Woolhaven also adds the “Winter” mechanic, which adds even more depth to the game, substantially increasing the challenge.

RNG on crusades feels rewarding instead of punishing

My greatest curse when it comes to gaming is that my luck is abysmally terrible. If RNG can screw me over, it by all means will and it’s frustrating as hell. Luckily, COTL, at least in terms of the crusades, does not feel this way. Enemies are not the definition of “random bullshit go” and upgrades you get are a slight improvement at worst. Even corrupted cards have a buff and a debuff and in a vast majority of cases you may pick a regular card instead if the debuff is too bad for your build. On top of that, if you get a good run, you can easily one-shot the regional bosses, which makes getting the “No hit” achievements easy to get even if you have bad reaction time.

I don’t have a controller, which is why I was a bit worried that the game might be much more difficult without it. I have tried some games which are also meant to be played with a controller and the experience ranged from annoying, but manageable to hard enough to make me lose interest in the game overall. Luckily, COTL was not the case. There are some small side effects of using a keyboard-mouse setup, especially when aiming charged shots, but the issue is generally neglegible.

The soundtrack

River Boy (RIP) and the rest of the team did a magnificient job. The soundtrack fits together very nicely and follows a given style, while simultaneously packing action when action is needed and feeling relaxing everywhere else. I personally really like Frozen Over from the Woolhaven DLC.

The art

Cute, fluffy, pettable. Even things that either could or are attempting to kill me. Generally speaking, everything looks pretty and vibrant. I like how after the respective regions’ bishop is defeated, the background terrain undergoes great changes, signifying the loss of authority and devolvement into chaos. Also you can see titbits of environmental storytelling here and there, that pertain to the game’s general lore, for example that giant skull in the Spore Grotto belonging to one of the First Gods.

The Mids

Follower forms

Most of them look great. But I decided to put this in the mids section because of a few… specimens… that just look cursed as hell. You probably know which ones I am talking about. Most of them are birds (Pelican, Kiwi, Crow etc) although there are exceptions (like the Leech or Mole Rat). The reason they look cursed is because the developers decided to keep the default mouth while including another in the base design. I know a default mouth can be removed, because they did it with the Poggers follower form. So why not the others?

Useful features locked behind the DLC

The Work Tent, The Medic Station and The Carpentry Station are buildings I wish were in the base game. Oh my lamb, are those things useful sometimes. Being able to keep your cult going for longer by making a crop-to-meal pipeline has made me less worried about having to prematurely end my crusade in order to tend to my followers.

Flockade

Remember when I said that my luck is terrible when it comes to RNG? Flockade showed that pretty well. I like the general idea being essentially turn-based Rock-Paper-Scissors with unique modifiers. It requires some tactical thinking and planning ahead, which is really nice. But this whole tactical thinking quickly goes down the drain, because RNG hates me. Oh, the opponent placed a Shield (rock) on the last spot on the grid? Surely the game will give me a Scribe (paper)? SIKE, all Swords (scissors). And the interesting thing is that most of my lost encounters were not even against the highest difficulty opponent, that being Sariel. Those were actually against Chazaq, the second highest. This is genuinely some kind of Divine Comedy, because out of all the Woolhaven characters, this one I hate the most. Mostly because he reminds me of

The Downs

Crusades are capped at 3

Hello John Massive Monster why are you capping the crusades at 3 I want to go on a very long crusade and see how fast I can delete the bosses after I spend 5 hours collecting upgrades and I want to reach a point where I do so much damage I overflow the integer storing the current damage and end up doing negative damage to the boss (or very small damage assuming you are smart and used an unsigned int). And I will not take the “you will exhaust the list of tarot cards” for an answer, you can always just replenish them.

But in all seriousness, I do sometimes have a nice run and my cult is doing fine. This is the moment where I want to continue to get more resources. Another example is when I wanted to get all the optional lore, I needed to find a very specific room, which does not always spawn. Being able to continue generating the map past 3 would have made my searching a bit easier, especially if I got The Reaching Tree card.

Offerings to Midas are also capped

That mechanic where you could give a follower to Midas to convert into a golden statue has proven extremely useful when it comes to disposing of spies. Which is a shame that it’s capped at 4 and the only reward you get are Holy Talisman fragments. Which are good, don’t get me wrong, but I wish I could make more statues. Technically there is this totem where you can release souls, but this requires first disposing of a follower normally, which is an extra step. I wish one could do the same thing, but directly to the follower and I think Midas’ Cave could work with this. That or the Fox.

Actually, now that I think about it, I hate everything about Midas! Please John Massive Monster, give me more ways to torture Midas and my life is yours.

Final thoughts

Another great game to my collection. I have a feeling that the developers might add more content in the future, given the conversation with the Mystic Seller after defeating the final boss of Woolhaven DLC, about what might emerge if we tear open the world. I personally would like to see more development on the First Gods, given what we already get from the Fanatic. Also that red crown boat you can see on the right part of the frozen Pilgrim’s Passage, near the Easter Egg collectible. I hope that gets some kind of development. New areas perhaps? Another thing that springs to mind when I think of COTL is how exactly do the voicelines for characters get recorded? Do they actually come up with a fake language or do they just tell the voice actors “Hey, say something completely random”. I bet on the former though. Anyway, maah-gnificient game. All Hail Lambert.