Like other reviews have outlined, this game is far too pre-occupied with a few things that hold it back from being an overall cool/fun/engaging experience:

- Too many tedious "plate-spinning" mechanics. Coming back to the game 6+ months after I first played it, I realized I couldn't even remember enough of the SUPER SPECIFIC ways you survive the early game, and the idea of reading a bunch of guides or failing 5 times again to figure them all out just didn't feel worth it.
- Way too many vague mechanics with incredibly specific solutions. You can literally fail a run just because you didn't buy a book when it was offered to you (since there apparently is a limited number of each book). You could survive HOURS of a run without knowing that there is NO available solutions to you left.
- The way time is managed in the game just isn't a fun gameplay loop. Some sort of turn-based system (that just auto-skips over turns while you're waiting) would be far better, since you have to pause the game so much anyways that the existence of a "real-time clock" isn't doing anything productive.

What I can say positive about the game is that it has inspired me as a game design more potently than almost any game I've ever played. That's not reason enough for me to recommend it to other people, but it is notable. There are a LOT of fascinating mechanics and interactions and ideas in this game, and I think there is a version of it that could be one of the coolest games ever...but unfortunately, for me, this isn't it. It needs a lot of refinement. Someone who puts 15+ hours into trying to understand and progress in a game like this -- a person who loves the type of game it is and wants to connect with it -- and then comes out of that time feeling like they've made barely any progress...that's not a great game in my eyes.

Gameplay Design: 5/10
User Experience: 6/10
Narrative Design: 6/10
Plot/Story: 3/10
Narrative Themes: 6/10
Visuals: 7/10

In Weather Factory's 2018 game, Cultist Simulator, the card play is taught in a way that reinforces thematic intimacy not typically seen in tutorial practices across video games. If we are to assume a traditional slope for how games meter out mechanics and their respective use cases, we would assume a linearly progressive trend correlating mechanical complexity with in-game progression; the player is first taught how to jump or move a puzzle tile and, after more time spent in game, proceeds to executing complex combo strings or corroborating dozens of puzzle elements. In Cultist Simulator however, the player progresses down a tutorial path that does not assert an expansion of its mechanics, although further complexity does incur as the game progresses, but a larger and grander sense of what the game’s systems and world are not allowing the player to intercede with. At the game’s outset, the player is given a small arrangement of cards which indicate commonly seen game resources: health, money, equipment, etc. However, unlike in games like Link to the Past or Dark Souls, the player is not given any indication of the use case for their resources: no press A to jump, no select to open crafting. This feigned obfuscation of Cultist Simulator asserts that the game world is not one manufactured for traversal by a player but is one of error and expansion, a transgression of purpose which denotes the mood and theme of a cultist’s desire to go beyond the knowability taken for granted by the in world fiction and outer world understanding of how game tutorials traditionally function.

Cultist Simulator is absolutely a genius game. And it is absolutely not for everyone, it appeals to a very specific audience. And no, it's not one of those ironic simulator games about building Kool-Aid tanks.

If I had to quickly summarize:

It's a game about maintaining a balancing act, spinning a dozen plates while taking risks and experimenting to further your goal of supernatural ascension, with the ever-looming presence of catastrophic failure in the back of your mind.

I can easily identify all the aspects that would make someone hate this game with a passion. Obscured mechanics, ticking timers, and especially the lack of clarity. Most first-time runs of Cultist Simulator will be confusing and end abruptly by dying of overwhelming dread or by going mad within 30 minutes. And that's by design.

It hands the player a few cards, some action tiles, and says:

Do you want to run a cult? Want to know how? Well, combine some cards and figure it out yourself. Good luck.

Of course, the game teaches you the basics, but it doesn't explain anything in detail, if at all. And when it does, it is in cryptic sentences and keywords, with mechanics obscured behind the combination of cards and verb tiles. On the surface, it all seems overwhelming, or even unfair, but it's really not. The game does give you (veiled) information, not enough to hold your hand, but enough to figure things out if you are paying attention.

However, If you have no patience to read and put some thought into what you are doing, it will be a very frustrating game. Mindlessly clicking through things will lead to dumb mistakes that will send your run head first down the eldritch toilet.

Which was exactly what happened to me when I first played.

But Cultist Simulator snared me, even with the initial frustrations the game tapped into some kind of obsessive behavior I didn't even know I had. The allure of possibility and the desire to learn more was strong enough to push me forward, to the point I took pen and paper and started writing things down. Combinations of cards, aspects, negative effects, and the ways I found to combat them. In time my desk slowly started to get messy, creating an oddly immersive connection to the game board and the overall vibe of uncovering the occult.

And that's when everything clicked.

If I wanted to progress I would at least need to understand the game's lore, or at least what each symbol represented and was capable of. It wasn't gonna be like other games were to succeed I just needed an abstract intelligence stat level up. Understanding, planning, and then finding ways to manipulate that knowledge to my advantage was the key to progress.

If the game did explain each and every mechanic in detail like so many people criticize it, Cultist Simulator wouldn't be nearly as engaging. Taking risks, making mistakes, and having breakthrough "AHA!" moments are the core experience of this game.

What at first looked like nonsensical flavor texts started to make sense, I figured out what the symbols and keywords meant, how I could use them, and how aspects feed into each other. Mechanics like the aforementioned Dread that felt like it relied solely on RNG to decide whether or not it would kill my run turned out to not be the case at all. I just couldn't see past frustrations before.

And just like that when I least expected it, I was easily destroying police evidence, summoning demons to teach me foreign languages, murdering my day job supervisor, reanimating his corpse with necromancy, funding expedition parties across the world to steal artifacts, biding at the auction house on cursed texts, and painting masterpieces with arcane pigments. All while maintaining health, funds, fascination, notoriety, and dread in check.

In no time I had all the tools I needed. I sewed their severed bodies onto mine. The feast of the True-Birth had started. Swollen with the lives of others, I returned from the Tricuspid Gate. My flesh reborn. I have become a Long, favored by the Grail. I shaw not grow old.

The process of learning the game loop is amazing. It is confusing, but that is exactly what the narrative justifies. Atmosphere is crafted with excellent care, I would say that is the best part; playing an entire game of Cultist Simulator makes me forget about the world and focus on the Mansus and the weighty implications of my esoteric efforts. However, I think that is precisely its weakest point: the hook is too powerful. When you get to "the zone" and lose track of time, you realise most of what you did in the hours you spent is trying to beat the timed restrictions, while progressing very little. I would recommend trying to beat at least one game, but spending more time than that on the game is really demanding.

this one is tough to rate because I feel like you can leave it dissatisfied after a few hours and still think to yourself that maybe if you gave it a little big more time, you'd come around and enjoy it. cultist sim is a resource management style game that's primarily text based with lots of room for personal strategies and interesting mechanics but unfortunately this game has so much that it gives you right off the bat, the amount of content is almost to its detriment. the stories on the cards you unlock are interesting, but the way the minigames are paced means it is hardly possible to really take a moment to stop and read/think/immerse yourself in the stories being told to you. maybe i'm an idiot or something, but i felt like i was just playing with my brain off and being thrown so much all at once with no time to slow down. couldn't vibe with it but i tried.

I love this game. I wish it loved me back.

So much of my time spent in this game is spent wishing there were actually decent usability features. The point, at least on the first playthrough, is to figure out how the cards interact with each other to tell a compelling narrative, but about halfway through that playthrough, you start playing "Organize Your Cards" simulator. It's atrocious; group moving is inconsistent at best, the raw quantity of cards makes organization near impossible, the separation and constant fading of certain kinds of status effects like reputation and mental ailments makes organization a never-ending battle, and most importantly, under certain extremely common conditions like "there are too many timers on the board," the game slows to an absolutely unplayable crawl, where even fast-forwarded time ends up slower than real-life time. If this game had a sort function, or even passable optimization, or like... any sort of opinion on how you should be organizing your board, I'd enjoy it a lot more than I do.

God, please let me just hit sort. Please let things with different timers stack. Please stop making me hit "pause" every 2 seconds so I can figure out where my cards got scattered to.

Or don't, I've already lost like 2 days, so...

Update: Played through to one of the major endings. Towards the end of the game, I spent about 5 hours doing about as many expeditions because the raw number of cards on the screen made the framerate and timer tick-rate slow to an abysmal 5 frames per second, causing in-game time to be even slower than real-world time, even on fast-forward. The game became borderline unplayable, and it speaks to the quality of the worldbuilding and writing that I wanted to keep going despite the absolute hell that was the actual experience of playing it. Honestly, even if that were not the case, the game became the least interesting grind of "hope RNGesus finally lets you win."

At this point, my recommended way to experience this game is to play through to a standard ending once to get the experience of discovery, then read a wiki somewhere to actually get to read the excellent writing.

Cultist Simulator is more than meets the eye. Behind the time sensitive resource management is one of the most interesting lovecraft inspired narratives I've ever read.
Aesthetically, this game is masterpiece. The artwork on the cards, the sound design, and the special animations that play upon completing certain tasks are some of the best I've ever seen and perfectly elevate the sense of eeriness you get when you play the game. The OST is also stellar, a perfect balance of intensity but also calmness that always keeps the player on their toes; you are running a secret society after all.
The one drawback to this game is the amount of reading. In cultist sim, reading is quite literally EVERYTHING. You are immediately dropped in to the game and must rely on nothing but your reading skills to advance you forward. This makes the early hours of the game a little tedious, but later playthroughs become a breeze. As someone who hasn't touched a book outside of required class readings, I thought I could skip through reading the cards only to be punished later for not paying close enough attention.
My personal favorite part of this game is how extensive the lore becomes. You can found a cult on one of the many different types of lore fragments, each presenting different benefits and stories. I often find myself switching cults each playthrough to try and unlock more lore to add to my understanding of the vast world infront of me.
Overall, Cultist Sim is a riddle wrapped in a mystery with hours upon hours of replayability. While the initial hours of the game may be difficult for some players, those who power through are met with an unforgettable and vast narrative experience. A full run of this game takes multiple upon multiple hours to complete, but will keep you on the edge of your seat each time. A perfect game for fans of management, narrative focused gameplay, and anyone looking to start a cult f their own