Whilst in the middle of playing Cult of the Lamb I spoke to a friend who, and I quote said "Isn't that the poop farming simulator?" Apparently when just casually speed skimming through a video about the game that was the core of what he picked up about it. In some ways he isn't wrong though, you see Cult of the Lamb is a weird mixture of base building for your expanding indoctrinated cult and Rogue Like dungeon crawling to get resources to keep them fed, clean and happy as they are mostly incapable of doing that on their own apparently.

It's two games merged together and while certainly fun, neither feels as fleshed out as it needs to be. Your cultists will just dump a poop out anywhere, some food will make them do it faster, they'll leave it, get ill and possibly die from hygiene issues, literally. That means in between dungeon runs I was running around cleaning poop. You can eventually get the ability to build an Outhouse but I had mines and a church before that which seems completely nuts on the village building priority scale for what unlocks. Even then though it's my character, the head of the Cult of the Lamb cleaning out the Outhouses. It's just odd the way it all works, there is no way to automate another character to cook or clean the outhouse I could find, you have to do it all or use a ritual to make them fast. Buildings will break for no reason, like beds and tents specifically just fall apart because "reasons" forcing you to rebuild them. Adding to the headache of cult managing, the layout is in a diagonal grid scheme in which trying to build next to other items in situ is so difficult I actually didn't think you could for about 5 hours. It's terrible. I also barely had to use most of the buildings available. I tried a couple that seemed like they weren't worth the effort, destroyed them and never looked back.

The dungeon crawling is kind of similar in that it feels a bit underbaked. It's a Rogue Like that mixes up the rooms you get going from the start to a boss or mini boss each time in one of 4 different areas. There is so little variety per run though it may as well not bother. Everything just looks and feels the same, there are maybe 4 weapon choices that can have a variety of modifiers based on what you've unlocked like poison etc. but they are much the same. The only other thing you can do is use Curses which feel kind of underpowered or all kind of the same that once again it feels like any would do. Each room is so noisy for things going on and so small in most circumstances simply using your weapon is enough, I beat the game and barely used a curse, it was rarely worth it. There was just a lack of variation or strategy required to get through each level. To add to this each time I was in the dungeon you get messages about your cult members dying of old age, getting angry or sick as it continues to flow whilst you're not there and they are completely incapable of looking after themselves unless you set up rituals to keep you covered.

I also had technical issues playing the PS5 version. Every time a new day came the game freezes as it works things out, moving in the dungeon too fast like rolling to get through fast and it hiccups and jitters. I had one hard crash and once my followers all went and stood in the same location morphing into each other and wouldn't do anything forcing me to turn off the game and restart (I was worried it was a game breaking glitch but did carry on fine after) which all hampered my experience as well.

I've been pretty negative so far but I did actually have a good time with cult of the Lamb. It's got a great atmosphere with these super cute anthropomorphic animal people mixed with this satanic sacrificial dark undertone. Making your dead followers into meals for others, sacrificing them to an eldritch tentacle when old rather than have them die in your village is all entertaining stuff with a really nice art design and soundtrack to boot. It just isn't balanced enough with how the Cult building works and not deep enough or varied enough in combat where it needs to be. It's got a lot of character however which does make up for that somewhat.