I never liked card games, but this game changed that. Cultist Simulator is very vague, but figuring out how to play it is part of the fun for the most part. 10/10 lore and atmosphere and I love all the occult stuff. Main issue with the game is that it is a little too vague at times and I had to consult the wiki a couple of times. But other than that it has a lot of replayability and despite getting an ending I will continue to play this game and see what other paths I can take. Highly recommend if you like card games and need a new phone game.

The writing in the game is whimsically and grotesquely mysterious. I figured out some of the mechanics, though I have more to find. I want to like this game more, but the pace of it was too slow for me. I think this game would work better as a choose-your-own-adventure style book. As it stands, the game has too much repetition that makes some of the writing lose its charm.
If you choose to play this game, I strongly suggest doing so with a pen and paper. Write down the card interactions. It will make your life so much easier.

died of starvation while I was on track to building a successful cult

good game

too bad I suck

It's a very original game, which combines different genres and makes them work quite well. It's a game where you start as one single person who decides to build a cult. Your goal is to manage the cult's resources, make it bigger, and more powerful, and make yourself more knowledgeable. In addition, you have to manage the resources of your cult and deal with different problems that pose a threat to you as a character and to your entire cult.
Besides, the game was done by people who previously worked in Failbetter Games, which means that the writing is more than competent. It is engaging and eloquent. The problem is that you need to actually put effort into understanding the lore because, without it, the game is only half as interesting. Also, without understanding the lore, it will be much harder to understand how to progress, especially in the mid to late-game.
Gameplay-wise, it is satisfying to make progress and keep improving your cult and your character. There are moments of stagnation, especially when you play your first runs - I kept stalling and just doing the same things all over again without understanding what to do next. It can also be easy to get yourself in trouble and die, but with experience, it is also easy to avoid such scenarios. It is one of the best aspects of the game - to be overwhelmed by different threats and then sort everything out and get the board clear of any problems.
I think it's important to know, that if you decide to play this game, you have to be ready to spend the first 15-25 hours learning basic mechanics, and even later, not being able to figure out what to do. You should also accept the fact that in these hours you will die frequently. With each new run, however, it will be much easier to get what you lost and make further progress.
I feel, however, that the goals that the game provides, at least in the base game without the DLCs, are lacking in substance. You just upgrade the card you pick as a win condition with other cards, and that's it. I would like them to have some sort of plot line that would give you a story to follow and also indicators that will show the progress you've made or something like that.
All in all, a great game that can be even greater. Maybe with DLCs it will solve some of the problems mentioned.
Grade: 7.5/10

Plagued by unnatural dreams and supported by a small inheritance that I received from an eerie old man who died in the hospital where I used to work as a janitor, I set myself to pulling back the veil that protects our reality from the abnormalities beneath it, searching for answers, direction, and something more, something I couldn't yet put to words. Slowly, I collected a few followers and established a fledgling cult with little to our name besides ambition and a crazy idea, and a mission that would put us on the map. I kept telling my followers to just wait, we'll soon take on that big mission while sending my most trusted believer seeking opportunities in the streets in the hope of alleviating our sudden financial troubles as the inheritance ran out and I was busy working myself into another sickbed. Finally, having no vitality left to fight another bout of illness, I croaked, leaving behind a lost believer and two hangers-on who returned to their regular life with nothing to show for it. As for the believer, I hope they'll forgive me in time or, at the very least, raise me from the dead.

I tried again.

This time I was the inspector who, following a lead, had happened on the trail of the wannabe cultist leader. The leader might have died, but his right hand was alive. But as I got closer and closer to her, the new-found madness in my dreams started to envelop me and just as I was ready to nail her with damning evidence, dread devoured me and I was lost.

I tried again. And again. And again, the cycle furiously repeating into another early death.

You get the point. It's a complicated game to get into with little direction and no hand-holding, the realities of a cult simulation quickly beating the novice into the ground just to start again with the same story from a selection that becomes increasingly limited walking down the familiar streets into another unexpected and seemingly unavoidable death. You might learn something from your every last loss, but there are so many other losses waiting.

Slowly a sense of meaningless creeps in as I tap through the same actions I've done before, stumbling into the same problems I faced before, with too little knowledge to still deal with them. I feel more comfortable with its fiddly interface that is constantly threatening to become just way too much, especially on the small cellphone screen, and there’s still a desire to dive deeper into this weird world that so successfully seems to evoke the feeling of being called by the secret whispers from another side to become the person that you usually take on in some horror game as the mid- or late-game boss, depending on whether it's going to send you against the demon itself in the end or not.

But it’s a game that encourages experimentation and exploration in its intro but punishes you severely for not knowing how to play the game properly. It’s as if to really enjoy it, you must read a guide beforehand; but I’d prefer a game to convince me there’s value to reading a guide for it before I actually do that.

In another playthrough, thinking myself ready, I took on the big mission, but it soon proved to be much more demanding of our resources than I had thought, and as my closest believer succumbed to the wounds suffered, we returned with nothing to show for it, back to our withered home. Our cult was done and I returned to my normal everyday life that could never be the same again, now aware of the precarious balance between our worlds, but impotent to do anything about it. I hope my believer behind the veil will find it in themself to forgive me; I will not be raising them again. My Google Play subscription is through and I’m not renewing it for this game.

This game is a very... unique experience but it's not a bad one. Objectively, this game is a great example of ludo-narrative harmony and does an outstanding job of establishing a tone and sticking with it. However, part of that harmony is an often frustrating degree of obscurity around game mechanics. I personally find this to be a positive trait in this case, since the narrative of the game is about being an occultist trying to grasp at knowledge that is beyond your comprehension, furtively reaching for any scrap that furthers your understanding. The gameplay is emulating that narrative by giving you some hints, but largely making you figure things out on your own. For me this led to a sense of obsession as I was insatiably curious about how to make it all work, how to get to the "end", and realizing how much deeper it went. Ultimately, I think that works for this game, and I am quite fond of it. I look forward to picking this up every once and awhile for many years to come.

This is cool and I think it could be an interesting game to really sink your teeth into, but it will have to wait for me. I saw so many people (and even the game itself, iirc?) saying that the game mechanics are supposed to be hidden and obscure, that figuring out everything for yourself is the joy of the game, that you absolutely should NOT look up anything online -- but after a fun start and then hours and hours and hours of just doing the same thing over and over without progressing or understanding what I was doing/was supposed to do, I finally looked up some base mechanics which REALLY improved the experience for me. Unfortunately it was too little too late, and I have to put it away for the time being until I find it in me to play it again. So many hours on this and I haven't even done any rituals yet! But I do like the feel of it so I'll probably return to it, and possibly give it a higher score if I enjoy it.

I do love me some mysterious and unknowable games, but for me this was just a little too much - figuring things out is fun, but if you're going that route I think you need to give your players at least enough information to get things rolling, especially when your game has this level of complexity to it. I feel like it's extra important if your game uses one single mechanic, in this case placing cards, because if a player (me) doesn't understand that one mechanic then they don't understand how to play the game at all.
Maybe my brain is just too small, but I think I would have a much greater experience with this overall if the game wasn't so intent on not telling me its most basic gameplay elements - or at least, if I wasn't discouraged from looking up tips online. Those last hours I played after actually learning basic gameplay were much more fun than the 7-10 hours or so that came before it.

(Also I played the switch version and feel robbed, the card table looks MUCH cooler on PC. Too bad playing games on my desktop computer is the bane of my existence)