Cultist Simulator

A new game from the original lead designer for Fallen London and Sunless Seas, this is a resource management game involving the experiences of a regular person who is pulled into the world of the occult. If you've played either of his earlier games, you'll have a good idea of the atmosphere of the game. If not, well, think desperate, wafty, creepy Gothic mythos building itself as you become more and more susceptible to the world between the worlds...

I started my first game as John Roy, a menial hospital worker who was sucked into a world of hidden knowledge and fevered revelations that gradually took over his life, even as he was driven to found a cult (with a grand total of 3 members). As he learned more and more, largely through esoteric volumes found in an unusual bookstore in the city, his sanity began to suffer, and that affected his work, which led to a distressing lack of cash for things like food. Still, he was uncovering snippets of the luminous realm that underlies our reality, living in a permanent state of dread, swinging between passionate enthusiasms and wasting sleeps, with dreaming a scarce respite.

Eventually, the raving Mr. Roy was committed to the local asylum, under the care of Dr. Phillips, who was perplexed by the case. John Roy expired unnoticed by the world, his followers scattered, but Dr. Phillips dove into his papers and books, trying to fathom the unusual case. And in the course of this, he noted that the books mostly came from one bookseller, in the city...

(Thus the second game began with a more capable investigator, both in funds and rationality, so while the good Dr. Phillips has to start from scratch, his advantages mean he's more likely to last longer.... A very nice mechanic.)

The game is timer-based; the player allocates his time and skills to timers that represent things like work, dreaming (or rest), study (of the occult), talking (to interested parties) and so forth. One timer simply burns off a unit of money every minute or so, and if you run out, it will eat your health... Another represents the mental effects of occult understanding, and will yank away various of your cards, which represent things like Reason and Passion and Erudition and timed, short-lived opportunities to conduct special tasks. As you grow in your knowledge and experience, or as events happen, new timers will pop up that you can use, or that will tick off automatically, perhaps demanding resource cards in lieu of adding a bad status (like Dread) that can affect you. It's all fully pausable, but at the same time, you only have the attributes of the cards and timers to guide you (with a little advice thrown in after something happens).

The effect is one of being overwhelmed, worried, a bit frantic, even paranoid, just through the mechanics of the game. Every advance heartens you, but you're always waiting for bad stuff to happen - investigators or journalists sniffing around, or the failure to understand an important tome when it became clear you really needed to focus on it, but your boss had demanded you work overtime or your pay would be cut (or you might even be fired). And I'm sure that as you go on and get your feet under you, the threats and rewards increase proportionately.

This is like a much more tightly focused Fallen London, but with a better system behind it. Still has the really cool text, and the emotions it brings out are unusually strong considering the mechanics are actually fairly simple. Each choice, even ordinary ones, feels fraught with hidden dangers, more likely to be regretted than perceived, and that's a really amazing achievement.

So if you want a different take on the trope of investigating cults, told from the perspective of the fevered would-be adept entering into an unknown world within the world, this is your game. It's weird, and challenging, but it's fun.

This is cool now that I know what the hell is going on! (sort of...still things that don't make sense, but I think that's the point).

I've started working my way through my steam friends list (always nice when you can rename your protagonists!).

The passionate artist Allen Lovegardnr was moderately successful in his work, but thanks to a mysterious inheritance his work became increasingly esoteric, to the point of obsession. His health, sadly, failed him before he could do much more than exhaust his sizable bequeathment on every occult text he could lay his hands on.

His medical files, passed on to his Doctor, Kate Tee, make mention of his strange behaviour prior to death by premature decrepitude. Something about the case lodges in her mind, and she begins her own investigation...

I know, isn't it lovely?

I really can't think of many games that use their own mechanics to create doubt, paranoia and tension. And to do it in a card-based resource management game is just next-level f*ckery.

It reminds me a bit of Foucault's Pendulum, and a bit of Kraken, with some Arkham Horror thrown in.

I kickstarted this, and I've had real trouble getting started.

I am a detective (I was some sort of clerk, and ran out of money and got sick and died before), and don't seem to be able to make much progress. The timeouts on cards like Glimmering seem designed to never let me have 5 of them.

Is the suspicious person I'm investigating important? I can talk to her, but it doesn't seem to do much. I have to pause the game a lot since I am apparently quite cackhanded dealing with the cards and the table - they're always the too small (or too big) to read and the camera's always in the wrong place. I have to pause a lot. The detective's job is quite time consuming, but doesn't give me money. He doesn't ever seem to get sick.

Pausing is normal for me. You can move stuff around on the table, I do that to organize things a bit.

The mechanics seem to slowly improve your chances as they game goes on, but this really is a case of "find out as much as you can before your inevitable death". Then you continue with the next unfortunate.

It's obvious that a good cult will be needed to supply money and take over tasks so you can do things like blitz Glimmerings. I just view that as something to build towards.

It may be that the purpose of your detective is simply to uncover more of the mystery; it lies to others to make use of that knowledge after his death.

Edit - As an example, I was unable to understand Latin books with my first character, but my second (who found out about the bookstore from the notes of the first one) was able to buy a primer on the subject, and now can not only read Latin, but has several books in Greek and a Sanskrit primer. None of which he's had occasion to be able to use... But it should give you an idea of what to expect as time rolls on.

I super wish this was on the Switch. As it is, I'll probably wind up picking it up at some point (we had a bunch of expenses this month, so it'll be a bit) and trying to play it on my laptop on my commute. Even though I hate doing that.

It occurs to me that this is basically taking one of the most annoying and cynical mechanics from sh*tty mobile games (timers) and making an actual proper fun game out of them!

I'm really looking forward to having time this weekend to dive into the game. I already have 8 hours in the beta test and it was looking really promising even in that early version.

I love the premise of the game, it's something I've always wanted to see. The writing looks very professional, and the choices intriguing. Descriptions of gameplay sound perfectly suited for me.

And yet, there's something about card based games that just leaves me cold. I should probably just get over it and dive in, but...maybe there'll be a demo someday.

So i don't know if this is a bug or what's meant to happen, but I just started a third game after my second (doctor) character is defeated by dread. I picked the "rich socialite" option for no 3 and...it put me back to a half-filled board that still has some of the doctor's stuff handy (the job, mainly), the custom name in the bottom left and half the 'action' boxes unlocked already. That doesn't seem right? does it?

Maybe someone who gets onto a third run could confirm if that's the case or whether I should just take the opportunity to reboot and start from scratch now that I have a better idea of what I'm doing?

I'll keep an eye out... But maybe it's reincarnation? What happens if the socialite shows up for the job?

I restarted and used the socialite as the second character and she gets her own unique job and setup, so I wonder if it was a game big?

Sounds like a save bug.

I’ve made a lot of progress in understanding how the game plays. For example, I now have a reliable method for gaining more health, reason, and passion but it takes time. I understand how to mitigate dread, and I how to recruit members to my cult.
Every game is a step forward, and I’m loving it. Use pause liberally.

I can't quite manage to complete expeditions successfully. It's possible that I need to greatly improve my cult first so I have more resources...

some are easier than others I think. That burned down factory place chews through anyone I send into it, but some of the others I get through much easier, like the dude's artifact filled mansion. (or maybe I just got luck).
Fair burns through your cash supplies though!

You have to pay attention in the expeditions. Cash only works for certain things. In other instances, you can put cash in, but it does nothing. Make sure to read the notes. Sometimes you come across something that needs a resource tied with either "Forge" or "Lantern" to make forward progress and save your cultists.

The wealthy heiress Connie Lee keeps hounding me. She's difficult to murder, and none of my disciples were skilled enough to steal the evidence she kept compiling. I tried to find a way to go over her head, via exploring my dreams, but didn't get the timing right.

The disastrous expedition to the abandoned factory didn't help. I got cocky after the success of my earlier expeditions and my best Lantern disciple ended up falling through a hole in the floor and dying.

Anyone else find the font really small? I'm playing on a macbook pro, which has a stupid high native resolution, so that probably doesn't help. I've been gradually stepping the resolution down, but haven't found the sweet spot yet. I know there's a hints magnification setting, which bumps up hint and UI size, but not the main dialog box size.

I'm on an iMac, and the biggest issue I had with the font was that the ending message when I died was really small.

Challenging game. It took me a couple times to realize you could put stuff in some actives while the time was running.

Still have no idea how to get medicine or see a dr for when your health starts failing.

karmajay wrote:

Challenging game. It took me a couple times to realize you could put stuff in some actives while the time was running.

Still have no idea how to get medicine or see a dr for when your health starts failing.

Hint for how to deal with that:

Spoiler:

Try dreaming with your injury/affliction to rest and recover. You need Funds (for medicine) or Vitality.

If you're just short on health period, try getting more Vitality and combining it.

Chaz wrote:

Anyone else find the font really small? I'm playing on a macbook pro, which has a stupid high native resolution, so that probably doesn't help. I've been gradually stepping the resolution down, but haven't found the sweet spot yet. I know there's a hints magnification setting, which bumps up hint and UI size, but not the main dialog box size.

You can zoom in with the scroll wheel or with Q and E.

This game has eaten huge chunks of my time in a way I wasn't expecting. Almost like the old "one more turn" problem from the Civ games - I just want to elevate the believer so I have a good knock guy for that expedition which just needs the right figment from the dream and whoops my dread is creeping up and I need to deal with my notoriety and oh look it's an hour after I meant to go to bed.

I'm also learning that a lot of what I took to be flavour text can actually be important, particularly related to the dreams and expeditions.

Toddland wrote:

You have to pay attention in the expeditions. Cash only works for certain things. In other instances, you can put cash in, but it does nothing. Make sure to read the notes. Sometimes you come across something that needs a resource tied with either "Forge" or "Lantern" to make forward progress and save your cultists.

I've also found one that required either heart or edge (think it was a matter of charming their way past some guards or murdering them).

Different expeditions need different things. I kept one going forever with funding while I recruited 5 new cultists just to find the one with the right aspect. Not to mention making tons of paintings for tons of cash to keep it going, all the while gaining lots of notoriety and trying to keep the constable off my tail.

How do you sell stuff?

Robear wrote:

How do you sell stuff?

there's an auction house location you can discover, but I'm not quite sure how to reliably find it unless you...

Spoiler:

Are playing the socialite character, who I think always starts off the that location and the speakeasy club unlocked from the beginning

You can use it to either pick up random books for a cost in gold (cost varies depending on how many people bid on an item), or sell stuff back to them.

Cool, thanks. I'll work at it.

OK I picked this up but it's on the pile for now.

You know your game list is great when you have Battletech, Frostpunk, and this game on it and they haven't been touched. Yet.

pyxistyx wrote:
Robear wrote:

How do you sell stuff?

there's an auction house location you can discover, but I'm not quite sure how to reliably find it unless you...

One way you can find it...

Spoiler:

...is by using the Explore verb with the right nouns. There's multiple ways to discover new places, some of which are more reliable than others.

For example you can try...

Spoiler:

Health, a follower, Occult Scraps...

I really wanted to like this. The theme and the writing is good but the game play feels well awful. I think there's something real good in there but it needs some seriously quality life enhancements. The board and card placement is such a pain. Especially because nothing locks in place. Certain actions are best repeated forever but you have to do them manually all the time. Certain lethal things can occur and if you don't notice it'll take you out regardless how far you are. There's no reason not to fail your first round to have an easier start for the second game. Unclear direction and explanation of everything. And tons and tons of time that feels like you are going in circles.

Still all that and parts of me still really like parts of the game. Fix even half the things I mentioned and I'd probable love it.

It's definitely not for everybody. It's something of a cult classic, if you will.

I do think the UI is the weakest part (and consequently the most likely to get improved).

There is quite a bit of repetition in the early game (though the different starting points and how you choose to approach them can change this drastically).

I've yet to get really stuck: there's always one more bit to explore. Sometimes that requires moving out of a comfort zone and taking some risks: even if you've got a safe groove going, it may not be enough to help you get to the next plateau.

I feel like I must be missing something but it seems like the doctor origin is heaps easier than the others since you have that reliable source of income from the job, and the job doesn't have that time expiry. Socialite gets a wad of cash but it doesn't last that long, and I haven't even worked out the upside to being the inspector yet.