Cultist Simulator

The game doesn't explain anything to you, you have to find out via trial and error. This is made more complicated by apparently random outcomes, cryptic responses at best and the fact that stuff that works only works again about half of the time. This continues until you die for no discernible reason. Then you can start the whole process again.

Cultist Simulator is a game where it's theme is in constant conflict with basic usability. As you play the game the UI becomes more and more unwieldly. This perfectly illustrates your characters decent into madness as they delve into the unknown but makes it difficult to even play the game. Cards will spawn under other cards, events will spawn off screen. You have to choose between being able to see the board or being able to read the interface. Very little is explained in the game which helps to build the sense of exploration and investigation but often makes the game feel aimless and grindy. Often events will happen or cards will be gained/lost with little explanation. The sense of exploration is also undercut by the game's brutal RNG. It's pretty easy to lose a run because the game randomly denies you the one card you need to prevent it. Or a mechanic may be misunderstood because the outcome randomly discourages it. The repetitive nature of actions of the game invoke a dual life of normal member of society while secretly pooring over forbidden texts and searching lost locations. Though the repetitious nature of the tasks in the game are grinding for grinding's sake and undermind the games narrative flourishes. In the end, Cult Simulator is a game that is more interesting in premise than in execution.

So I just played 3 hours or so of this. And I do not get what happens. The game throws cryptic messages at you and you are supposed to guess what is supposed to happen. More often than not nothing will happen - which leads to losing the game. It is a heavy trial and error game and a lot of things are based on chance. The concept is not bad at all. Actually quite intriguing. I played 4 or 5 different "classes" and they all played very different from each other. Some make constant income hard, others character progression very easy, some let you grow your group faster others don't. I love clicker games, and it somewhat reminded me of one. You can pause the game at any time and you will have to because at some point things progress fast. The losing conditions are not obvious. The Interface is adjustable - but this makes it a mess most of the time and causes you to miss certain things. It is a wild guessgame, you figure one thing out and then the next time it doesn't work as you wanted it to. I am sorry to say that this whole thing has been a horrible experience as a game for me. Maybe I should consult tutorials for it but honestly I don't even care any more. Any game should provide a basic tutorial to explain what happens and a UI that helps the player understand what is going on. This game does not. It lets you organize your cards yourself and it has way too many different variants. Some cards can be put in slots but won't work and there is no explanation why. The cards are not marked other than by name. But apparently some people enjoy it so check the other reviews if you might enjoy it

The art is beautiful, the music makes the atmosphere, the presentation is overall nothing short of wonderful. It is one of the few times I've really felt that me, as a player, have become immersed in the story. However the gameplay itself is a fairly simple adventure game with the context of your actions largely stripped away. Rub thing on thing. Did it work? No? Try different thing. Work? Okay, try thing in the new thing. This in of itself is not a problem, not every game needs to be mechanically deep, this certainly doesn't need to be to be enjoyable. My biggest problem is that the game board lacks basic organisational tools like card spawning in a user-defined place for organisation. That and that you have to move the mouse more than in a first person shooter, I had to stop because my wrist was hurting too much at times. The board is a mess and you have no tools to counter-act it, unlockable or otherwise. But the absolute killer is that the game is filled with routine grind that never ends. It is not deep, it does not change, it is not interesting or rewarding; the same few actions simply allow you to continue playing the game. Grinding the same action repeatedly should not be a game mechanic past the introduction; it directly contradicts the exploration element. This game has little substance past the dressing and flowery dialogue. A good plate-spinning game should reward you for your performance, not reset you to square one because one out of your 28 plates fell.

I bought this game on special, I probably should have saved my money, I had read all the bad reviews about the game being slow and tedious, but I usually like slow moving games (like civilisation) so I figured it was worth a shot. I really wanted to like this game, I put a good 30 hours in to see if I could get the hang of it, and I worked most of it out, managed to start a cult etc, worked out methods to progress, but every time the game takes you to a dead end unsatisfying grind while hoping the RGM will bring you your next step, which it rarely does and I turn it off due to boredom. So most of my stories didn't end with me dying from an affliction, or despair, but just because I got sick of grinding those stupid timers. I might give it a couple more shots, but my enthusiasm at this point has been spent.