Cult of the Lamb is a cute game about building, maintaining, and running a cult in order to overthrow the four Bishops controlling the Old Faith. But is there such a thing as a good cult…?
You play as The Lamb, about to be put to death by the four Bishops. They’ve eliminated all of your kind to prevent a prophecy of “The One Who Waits” returning. With your sacrifice, the prophecy will be impossible to fulfill.
As soon as the blade lands, you wake up in a strange land, in front of The One Who Waits. He’s imprisoned by four chains. He says that the Bishops, in trying to keep you from him, ended up sending you directly to him. He claims that he will grant you life again if you would start a cult in his name. Your choice is either “yes” or “absolutely.” No middle ground option, I see.
He gives you his Red Crown, which revives you and grants you the power to command the loyalty of your followers and strike fear into the hearts of your enemies. You awaken at the sacrificial grounds, renewed with life, and fight your way out, taking out some of the Bishop’s cultists along the way.
On your way out, you run into Ratau, a former vessel of The One Who Waits. He was instructed to help you with starting your cult. He will pop in and give you advice and guidance from time to time.
He also instructs you to save a poor soul about to be sacrificed. The grateful sacrifice will be your very first convert.
From here, you learn how to build your own cult grounds. It takes some work! You can’t just leave your cult members to their own devices; you need to check in on them, provide food and shelter, task them with jobs, and overall just ensure they’re happy and loyal so they continue to praise and worship you.
The more loyalty they have, the more power you build and the larger you can build your cult. Placing a shrine in the middle of your cult grounds will give your followers a place to pray and grant devotion, a sort of currency that you can use to upgrade various aspects of your cult.
You will also need to build a temple in order to give sermons, enriching your followers and also collecting more devotion from them.
Cultists can be tasked with collecting resources, which are needed to build up your cult grounds. But you also need money and more followers, both of which can be obtained by fighting your way through the lands of the Old Faith.
You ultimately need to end the lives of the four Bishops in order to release your imprisoned leader, so working your way through each of their lands is your overall goal. But it takes time to build up a cult and gain power, so you will slowly work your way up to each Bishop. As you gain more followers, each of the four lands will open up so you can travel through them for resources, money, followers, and power.
Good luck in building a faithful following! And remember:
Great game, really nice visuals and nice (very trippy) soundtrack. I tried to be a “good” cult leader, trying to ressurect everybody that “died” (most got sacrificed before they could die of old age), but some people should stay dead. And mourning and sadness is just another reason to put everybody on shrooms again
Fun fact: at least in the Catholic Church, “cult” is a neutral word that basically means “popular following”. In the Church, it’s mostly used to refer to particular devotions or holy people that catch on in local communities and spread to a wider area, which the Church may look into for official " approval" for anyone to participate in or promote worldwide, or as a beginning sign that a holy person may become a saint. Even if the Church doesn’t officially canonize a person a saint, they may still say the person has a “cult” in a particular area.
EDIT: meant to post in reply to the OP, not the above comment, sorry about that.