Cultist Simulator

This game is not for everyone. At its core, it is a game of watching timers and reading a choose your own adventure book. Only the book isnt linear and not necessarily leading you towards an end. The puzzles can be obtuse and a lot of trial and error is needed to accomplish anything considered progress in this game. That being said. The atmosphere, the lore, and the writing in this game is absolutely high class. If you are into a game where the journey and the experience drives your notion of "fun" then this game will hit the right marks. It is a lot like reading a book and really diving into what the words mean to derive your next steps and actions. You are solving word puzzles, you are solving ephemeral quests and notions of immortality. It is a cultist simulator in that imagine what it would be like in real life if your goal was to look for ancient occult texts, deciphering their meaning, starting a cult, and reaching said immortality. If you use a guide, the game is going to feel incredibly easy and simple. The beauty of this game is purely in the journey and the experience of reading it. Like a good book. So this isnt for everyone. But for the people that it is for, it is really damn good.

The whole game is about not knowing what happens if you make combinations at first. It's a game about trying and discovering the possibilities. About feeling the sensation of reward for discovering new features. If you were to began yourself at the dark arts, would there be a guide explaining every detail? I mean, it's not even hard to play for like 1 or 2 hours to understand the concepts. I guess everyone now just wants to beat games in 3 hours without dying once.

I've been playing this for a few hours now, and this game is simultaneously obtuse and highly addictive. It's an old-school approach: It picks up immediately, and expects you to learn it as you go rather than doing any hand-holding. The timers keep things moving and maintain a sense of urgency, even making liberal use of the pause button, though I sometimes find myself getting too caught up in that feeling to give the prose and atmosphere their full due. And they are due a lot! It feels like I still haven't reliably figured out some things that ought to be basic. There are some quality of life improvements that would help a lot in terms of the UI (finding cards that occasionally get covered or auto-bumped by others is a particular annoyance), and it's occasionally irksome to know I'm about to die, that none of the cards I'm waiting on will be done in time to prevent it, and have to wait on that death timer to do its thing as every second ticking off rubs it in a little harder. While less than optimal, though, these issues haven't been enough to keep me from the rabbit hole of, "Just a little longer--oh, what's this bit do? Wait, how did it get to be 2 a.m.?"

There's nothing quite like Weather Factory's game on the market. It tells your story via icons. There are two types: blocks and cards. The blocks are much like engines in that you need to feed them a resource (which is always a card) and they give you something in return. The cards themselves are like snippets out of a book. It's a bit like Choose Your Own Adventure, except that it's much richer in lore and text than you could fit in any normal book. This game is best if you enjoy a long read and delving into the occult. It is roguelike in that you can expect to die quite a bit and learn something each time. Once you get the hang of things, though, it's a rewarding slow burn that permits you to peel back some secrets of the world that Alexis Kennedy created. Most players find dozens of hours worth of entertainment in the game; I hope you do, too.

You need to be a certain type of gamer to appreciate this game, but if you are, there is nothing better that you can find.