I find myself in the odd position of thinking what I’m writing is going to be wholly redundant. But I want to write it anyway; anyone who’d plausibly be interested in this has probably already got it. Maybe there are one or two people out there who’d enjoy this game who’ve somehow managed to miss its existence. This has the additional unique complication that for anyone who *is* interested in this game, talking about it is difficult without spoiling some key elements of the gameplay.
Cultist Simulator is a game in which your initially unnamed and largely undefined character goes through the process of setting up an occult society, recruiting followers, and dedicating themselves to an otherworldly principle in the pursuit of immortality.
That’s a simple summary of the game. And it’s about the only simple thing about it.
For starters, it’s actually a card game. And a text based game. And sort of a word puzzle game. All elements of the game, be they people, jobs your character can do, locations, your character’s attributes and abilities, negative status effects, occult lore, and everything else are all represented by cards.
The way you interact with the game world is by using these cards by slotting them into one of five core actions (or you could think of them as verbs) your character can perform; Work, Talk, Study, Explore, and Dream. These are mostly self-explanatory, but finding combinations of actions and cards is esoteric, vague, and inaccessible by design. Putting the card representing a job at an accountancy firm into the Work slot is simple enough; figuring out what combination of cards you need to fill the Work slot with to summon an otherworldly monster to do your bidding is not. Nevertheless, this is the entire gameplay loop in a nutshell; find out what combination of cards works in what slot to achieve what you’re trying to accomplish.
The learning curve is deliberately steep, and you *will* lose a few characters as you try to figure out what to do with things like Dread cards piling up slowly ticking you down to doom, or you run out of Funds and starve to death.
Your character is working towards the specific goal of immortality, which to describe in depth would be all kinds of spoilers, but broadly speaking involves dedication to one of three concepts; power, sensation, or enlightenment. Each concept has a different route to the form of immortality it offers, though most involve murder, and all involve increasing amounts of personal body horror as your character gets closer to achieving their goal, including such delightful things as light leaking from underneath your skin, self-inflicted scarification and burns, new organs growing, and similar.
Soon enough, Hunters from an organisation called the Suppression Bureau who oppose your goal will make themselves known, looking for remnants of your occult and illegal activities to build evidence against you and your cult to get you thrown in jail. They’re not too dangerous to start with (the first Hunter you’ll encounter is a Weary Detective named Douglas), but should you attempt to take them out of the picture, they can survive your attempts to deal with them and get stronger as they become resolved in your arrest, or you can even subvert their intentions into becoming a rival seeking the same power that you do. Should you remove the Inspector (through one method or another), his replacement will be one of a handful of pre-determined Hunters who are quite a bit more dangerous to you.
You raise your followers up through the ranks of your cult by advancement rituals utilising high level lore of the principle your cult is devoted to, making them more useful and more likely to succeed as you engage them in murder, kidnap, seduction, destroying evidence, making money, or forming expeditions to dangerous locations steeped in occult lore and artefacts to take for yourself.
Though there are other endings that involve mundane things such as living happily with a job or loved one that you’re satisfied with, but in the context of the game’s tone these are treated more like a non-standard game over than an actual victory.
There’s more to it than that, but it’s far more fun to go in and discover it for yourself.
Produced by Weather Factory and designed by Alexis Kennedy, known for web-browser game Fallen London and its video game offshoots Sunless Sea and Sunless Skies. Anyone remotely familiar with his work knows what kind of writing to expect; purple prose layered on as densely and obliquely as possible. But this is what makes the game sing. Nothing is obvious due to the nature of the language, but what about the pursuit of occult study and unnatural immortality that suggests it should be accessible or simple?
The game takes place in the Secret Histories setting, a sort of 1920s alternate history to ours. The game, specifically, takes place in a location referred to only as the Capital, though it isn’t difficult to read between the lines that it’s London. Weather Factory have also produced a stand-alone scenario/rules hack of the Call of Cthulhu RPG set in this universe called The Lady Afterwards, taking place in Alexandria where the party of characters are tasked with tracking down a woman of high social standing and dubious morals.
And, finally, the real reason I wanted to write this review: there is a successor to Cultist Simulator coming out this month called Book of Hours, more personal in scope as you take on the role of a librarian restoring an occult library on a remote Cornish isle. This review is really about laying the groundwork to review *that* once it comes out.
Cultist Simulator is worth trying for anyone who enjoys roguelikes with a high lethality rate, or fans of esoteric or cosmic horror. Lovecraft fans in particular will probably see a lot to enjoy here.
