Cultist Simulator

2026-01-14
Comical mismatch between the wonderfully evocative, grotty writing and lore with the actual gameplay and it's two fundamental problems:

1. Too little direction and guidance on what to do next. Now I know people say "the game is all about discovery". Yeah, I get that but still I found there too little guidance. Cards or actions would vaguely reference different things but outside of the initial unlocking of the first set of actions I was plodding through. Experimentation is fine and dandy if you can figure out things quickly but you can't because of the grind that's baked in. Which brings me to part 2.

2. The grind. There is such a painful grind to this game. Where you're literally clicking and moving the same set of cards over and over and over to farm up the resources needed to move forward in the game. It was just a slog. You hit a point where none of the lore matters because you're just doing these repetitive actions over and over and nothing new is actually showing up.

Inevitably you hit the wiki and that sense of mystery and intrigue has evaporated because your mortal eyes have seen beyond the morbid scrawlings of the authors and are now reading what leet_wikier69 posted on some Fandom website while you close a popup video for the third time. Terrifying stuff indeed.

2020-12-30
I really really wanted to like this game. The writing and the lore are very cool. The style and visual design tying everything together is very nice. But in the end I found it failing in two main areas.

1. Too little direction and guidance on what to do next. Now I know people say "the game is all about discovery". Yeah, I get that but still I found there too little guidance. Cards or actions would vaguely reference different things but outside of the initial unlocking of the first set of actions I was plodding through. Experimentation is fine and dandy if you can figure out things quickly but you can't because of the grind that's baked in. Which brings me to part 2.

2. The grind. There is such a painful grind to this game. Where you're literally clicking and moving the same set of cards over and over and over to farm up the resources needed to move forward in the game. It was just a slog. You hit a point where none of the lore matters because you're just doing these repetitive actions over and over and nothing new is actually showing up.

These sound like fixable things but my guess is it's too late now. Sadly I can't recommend this game as it stands.