Cultist Simulator
Platforms: PC
Reviewed on: PC
Reviewer: Maiyannah Bishop
Review Play-Time: 17h
Developer: Weather Factory
Publisher: Weather Factory
Released: 2018-05-31
Review Published: 2023-12-28
Editor's Note: Maiyannah's copy of the game was a Christmas gift from a friend.
Cultist Simulator is a digital tabletop game developed and published by Weather Factory. This is a game I had my eye on for a considerable length of time, but only got to truly play much more recently since it was a Christmas gift. The premise intrigued me and it kept me hooked along while I struggled with the game's opacity - but moreso the rather annoying tendancy to create dead “runs”. There's enough here that if you like a digital tabletop game, you will probably happily lose hours to Cultist Simulator, but it isn't going to win over any new converts to the cult of tabletop gaming. The world it presents is mystifying, esoteric, and holds the same sort of appeal of mystery as the old Secret World game did - but the same opacity of mechanics that provides the captivating mystery is often a dual-edged sword by which it falls as well: when the randomness of the game decides that you didn't need to win this round anyways, enthusiasm tends to be curbed. Digital tabletop games to your fancy? This one will have more than enough to get your money's worth and then some, especially with the quality of writing - but if that random nature bothers you, this one is a pass: it might be not quite as bad as something like Darkest Dungeon, but there will absolutely be “dead runs” through no fault of your own. On the fence? Well, then I invite you to read on, dear reader - while I won't be getting into the more advanced mechanics, since that would ruin some of the mystique of the game to say the least, we shall be covering enough of them that, hopefully, you can evaluate whether this is to your speed.
Somewhat mockingly, this game was often posited to me as the "Dark Souls" of tabletop games - but there is some truth in the comparison, as it shares two similarities with the venerable From Software game: firstly, there is absolutely no player training or tutorializing here outside of the mechanics themselves, and players are left to experiment and discover the game for themselves; secondly, the game tends to be unforgiving in ways that feel unfair - often runs will end up being "dead runs", and oftentimes, as I mentioned above, there is little fault on the player's part - this is rather simply a byproduct of the random generation of the game. While the former point of comparison helps the game, the latter hinders. The theme of Cultist Simulator lies into a tread onto esoteric paths which would not have "how to" guides, and discovering the secret rituals of the occult - so hand-holding the player through this would both compromise the theme and somewhat ruin the mystique of the mechanics. Indeed, the mechanics are a lot of the mystery here, and much of the skill to be found in play of the game comes through iterative knowledge - trying again and again as you refine your understanding of how these mechanics work.
There is fun and reward to be found in this exploration - yet it is an enjoyment which becomes tarnished by a growing understanding that sometimes, the game will just throw situations at you where you are fated to fail. One such example: through a variety of events you can get Despair cards, and these will be consumed into 60 second cycles where they accumulate - and if you get through three of them accumulated you must get a Contentment card to eliminate at least one of these cards, or it is a game over situation. This is the least threatening of the game ending situations in terms of the mechanics - you are given a relatively long time to try to eliminate these stacks, and if the third does happen, you get a short window in which to try to work down the stack. The central problem here is anything which can generate Contentment is a random chance - there is no sure-fire, 100% successful way to do it - which for me at least, often resulted in runs that became death spirals of wasted time, essentially repeatedly rolling dice that kept coming up snake-eyes. And so these runs ended, but there was no satisfaction of having learned more for me, only the aggrivation that I tried again and again, and a random number generator was essentially dancing on my grave.
It was, in a word, galling.
