TL;DR - An enjoyable narrative puzzle game with RPG aspects and a Lovecraftian atmosphere. Good if you like slow, methodical gameplay with empasis on story. A long while back, I was introduced to the world of Fallen London. Before I knew it, Sunless Seas was in development and was showing promise in Early Access. Throughout my time spent playing Sunless Sea, I love the card system that was used to note objects, places, aspects, and many other pieces of the world that were relevant and useful to the player. From these cards, the player could better understand nature of the world around them as well as being provided a very simple mechanism for aiding in immersion. Cultist Simulator game takes the conceptual framework around this card system and makes it the primary focus of play. Again, you are provided cards to represent the various animate, inanimate, and abstract objects of the world placed before you. There are primary functions you use to "transform" or "operate" on the given cards to produce various different results depending on the function and/or any extra cards to "buff" or "direct" the outcome of the function. Each card contains a descriptor of its contents and its relevance to the games world. Upon passing a card to a function, a piece a the narrative is presented to you while the operation takes place. Longer operations that have multiple passes will usually have more of narrative components to share with you, in depth, if not in length. Ever now and then, procedural or "randomly", other functions will present themselves on the board to represent an event or relevant change in the world. Upon immediate observation, the gameplay is very simple, but that does not mean it is an easy game. There is very little hand holding to guide you to the endgame. This is very much, in a sense, a rouge-lite in the regard that you will mostly likely "die" several times through your journey to one of the many ends.
