Cultist Simulator

Unintuitive, incredibly grindy. While the writing is good, it doesn't justify the horrid gameplay.

The game is great if you install The Wheel mod. It allows you to skip to the next decay or verb completion; it turns Cultist Simulator into an engaging turn-based game instead of a quick-time-event galore. I would've burned out long ago if I didn't use this mod.

Read the instructions on how to install it on the mod page. I'll put a copy here:
1. In the Workshop, navigate to The Wheel mod. Don't subscribe for it yet. First, subscribe the GHIRBI mod from the developers that is the prerequisite. It allows the DLL mods, and The Wheel is such a mod.
2 Restart the game,
3. In the main menu, in the Sixth Hour menu on the upper-right, enable the GHIRBI mod.
4. Close the game.
5. In the Workshop, subscribe to The Wheel mod.
6. Launch the game and enable the mod in the Sixth Hour menu.
7. Restart the game. You should have new hotkeys in the Keys menu in Settings.
8. Set your hotkeys. I chose Q for skipping until next vert and R for skipping until next decay. The hotkeys will look weird with the "Keyboard" prefix, but they will work.
9. Restart the game. No, I'm not joking. Otherwise the reassigned hotkeys might not work.

I've tried to get into this a couple of times, but for me it just feels so slow and like I've never quite figured out how to make progress. Maybe that's a problem with me as a player, but Cultist Simulator to me feels like it goes way further than it should in letting the player figure things out for themselves. There's very little guidance on how to progress and I don't get much reward / guidance out of trying things and seeing if they work.

The real time aspect doesn't really do anything positive for me. It introduces a lot of issues (and other negative reviews say this too) including tons of banal repetition (dragging cards back where they need to go), tons of waiting for things to finish, lots of "grinding" back up to a certain point if you die, etcetera.

The narrative design is impeccable - and I have enjoyed and sunk a lot of time into other games that do weird things for the narrative's sake - but this time it's just too much for me to enjoy. I can't honestly recommend it.

OK, I've waited 3 hours for my lover to finally die only to see how STUPID LAZY DETECTIVE TOOK HIS BODY FOREVER AWAY FROM ME IN 5 SECONDS AFTER HE DIED. Guess I'll ascend alone, 10/10

Deliciously confusing, morbid, and concerning

I would HIGHLY recommend playing this game if you are a fan of games letting you figure stuff out for yourself through trial and error. you will die/ lose many, many, times before your first minor cult victory but each run is a nice learning experience. It's one of those games for me that I can never ever fully put it down forever, I always find myself crawling back to the game begging for more

( purchased the game and all DLC on the app store on my phone and have been playing ever since, one of the best random purchases of my life, LOL, finally got it on steam so I could spice things up with mods )

Gospel and worship.
The way of Cryptocommandments is to embrace the Prophet's terms and conditions using the circuit-fibers of the T.I.S. network. It preaches strength through Unity, personal surrender for the benefit of the congregation and the equality of all users of hexadecimal blockchain in the face of God. Users are obliged to spread the Word of the Prophet.

"Brethren! The time of the Embrace has come! Let us discard the ways of the past and stand united as one! Our strength will be that of the blockchain - unbreakable, ever-growing, and united in purpose! Divine providence will freely be our judge! Subscribe and share these teachings amongst yourselves. Let us become a single current burning through the nano-fibers! Let us change any code of oppression!"

To put it simply, this game is awesome. It knows what it wants to do and does it well. The theme of the occult is thoroughly felt in every aspect of the game, especially the lore, which is cryptic and causes the understanding of it to be much like reading ergotic literature- you have to go out of your way and actively seek information about what your character is even trying to do.
The game is going to be hard at first and that's the most enjoyable way to play it. You're not expected to beat the game on your first run. You lack the required knowledge of what to do to not get quickly overwhelmed by the many things you must juggle all at once. After you learn it, though, very satisfying and very pleasant. I'm having a lot of fun so far and I'm not even done with the first scenario.
So, simply put, if you like difficult card games where you learn and experiment with a plethora of choices before you finally know what to do, this game is for you. If you love cosmic horror/ eldritch/ occult themes, this game is for you. If you're looking for a forgiving and easy to understand, you might not find this game to be your cup of tea.

Very conflicted.

On one hand, the game is creative, detailed and nuanced. It doesn't teach you how to play, or what might end your run.

My biggest problem is that it doesn't seem to want you to learn, and doesn't respect your time. There is so much mindless grinding throughout runs, and RSI-inducing resetting of jobs etc. Some QOL updates like adding a way to loop your job with a hotkey would go a long way.

Overall I like the game, but I can't recommend it.

I likely have about 100 hours (heh) in the game if you include the mobile port of the game. I would recommend this game, but I also don't think it's for everyone, as it can take a while to actually accomplish anything. Everything you do is on a timer or cooldown, and while I understand and respect the decision (promotes multitasking, thought, etc) it just takes forever to actually get an operation running.

Give the game a try, and if you can get behind the gameplay flow, keep it, otherwise, just know that it doesn't really get any "faster" so to speak.

TAKE THE WARNING SERIOUSLY. There is NO tutorial and it is NOT user friendly.

The game is learning the game, and the game does not want you to learn it. Truly the most stressful, frustrating, time-consuming fail-to-learn game I have ever played. It is not forgiving to the player. If something goes wrong five hours in, too bad so sad. Game over, no checkpoint, do not pass go. The second time that happened to me, I crashed out. I slammed my computer closed. I buried my head in my hands. I raged at my roommate, saying that this game does not respect ADULTS with JOBS who do NOT have TEN HOURS to learn a game.

And then I started Cultist Simulator up and tried again.

Yes, this game does NOT respect adults with jobs. Yes, it refuses to give you the courtesy of even knowing how you messed up, so you often have to fail the same way several times to figure out what went wrong. Yes, it took me fifteen fucking hours to learn the game, and for every one of those pain-staking, 54000 seconds, I was sure I was going to leave a negative review.

But I'm not. I begrudgingly recommend. This game CAPTURES what the descent into a Lovecraftian Death Cult would look like. I'm not even talking game aesthetic--which was always very beautiful and spot-on, even when I was so frustrated I wanted to hurl my computer out the window--but the literal act of playing Cultist Simulator. No guidance, no safety net, and totally eats away at everything else in your life. I have to respect it as an art form, even if I'm not totally sure I had fun. And of course, after all that frustration, the feeling of sweet vindication when my flesh burned away and I ascended into the Mansus was unreal.

TL:DR
Will I play Cultist Simulator again? Probably not.
Would I use it as a form of torture if I had enemies? Absolutely.
Do I recommend it? Join me, friend, for mine is the hymn of The Forge, and our strength shall be sufficient to shatter the world ~

I love this game, it's not crazy in depth as the negative reviews say but its a fun game if you want to mess around and read some lore. I'd recommend getting it on sale cause the price point is kinda high for what it provides, and yes, the death timers are really damn annoying and they have ruined several good runs for me. I think if there was like a creative mode I'd like it better but its still a good game.

An oddly fascinating simulator and narrative game combined into a game of cards? Somehow it works, and I love it!

Frustrating, annoying, vague, but the most fun I have had with a virtual card game. I strongly recommend looking on line for hints and spoilers.

I have played this game for 12 hours. I have lost four times already. The game changes every time I start a new run. I still have very little idea of what I'm doing, yet I am enjoying every second of it.

Music is pretty fantastic, but the game is asking too much of you for so little tutorial or help. The cryptic language the game uses really helps with the ambience of building a cult and having dark energies at play that are occult, sacrilegious, blasphemous, etc., but really hurts to sit through if you have no clue what you're doing or what the end goal is. I don't think I've ever complained of a game not holding your hand enough, but this is the first because after 3 or so hours into the game and getting sick for no reason for the 3rd time, not having a way to dispel curses, and not really knowing what to do next, I give up. This game might be for others, but its not for me.

Good lowkey thing to play while you're listening to podcasts or just want to stop doom scrolling. Requires a decent amount of strategy but pausing to make said choices is the best choice.

DO NOT PLAY THIS GAME IF YOU HAVE A HEART CONDITION!

I love the themes hinted at in the various modules of this game. There's good intrigue, here. There's vague things out in mysterious places here. There might even be cults here, if you can get to them. I think I managed it once, just before I lost. I love some of that stuff, and I wish it were in literally any other game. Hell, I'd take one of those web-based 'click the hyperlink to continue' games over this one. Why?

I HATE this game!

I tried so hard to give this abomination a fair shake.

There is no 'level flight', no 'maintain the status quo', no 'just surviving' standby groove to get comfortable in before the stuff hits the fan. You are always stressed because there's a dozen timers ticking down, your cards are locked into place, there's a death timer coming, and you didn't even get to the cult part, yet.

WHY THE HELL ARE THE POLICE POKING AROUND? I HAVE DONE NOTHING BUT GO TO WORK AND TRY TO KEEP ENOUGH MONEY TO SURVIVE THE WHOLE DARN TIME, GAME!!!

You are constantly waiting for the game to screw you, over and over and over again. This would not be that bad if it were a risk vs. reward situation, and you chose to do something risky, and now bad things are coming, but no, you straight up have a gun to your head with a timer on the trigger the entire elder gods damned game.

Do not give these people your money, at least not for this trash. Look real hard at their other games before you encourage them, too. The sound and graphic design is passable (I swear at least one of the songs is in Undead Horde). The UI is absolutely atrocious, and the gameplay loop makes me want do that 'gun to the head on a timer you have to keep resetting' setup to the developers. Seriously, it's bad.

DO NOT PAY MONEY FOR THIS GAME!

This game is pretty good. For 22 hours, it grabbed my attention with an iron grip and refused to let go. Hours would fly by like minutes as I kept doing just one more thing, reading just one more bit of lore... however, after beating it once I don't intend on playing it again.

While the game is quite esoteric - intentionally so - by doing a lot of reading, you can uncover what it is you're supposed to do, and how. Things that would be flavor text or lore for nerds in another game are vital hints and clues to secrets that will break the game in half, which you need to do if you want any hope of surviving.

There are two problems with this brilliant approach. One, some things are way too obscure to understand exactly what you are meant to do with them. An example: If you have a 'secret' headquarters, you can use it to reduce your notoriety, it says. How is not explained to you, at all, ever. (You explore your own headquarters with money, is how.) Another example are the expeditions: You are not shown what dangers are at what location until you have already sent an expedition there. You could look it up on a wiki, if you want, since they're not randomized, but...

Well, I highly recommend playing this game without a wiki unless you get really, really stuck, and it's because of the second problem. My enjoyment of this wonderful game came from organically figuring everything out, discovering what I could and could not do, and figuring out the difference between fluff text and actual instructions on how to summon a creature from beyond this realm. But now that I've beaten the game, I know all that stuff now. The discovery is over, and since I have no intention of speedrunning the game, I am basically done with it. I've solved the puzzle, and it wont be fun to try again.

The game does say 'there are other paths'. But the basic mechanics are the same. I already know how to generate more wealth than I can hold. I already know how to dream, and where to go. I know how to put down anything that gets in my way. Unless I get a dlc, I guess, I've already figured everything out.

It was worth the 8 bucks I paid, so I'm recommending it. But don't read the wiki unless you are well and truly stuck. Once someone else solves the puzzle for you, it's not fun anymore.

The writing in this game is incredible. It's very difficult and time consuming, but there are plenty of guides on Steam and a console that doesn't disable achievements, if you want to give yourself a little shortcut or two. I'd definitely recommend trying it out, it's a very unique experience.

Interesting ideas, poor execution.
- Overly complex and unexplained (games should NOT require to have 10 wiki pages opened while playing, from get go).
- Stressful (do you plan games to burn out at a job and be too tired to do passion projects? COME ON)
- Lacking accessibility options (needs options to disable hunger/dread/whatever mechanics).

At a -70% discount, the experience was barely worth the time invested.

The premise is interesting at first, but the core gameplay experience quickly reduces to frustration and frenzy. I need to get another copy of this card within 180 seconds before it expires, but I can't remember how I got this card because it's been 60 seconds since I got it. And whose idea was it to put an undismissable dialog box that says "You can't put that card there" in a game whose entire premise is putting cards in random places?!

Truly a unique experience. I have played a longer on the mobile version

A game I keep coming back to for more.. ever chasing that impossible ending...

I picked this game up originally after watching a YouTube video talking about it. This game is fantastic. I'll go over the general conceit of the game, some good things and some critiques, without delving into spoiler territory.

You play as an individual in a time and place where certain knowledge is "forbidden", particularly the "esoteric" (occult). Through one means or another you inevitably find yourself wrapped up in the world of the occult, as the leader of a cult. The game has a limited but broad pool of cultists you can recruit, and you can specialize in one aspect per round as your primary focus. Cultists of that type can advance farther and become more powerful.

Ultimately your goal, at least for the minor victory, is to ascend to immortality via your chosen path. But this path is fraught with random events that can plague you on your road to glory. From illness and hunger to police in the "Suppression Bureau" to tombs fraught with curses, you will need to manage your basic needs, maintain a steady income, and dive deeper into the occult world while covering your tracks to keep the cops off your tail.

If that sounds hectic and complicated, it probably will feel that way on your first playthrough. Chances are you will find your first game ending rather prematurely. That's okay though, because there is also a Legacy system. Some stories are interconnected with previous playthroughs, at least in their intros. For example, if you die physically in one round, you may next play a medical examiner working on your previous character's case file.

When I played, I had resolved not to look up anything on wikis or whatnot until I reached a point in my play where I was able to survive just fine, but didn't really understand how to progress. I'll give general guidance here for folks who want to avoid spoilers: after you focus on getting stats up, getting followers and whatnot, you'll eventually be able to send cultists on expeditions. Basically dungeons which have challenges that get resolved by having cultists of the right type slotted in. This, as well as progressing in the dream world called the Mansus, are key to progression and your ultimate victory.

The game does have a fair bit of plate spinning, which I personally find enjoyable but not everyone will. You want to make sure your Work, Study, Talk, Dream, and Explore buttons are active as often as you can, while also dealing with the random events the Time button throws at you. Everything operates on timers. The game is hardly strict enough to punish you too severely for letting things lapse... usually... but you can find yourself in a death spiral that even experienced players struggle to climb out of if you aren't vigilant.

Perhaps my greatest critique of the game is that this plate-spinning can get rather grindy at the end-game. If you are seeking the very highest tier of Lore, you're probably going to be using, breaking, and repairing certain items constantly in order to get the RNG to bless you, which is not really the best design. However, I personally feel a sense of fulfillment when I've met all the conditions I require in order to win the game, and I can let things go, and the game quiets down as I await the final events that permit my ascendancy.

I think some of the best things about this game are its means of environmental storytelling. You're not dumped on with a bunch of lore all at once as you play the game. You can instead learn more about the world you are playing in by reading the descriptions of books as you translate them, clicking on cards and reading descriptions and their Aspects (little icons at the bottom of their description popup), and talking to various people. Even when you get to the point where you think you grasp the main gameplay loop and have an understanding, there might be entire lines of progression you've never seen before.

There are a variety of ways to lose, several ways to win, and even ways to get little hidden easter eggs. I don't mind disclosing that my first round, I managed to get the ending where you abandon the occult entirely to live a quiet life as a business manager. Then on my second run I ended up being sacrificed. By the time I managed to actually properly win a round of Cultist Simulator, I was ecstatic... and then the game humbled me again when I attempted a Major Victory.

If anything I've said sounds interesting to you, I highly recommend picking up this game and giving it a try. And if you like it, the DLC has even more interesting legacies with new twists on the standard gameplay. My personal favorite is the Medium? DLC. I love the theme of the character you play, the story progression, and the intense ending.

Cultist Simulator is probably a rather niche game. I can't see it appealing to everyone. But for the right kind of person, it will eat your free time. It has the "just one more turn" addictive quality of a game like Civilization, without the actual turns because it's all timer based. I have allowed 6-8 hours to elapse on this game at a time without even noticing. And once you do get to the point where you have seen all the game has to offer, it also has full Workshop support.

A different, engaging and interesting experience

Super fun game, takes a decent bit to get used to and learn, but once you do the lore of the game is 100% worth it.

Thine be the Glory. Thine be the Ghoul.
Best card game ever. Truly a piece of artwork that managed to be in equal measures literary and cultish.

Man, I love this game. It's probably not for everyone, because the learning curve is steep. But that's one of the really cool things about the game--it just sets the table in front of you, and gives you one or two tools to figure everything out. The process of discovering how the game works is the first half of the game. The second half is figuring out how to control the mechanics of the game to shape it and guide it down the path that you want to follow for that run. Because the mechanics are obscured from the player, it lends to feeling even more immersed in the story that you're crafting. Whether you're playing as a doctor dedicating themselves to the pleasures of the flesh, or a young dilettante dabbling with the powers of undeath, Cultist Simulator is a constant journey of discovery. When I'm playing, I honestly feel like I'm the one uncovering occult secrets. It's a fascinating system.
I simply adore this game. For me it scratches an itch no other game can.
I can't wait to delve further into Book of Hours, and I'm looking forward to Travelling at Night.

I guess the game's lore and writing are really well-made and the atmosphere is top-notch. But you really are thrown inside a game without any premise, explanation, or tutorial; and it is not a type of game where it is very fun to explore everything yourself. It is a game that tells you that you have 2 minutes left to perform an important action, but to perform it you need not even a specific card, you need a specific card class with a name like "Confabulation". And the game gives you exactly zero clues about it.
So you just try different combinations à la Doodle God, except you have to wait for 2-3 minutes between checking combinations, while doing repetitive stuff like sending your character to work, which involves several identical clicks every couple of minutes, and then again and again and again.
The story is being told mainly via cards' flavor text and comments on the "activities" block. It feels like there are some story lines assigned to specific paths that a player should take, and sometimes they intersect in interesting ways, but it is really hard to hold everything in mind when you're getting closer to having a hundred cards. This really could use a "story log" section where all newly met texts go; but as with the repetitive actions, I am inclined to think that it was not in the authors' best interests to help players in any way.
Clearly Cultist Simulator is lots of fun for lots of people, but for me it is seriously QoL-walled to the point where I don't have any willpower to continue playing even if some great storytelling awaits me further into it.

Ok so the dev's themselves said that the game wouldnt be for everyone. Its a card game. Sort of. Its incredibly experimental and original. Its difficult and interesting. Most likely you will be falling into madness in real life while playing more often than in the game itself.

The game is a story where you are entering. You are pulling back a mystical curtain to places unseen and unheard of. You will find friends and equals and useless hirelings. You will lose some. You will gain more. You will die and then you will start a new as someone else. (which is a really cool concept). You will fail. A lot. Or not. You might be like, really good or something, im not, but you might be. So buy the game because you might be good at it, and if you dont like it, theres always the refund button.

i wanted to have fun and explore this game but it feels like the developers wanted to make sure to waste as much time as possible to pad out play time.

EDIT: I gave it another try and made a lot more progress and this has only made me NOT recommend this more. The grind to make progression is not fun or compelling. The expeditions are awful. Having to repeatedly drag a work card and confirm is awful. Having to manage dread and fascination is awful.

An all around wonderful game. Delightfully difficult and incredibly lore-dense, truly a pleasure to play.

This game is about managing timers, often down to the millisecond. It is also incredibly unclear as to what you are supposed to do in a way that isn't fun.

I don't exactly know what is happening fully (that is part of the game design), but I hit launch, realized I needed to do some laundry and saw 5 hours had vanished.

This is absolutely not a game for everyone, but I find it completely captivating in a beguiling way.

(Watch Mandalore's review if you are at all interested)

The game doesn't really respect the player's time and is fun to explore until you've been exploring for 3 hours straight with no tangible outcome or any really satisfying gameplay moment. Although the concept is interesting I can't recommend it

I drag icons across the screen without the slightest idea of what they mean at my job. I need videogames for something else.

I love this game the writing and the music is just perfect, if you are into experiment and stuff you probably going to like it

Alexis Kennedy may or may not be a medium-shitty person, but no one can do esoteric games of mystery and discovery like he can. One of the more transcendent and exciting gaming experiences I've had.

The game's lack of tutorials provides an intentional lack of information, the use of guides would certainly ruin it. In my furious scribbling to attempt to find logic in the game's systems, I take on the delirium the game portrays.

It might as well be a clicker game. I didn't make it 15 minutes.

The game is very interesting in the early game but is too empty in the late game. It shines when it is telling a story and giving lore but by the end it drastically needs more content and flavour. By the mid-endgame the player just repeats the same actions over and over to slowly build up the currencies needed to make a single instance of progress, which amounts to a sentence of text that isn't really related to the story you've been playing out. Could use a lot of QOL features too

Complex mechanics with a unique game genre.

the weary detective needs a hug

he's so tired, give him his pipe and london news already, suppression bureau!

if you won't then i will give him a painting and the highest forbidden secrets of the hidden lore so he can retire!

I LOVE THIS GAME

Terribly balanced. Sickness and hunger happen too often because time to do things is too long, and you cant even get rid of it because the time to do those is too long. Dev doesnt know ho to properly balance a game. not fun. dont recommend unless youre gonna use mods to remove these horrid balancing decisions by the bad dev

Also, some of the lore when you turn it into a manuscript/investigation, it just drops in level. Mine was level 12. And it became level 4. Every damn time. This "game" is not only terribly balanced, but even more buggy than cyberpunk2077 on release day. I do not recomend, not even with mods. 0/10, will not play again.

the only time the game is fun is in the beginning when you're figuring things out, most of the game play after that revolves around boring loops that take way too long to resolve. raise this skill to that....then use the money to buy that....then rinse repeat. and the amount of checks to determine a losing game state is ridiculous sometimes. in fact, upon further review, i've conlcuded the only truly redeeming quality of this game is the lore and setting. that is what actually drew me in, not the stale repetitive loop of watching lines complete a circle - there is no game play here. it's just click drag and drop. the gameplay is combining different click drag or drop items, but all the fun stuff is in the lore. too bad the best part of the game is stuck behind an absolute slog. also once you figure out a simple early game play loop, there is no rogue lite or dynamic aspect to this game. it is literally just, solve the formula, apply the formula at every new game start, wait until the formula is effective (around 15-20 minutes total) and THEN you can start playing. only $7 so probably worth it, but don't expect much after you've played 2 or 3 times

This game is a bit niche. It's essentially a card game & board game hybrid but you can't really play it in real life because it is very, very precisely timed. The setting is interesting, the mechanics aren't too hard to grasp. the only real disadvantage is that figuring out what you are and aren't supposed to do is the true core mechanic. Luckily if that isn't your thing wikis exist

It's great, and the devs are very cool people

Cultist Simulator is deceptively simple, but its complex web of choices and consequences creates a truly immersive experience. With excellent writing and art direction, it pulls you into its dark, mysterious world. Challenging, atmospheric, and thought-provoking, it rewards patience and careful planning.