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[Robsoie]

They probably got access to humanity's internet.
I knew Twitter was a mistake.

[King Zultan]

Oh shit everybody delete your internet history before the aliens see it!

[nenjin]

Cult of the Lamb.

Newly released, published by Devolver Digital.

It's basically BoI meets the cult management elements of Cultist Simulator.

It's got two parts: one the dungeon crawl, the other the Cult management part.

It doesn't do either section to the 9s (one cannot really compete with the variety of BoI on first release), and the Cult Management part by and large takes the form of building a few buildings, upgrading a tech tree, and a lot of daily busy work like farming, cleaning up poop, giving sermons, claiming Divine Inspiration from shrines that your cultists power up for you.....

That said, it's hella addictive. The *pacing* is all there. The busy work is busy work but it's about as quick as something like farming can be. The combat in the dungeon is snappy and responsive with a good amount of crunch and screen shake to keep it exciting. There's not the depth of transformative elements like BoI but it's a solid framework for more to be added. And the fact the game operates on a day/cycle means you're always measuring the seconds, moving through a dungeon as fast as possible to get back to your cult, maximizing efficiency while you're at your base so you can leave them it in a good place, so you can go on another dungeon run....good stuff.

There's lots of flavorful cult management features too, like dissidents you have to deal with, burial, brainwashing, cannibalism, rituals....all the stuff you want out of a game about a cult.

I basically haven't stopped playing it since I installed it. One downside is that the tech tree for the cultists buildings, cult attributes (called Commandments) and your own character's tech tree are completed long before you've even cleared the initial 4 bosses and their regions. So that's a little disappointing, but understandable in a game where you're constantly amassing upgrade resources on a daily basis, and the game doesn't FORCE you to seek out the dungeon every day. So if you want to just sit around your base and manage and build things, you're still progressing. But do too much of that and you'll find there's not much left to advance while you still have a lot of the dungeon gameplay to look forward to.

Anyways, I think the price is ok for what you're getting at $25. It's a rock solid base of a game that's enjoyable right out of the box, and they're talking free DLC updates which is promising for the future. Right now the game just needs MOAR, but what it has is already quite excellent. The style of the game is cute/evil with pretty nice animations and a quirky, enjoyable soundtrack.

[Niveras]

One thing I always felt missing from those "village simulators with combat" is a means to engage with the combat system without having to do so directly, necessarily. Basically hiring NPCs to actually do and tank the damage while you're there acting as support (probably activating healing/buff type spells and effects).

Especially in a game like cult of the lamb, you'd think you could train some of your cult to go with you into the dungeons. I think Portia let you hire mercenaries to clear dungeons, unless I'm confusing that with something else entirely.

The question, of course, is how to balance it against simply playing the combat directly. For certain, it should be preferable to actually play though the game element as intended, this alternate path would only be intended for people who aren't so interested in combat elements of the game, without getting completely locked out of resources that can only be found through combat.

[nenjin]

There's a lot features particular to your cult leader (the bad guys like to talk to you when you're in their realm, tarot cards, etc....) that would make it inappropriate to send your cultists in your stead.

That said, you can convert your followers into DEMONS that follow you around like a pet when you're in the dungeons.

But yeah. It's a weird oddity of the game that you have to balance dungeon delves with maintaining your village. Your cult can't seem to maintain the faith or keep shit running without you for more than 2 days, it seems, before real problems start to pop up.

[Aoi]

That reminds me of the Community Center/JojaMart in Stardew Valley...  If you don't like a specific facet of the game,  you can just sidestep it entirely with that most beloved universal resource...  Money.

The problem is that in a lot of games,  it's almost guaranteed to end up worse for you-- I think it was Planetfall where the combat autoresolve was so miserable that I could manually do battles with no losses that had effectively no chance of auto-wins.

[Iduno]

One thing I always felt missing from those "village simulators with combat" is a means to engage with the combat system without having to do so directly, necessarily. Basically hiring NPCs to actually do and tank the damage while you're there acting as support (probably activating healing/buff type spells and effects).

There was a game where you ran a store selling goods to adventurers, and could get better stuff to sell by doing the dungeon yourself. You could win by ignoring the dungeon entirely, and probably by ignoring the store entirely. But I don't remember the dungeon being very responsive, and store-management games only have so many playthroughs before you've done everything interesting.

[n9103]

One thing I always felt missing from those "village simulators with combat" is a means to engage with the combat system without having to do so directly, necessarily. Basically hiring NPCs to actually do and tank the damage while you're there acting as support (probably activating healing/buff type spells and effects).

There was a game where you ran a store selling goods to adventurers, and could get better stuff to sell by doing the dungeon yourself. You could win by ignoring the dungeon entirely, and probably by ignoring the store entirely. But I don't remember the dungeon being very responsive, and store-management games only have so many playthroughs before you've done everything interesting.

Sounds sort of like Recettear, but I can think of a half dozen others that are in the same vein.

[nenjin]

Also, random pet peeve that CotL made me remember yet again....

Games with Day/Night cycles and NPC aging just.....argh.

I'm about 60 days into this playthrough. I've buried close to 20 cultists (those left corpses at any rate heh) in that time. They grow old in the span of like 4 days, aging 25 years in a 4 day span.

I hate this disconnect, even though I know it's reality. It's almost always an issue of tweaking the value but man.....give me a game with a day night cycle where people don't age 10 years a day. It makes the whole mechanic just seem pointless. People can die in games for all sorts of reasons, but specifically aging and then dying just is never balanced against the day cycle of gameplay appropriately.

[axiomsofdominion]

Also, random pet peeve that CotL made me remember yet again....

Games with Day/Night cycles and NPC aging just.....argh.

I'm about 60 days into this playthrough. I've buried close to 20 cultists (those left corpses at any rate heh) in that time. They grow old in the span of like 4 days, aging 25 years in a 4 day span.

I hate this disconnect, even though I know it's reality. It's almost always an issue of tweaking the value but man.....give me a game with a day night cycle where people don't age 10 years a day. It makes the whole mechanic just seem pointless. People can die in games for all sorts of reasons, but specifically aging and then dying just is never balanced against the day cycle of gameplay appropriately.

There's virtually no game except like mp survival games that need a day night cycle or which a day night cycle makes sense. RTS for instance often try a day night cycle and then you farm like 2 food and it has been a week.

[nenjin]

Well "need" is a strong term. Lots of games add flavorful mechanics around a day night cycle.

It's really the intersection of "Days", and "Aging." No one is going to play a game for 54,000 in game days to see someone grow old, they want to see that mechanic realized sooner. So either the days have to speed up (not feasible for gameplay) or aging does. So people leverage aging instead. I think they just go overboard. Especially in games where NPCs can die from all sorts of factors, I think death from old age should be relatively rare. That way it's memorable. I stopped paying attention to my cultists in CotL for the most part because, eh, I'll recruit them and an hour later they'll be pushing up daisies. Them dying of old age is a mechanical inconvenience due to how it's designed, rather than a flavorful gamepaly mechanic.

[Sirus]

I agree that the aging process in CotL needs to be slowed down some. I named my initial cultists after Discord buddies, but before long they started dying off one after another and I ran out of buddies.

Maybe if they aged a "year" every two days, or had an average lifespan of 60 years before hitting Old rather than 40, it'd be more bearable.

[Iduno]

There was a game where you ran a store selling goods to adventurers, and could get better stuff to sell by doing the dungeon yourself. You could win by ignoring the dungeon entirely, and probably by ignoring the store entirely. But I don't remember the dungeon being very responsive, and store-management games only have so many playthroughs before you've done everything interesting.

Sounds sort of like Recettear, but I can think of a half dozen others that are in the same vein.

Yes! That's the one.

[Frumple]

Oddly enough, from the description I figured it wasn't Recettear, 'cause I don't think you actually went into the dungeon in that one -- you had patsies that did that for you. I'm only aware of a couple other shopkeeping things like that (some Kemco mobile RPG I'm forgetting the name of and Moonlighter) that actually has the shopkeeper do the delving, too.

[n9103]

Yes! That's the one.

Cool. Glad to help.
Chantelise, a game by the same team, mostly forgoes the shop/merchant aspect in favor of much more interesting dungeon adventures. (as in the dungeon is more exciting than it was, not that the dungeon is more exciting than the rest of the game)