Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
S3 Ep221: Cult of the Lamb
88 Plays3 years ago
MINOR SPOILERS and then after warning FULL SPOILERS: Cult of the Lamb
Don't you want to be a cult leader? Since the death of god there has been a vacancy open.
Intro:
SoapstonePodcast@gmail.com
Like our podcast? Like our podcast! We'll post when new episodes are uploaded!
https://www.facebook.com/SoapstonePodcast/
Update Description
Don't you want to be a cult leader? Since the death of god there has been a vacancy open.
Intro:
- Cult of the Lamb - Start a Cult
- Cult of the Lamb - Saviour
SoapstonePodcast@gmail.com
Like our podcast? Like our podcast! We'll post when new episodes are uploaded!
https://www.facebook.com/SoapstonePodcast/
Update Description
Recommended
Transcript
Welcome and Podcast Setup
00:00:30
Speaker
How's it going, everyone? Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. My name is Jake and I'm joined by my co-host is always Dave. How's it going today, Dave? It's going pretty good. Enjoying the Thursday vibes. Yeah, it's definitely Thursday and we're recording during the day, during the work day. I adjusted the microphone slightly. I apologize if that threw anybody off.
00:00:55
Speaker
That's why we take our lunch breaks. It's not because it's, you know, federally required. It's more because you have to account for your employees podcasts. What else are they going to do it? Yeah, it's definitely not federally required. I think like half hour is most is legally required, but we've had the benefit of living in cushy desk jobs.
00:01:23
Speaker
where they're just like, I mean, yeah, I guess, you know, sure. Eat lunch. Hold on a sec. Your desk is cushy. Mine's so rigid and hard. Hmm. Interesting. I hear people are into that. But no, actually, my desk is literally just a for the time for recording. It's a it's like a laptop stand or like a projector stand or something like that. It has room for literally the audio interface and the laptop.
00:01:53
Speaker
I have my beverage sitting on the floor so I can reach down and pick it up. I've seen it. I feel like it's something that you'd give to an intern where you're like, hey, listen, some of the resources didn't come through yet. We'll get you set up at the desk eventually. This is where you're at for now.
00:02:09
Speaker
The true irony here is like I'm actually surrounded by boxes from like when we got the couch and stuff like that. So I have large boxes all over this room. If I were to just pile them in this corner, it would be an objectively better desk for the purpose of what we're doing right now. But yeah, didn't think about that until we started recording.
00:02:32
Speaker
That would be a fun idea to just have a janky cardboard structure or like lattice of like, yep, it's it supports things. I think what would be funny is like to get that that that desk shape out of the boxes and then get Jenny to like use permanent marker or something and like make a desk outline like, OK, these are the legs down the cardboard. Like fill in the table a little bit. I like that idea.
Lunch Break Nostalgia and Gaming
00:03:00
Speaker
It'd be funny.
00:03:01
Speaker
Um, but yeah, definitely, definitely Thursday. Now this week's been real busy, so I'm glad we're recording a little bit later. Um, and not during the middle of the work day. Um, yeah, it's, it's always nice to have the, the room for flexibility. Yeah. I do kind of miss like, um, we used to play smash over lunch or like watch Starcraft or do something like that. And those are, those are fun times.
00:03:32
Speaker
When did we play Smash over lunch? That might have started more after you left, which is kind of kind of unfortunate. But for a while, you know, like the big TV that was was back there. I saw some of the other guys that were like they had their switch set up like the switch on the little stubs that it stands up on. And they put it like on one of the desks and they were all sitting in that center space between the cubes. And they're just watching this tiny little switch screen.
00:04:02
Speaker
Um, playing smash and I'm like, what is wrong with you people? I just walked over, grabbed this like big TV, I guess for the listeners, what's probably like 30 inch or something like that. It's real big. Um,
00:04:17
Speaker
carry it over, drop it down on the desk, HDMI in. I'm like, there you go. Went back out and continued whatever I was doing. It is funny to see certain things that you notice in other people that you might not notice in yourself as far as habits of, oh, I just do it this way because it's the most straightforward thing. You could improve it by doing one simple thing like, oh, oh, yeah, I guess you're right. Yeah, I get that a lot.
00:04:47
Speaker
Part of growing up, I guess, or getting older is like it always hits you. Crap. This is such a simple thing that I could have been doing better for so long. Right. Like the the realization of how much this could have been already improved, you know, really, really continues. But that's fun. You know, it means that there's always stuff to learn. So don't use the little baby switch screen if you have a 30 inch television nearby.
00:05:19
Speaker
That's, that's my life advice. It comes early in the podcast. My advice comes later. So you'll have to tune in for that.
Exploring Cult of the Lamb
00:05:28
Speaker
And I'll have to think of something over the course of the next 15 minutes. So it's about right. But you know what you could use a switch screen for. What's that? Playing video games. One of those games that's on the switch is Devolver Digital's Cult of the Lamb made by MassiveMonster.
00:05:49
Speaker
That sounds interesting and fun. Please tell me more. That's all I got. That's, that was the extent of my prep for this episode. Um, no, I didn't play it on the switch because I didn't play it. And that would, that would be funny. It's like, let's just go back to talking about furniture with drawings on it. Um, now cult of the lamb was, uh, I think part of it is because this, this year it has not been super hype for games for me, at least it's got Elden ring.
00:06:20
Speaker
That pause was just came out. Yeah, intentionally left blank. Like I really haven't picked up much else. I know there was a second Horizon game that came out, but like, yes, I can't be fucked to even look at it until it's like six years from now. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I don't want to triple open world. It's going to be very much like the first one I played. Mm hmm.
00:06:47
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, we had we had an episode earlier in the year that goes into what we were kind of looking forward to this year. And I feel like it was probably a little more difficult. It was probably kind of difficult then, but since then, even more things have kind of fallen off. So it sounds
00:07:08
Speaker
It sounds like we're nagging Cult of the Lamb to be like, hey, no other no good games came out. So we played this. But honestly, it was one of the ones I was excited for.
00:07:19
Speaker
Yeah, there was very few on my radar in general, because I'm very much in my own lane and wheelhouse of like, I don't like many things when I do like something. I'm like, I hope it's good. It's like for me, it was, I think Tunic was this year as well. I was excited for that. And then Cult of the Land just looked super interesting and cute.
00:07:40
Speaker
So let's follow up on that. And a lot of people were thankfully in the same boat. So we have a bunch of friends on discord who are also have played through it already. We are playing through it now. So it's nice to have that cult. I would say like, um, to, to support your, your statement there, that like, when you like a game, it's generally because it's pretty good. I don't think you've ever recommended a bad game to me.
00:08:07
Speaker
The closest thing was something that was like, this is kind of social. I'm not sure if it's going to be great or not. Like back for blood. Right. Like a lot of people got into back for blood initially. And I was like, maybe, but you never were like, you got to pick this up. No. Um, and usually with any type of game recommendation, I try and tailor it to the person. So if I'm recommending games to Rachel, I won't do anything. It's like.
00:08:32
Speaker
difficult for the sake of difficult, um, super meat boy. Yeah, no. I'm like, cause that's not her, her jam. Whereas sometimes I might dabble in that might be interested in it. And they're like, for you trying to think what games I've put you on. How would you socio-type me? I play the occasional JRPG. That's definitely more.
00:09:00
Speaker
Rachel's Forte, I think. Um, yeah, she's, she's a pro whereas you're an amateur and I'm not even in the same space. I'm an amateur also. Yeah. Yeah. No. Okay. Um, yeah. I mean, I play, I play a wide variety of games, but I actually don't have a follow up to that. I guess I just do.
00:09:24
Speaker
but yeah, I wouldn't say you have like a specific niche of like, oh, this is a Jake game. Like you don't have a, I only do tactics games, right? I only do, trying to remember what the fuck a Starcraft is again. RTS. And RTS. There's so few and far between and it's, it's a dead shot. You're not entirely wrong. It's very rarely.
00:09:49
Speaker
one comes out, and very rarely a good one comes out, but that was the RTS. You'll pick and choose from that. One thing I think I tend to not usually recommend to you, because it's not as much your forte, whereas I will binge drink them, or roguelikes. Yeah, I was going to say. So for me, I grew up on some Binding of Isaac, and for whatever reason, my
00:10:12
Speaker
my brain just latched onto it. So when I found other roguelikes, I'm like, oh, I'll compare it to this. How do I like this? I tried some other ones that were okay. Tried some that are good, like Hades. Whereas like you got onto the Hades train because I think you enjoyed super giant games you enjoy. Yeah.
00:10:29
Speaker
the roguelike aspect for how quick and clean it was. So, tying back to cult of the lamb, it's kind of split between a 50-50 of you're out there doing some roguelike shit, progressing the story, fighting some baddies and some bosses, collecting resources, and that's all to fund your cult. And that's kind of like your home base and cult management portion. Right. So of that, how did you like the roguelike aspect of this?
00:10:58
Speaker
Were you on board? I think it's like, I think it's good, but like specifically not great. And it's specifically not amazing. Right. Um, I didn't play a ton of binding of Isaac, but I played enough to get a feel for like what it's establishing for RNG and for progression and all of that.
00:11:22
Speaker
And if you're going into this just for like the roguelike portion, I think one of those dedicated games, FTL, Binding of Isaac, Rogue Legacy, something like that is probably going to be more your forte. I don't think there's a reason to really jump into Cult of the Lamb just to like dive into a dungeon and kill things. It's just not that strong mechanically.
00:11:46
Speaker
I would agree with that wholeheartedly. I don't want to be the guy who's like shooting in the ground within like the first 10 minutes. But we can revive it later. Resurrect. Is that really a... First, I will sacrifice it.
00:12:03
Speaker
for the podcast content, but I did not really enjoy the combat. I felt like the combat was fine if I got upgrades for damage and attack speed, and I already had a fast weapon. Otherwise, it felt very painful. The enemy moves are telegraphed enough, but it felt like I was just mashing roll and then mashing the attack button.
00:12:26
Speaker
which is not very much different from how I play Hades. But yeah, it's just it didn't feel as good to me as far as like my options felt very limited between what weapons I'm given might be able to change them up in the run a little bit. And the magic spells felt a lot of different colors of the same thing. And the hitboxes do not feel that good to me. Even like the hitboxes that I was putting out and like I didn't expect that to hit or I did expect it to hit and it didn't.
00:12:53
Speaker
So that part felt a little clunky, but I will say the strength of the game is probably closer to the cult management side. It's nice because you're never stuck doing one. You're very much usually going back and forth in between.
00:13:11
Speaker
So like you can go out for some rajak. Yeah. And you're like, Oh shit, everybody's hungry. Yes. I only go cook some meals. And then you focus on the cult. Tivation. Um, and building that up. I think like it does show that the developers, um, they were cognizant of where their fun was for the most part. And so like.
00:13:37
Speaker
Yeah, so just high level. The game is basically split into those two spheres, like your cult compound management and then your actual combat, which involves some boss fights. It involves RNG, room exploration, kind of very similar to Slay the Spire.
00:13:53
Speaker
where you pick your path based off the contents of whatever you want to see. And I think they knew that the Roguelike combat room by room exploration thing was not gonna be like, it wasn't gonna hold the whole experience up, specifically because of this sort of ongoing decay
Weaponry and Mechanics in Cult of the Lamb
00:14:17
Speaker
that requires your intervention back at the compound, right?
00:14:23
Speaker
You need to feed your followers of whom you pick them up, you recruit them from the combat portions of the game, right? Send them back and indoctrinate them. But none of them can create food themselves. It's not a function of the game that you can assign someone as a chef, like this is, you know, Rimworld or something like that.
00:14:44
Speaker
They explicitly made the decision to say, no, no, you need to go back and make meals for them because, and I think this is smart on their part. They knew that the combat portion wasn't going to hold up for an extended play session. And.
00:15:03
Speaker
Like at the other piece, sorry, go ahead. I would argue a part of that's true. Like that's probably definitely a factor. Um, my knee jerk assumption was probably that as a cult leader, it's kind of like building up your dependence.
00:15:19
Speaker
Oh, they depend on you. So you have to go back, take care of them and do your sermons and stuff. It kind of encourages that cycle of, hey, you've maxed out on prayer, you have to go back, collect everything. Oh, it's a new day, do a sermon type thing. Right. So it just encourages the going back.
00:15:38
Speaker
Yeah, there are a lot of elements to the game that I think support that belief. They're using gameplay to support a cultish ideology and to drive that home. So the natural question is, if you are incentivized to spend so much time in the compound, why would you go out on these missions? And for the most part, three main things. Push the main plot forward.
00:16:06
Speaker
gather resources necessary for building things at your compound and get new followers.
00:16:14
Speaker
And the game gets gradually more difficult, like across, you know, they do kind of the traditional Zelda thing. There's multiple dungeons, four I think in this case, and then the final door. And so there are some upgrades, although not a lot, not as many as I would like back at base using that devotion from the people like praying to improve your combat abilities or give you like an extra heart or something.
00:16:43
Speaker
Yeah. So overall, like you collect prayer and then cash that in to upgrade different. I want to say tiers of access for when you're going out on runs. Yeah. So it's like, Oh, you can now get this tier of weapon as a starting weapon. You can now access new spells and then they'll show up in the pool. Um,
00:17:07
Speaker
It never felt crazily impactful. But at the same time, let's say you start out, you have a level three weapon, and you don't know exactly what that means as far as damage or anything. But towards the end, it's like, oh, level 16 of weapon. And I'm sure if you do it side by side, you'd be like, oh, painfully obvious. But it doesn't feel as impactful as you're unlocking it. And then once you have everything unlocked there, that's it.
00:17:36
Speaker
Like there's nothing to do with your extra devotion that you're collecting. It just kind of exists. You have the option throughout like the course of a run. So if like, uh, items drop, they're always one level higher than what you have now, right? To try to convince you to perhaps try something you wouldn't otherwise try, which I think is smart, but, um, it's always just a spell or a weapon, right? And the, the weapons are like,
00:18:02
Speaker
Some of the archetypes you get later are definitely the strongest. I think Godly Weapon is the last one, which just deals more damage. And that's kind of boring for a capstone, because that's the most straightforward thing you could possibly do, deal more damage.
00:18:19
Speaker
Yeah, it's like, do you want a dagger that's fast? Do you want a sword that's, you know, well balanced and speed and damage? Or do you want a hammer? Or do you want a slow hammer? So basically, it's a sliding scale of damage to losing attack speed.
00:18:37
Speaker
And I felt like for the last tier of the highest damage, uh, was the slowest attack speed. It was so, so painfully slow. Where if you had like an Emmy, who's like jumping around a whole bunch, I'm like, Oh, I have to read where they're going. Line up my attack. Um, I just wasn't a fan of that. So I'd prefer to go like, give me a dagger. I'll try and hope for some damage or crits and we'll see what happens.
00:19:02
Speaker
Yeah, I did, I did go in the opposite direction, which I guess is a positive for the game, right? If we had different experiences with weapons and different preferences, but like I really enjoyed the slow weapons because kind of going back to the question about hit boxes and things like that, I found that if I was
00:19:19
Speaker
really lining up my attacks for these weapons that had a bunch of reach. I could just do a little bit more, the Dark Souls 2, okay your turn, okay my turn, okay your turn, and kind of just crush through people. And I also covered the downside of having a really slow primary weapon with fast spells.
00:19:42
Speaker
Because I think that's if you're doing like optimized build, which is completely unnecessary for this game, right? There's a lot of bonuses you can get to like the spell casting effects.
00:19:56
Speaker
Yeah, I do want to call out for everybody who hasn't played it. You do have one weapon and one spell. And you can swap them out possibly through the run. But that is it. So it doesn't feel like there's a whole lot of mix-up or synergy. It's just that's what you got. Uh-huh. Yeah.
00:20:16
Speaker
Yeah, so a lot of times your runs pretty defined, relatively defined early, because again, a lot of these options are kind of samey. And if you find something you like, you're probably just going to stick with it. But I was just going to say, one thing I did appreciate for development is
00:20:37
Speaker
one of the buildings, it's like a demonic shrine in your camp, allowed you to temporarily convert your followers into basically little summons for the next dungeon run. And different types of followers would have different abilities and things like that. And some of those were really cool for the combat portion.
Art Style and Storytelling in Cult of the Lamb
00:21:01
Speaker
And it just kind of made me wish that the combat portion had more depth to it.
00:21:05
Speaker
So you could exercise those abilities.
00:21:11
Speaker
You're making demons. Exercise, I thought, was a play on words. Ah, OK. Yeah, I mean, it was now. I do like that as an option, but I didn't really find myself using that. Also, I didn't find myself using a lot of, like, I didn't collect all of the cards. Yeah, in Tarot. It basically, like, passives you can build up for your run. And certain ones you can unlock just by playing the game. Like, oh, you can now have an option to have more temporary hearts or something else.
00:21:39
Speaker
But a lot of them, I'm like, when would I use this? Oh, you get bonus damage during nighttime. A very narrow window. Okay. Then some of the upgrades for some of the side quests from NPCs. I'm like, I don't know when I would use this particularly. It's cool that it's there, but it just wasn't for me in my runs. But that's the last time I want to dunk on it for right now. I do want to talk about something like the design.
00:22:08
Speaker
Okay, I gotta say like the game is cute as fuck the animations and like the art style are very like
00:22:17
Speaker
whimsical almost as far as like the followers and I'm getting big like animal crossing vibes. Yeah. Like how they interact, how they talk. It's somewhere between like don't starve an animal crossing. Um, and the, and the way it's portrayed, it's got more of that kinetic energy. Um, I think, but I don't know what that means. Wow. That sounds like I said nothing, but yeah, it's somewhere between. I was going to be like, I assume that a listener knows what that is and I won't ask. No, I mean like, um,
00:22:47
Speaker
The animations kind of flow together. There's like more frames to them than something like Don't Starve, which is much more kind of like paper cutouts running across the terrain.
00:23:00
Speaker
Okay. That's fair. Yeah. It felt kind of very smooth and cartoony. Um, and I liked that, but also outside of even your followers who were kind of like generic copy pastes cause you can change their form and whatever. Um, but they're all roughly the same, but the specific NPCs that can give you like side quests. Ooh, your designs, great. The specific voice they have for each character is great. And each one I encountered, I'm like, what's your deal? You're cool.
00:23:29
Speaker
And it's always impressive when like you play a lot of games, you see a lot of characters and you're like, what are you going to do? Subvert my expectations and surprise me. And it was just very fun. Again, full of whimsy. Yeah. Where I was always like, Oh, nice. It was very, very pleasant to meet a new NPC and see what their shit was. Yeah. I think the NPCs kind of reminded me of, um,
00:23:54
Speaker
Supergiant NPCs, not all exclusively that good. But if you're catching like hints of inspiration from that, you're in the right spot. You're in the right place, right? In particular, like the one of the early ones you see is like a fisherman who's definitely a man and not a fish. And it's like speaking to you with like this blub, blub, blub voice.
00:24:21
Speaker
uh while like the dialogue is running across the screen and i'm just like this is so good so good one of the ones i really liked not for design as much because it was like like a very
00:24:37
Speaker
Richard's scary level of design on this character is like a simple fat cat, which is basically its body was a square. It's like one of the shopkeepers you can come across in your runs. But the character is actually really interesting because like just in some passive dialogue, like you in the care as a character might be like running through like I want to buy some stuff in the shop and call it a day and move on to the next room. But if you listen to the dialogue,
00:25:02
Speaker
She's like, yeah, like some cultists came and like stole my children and sacrificed them to a thing. But like, I just hope that they were as worshipful to that God as I was type thing. And you're like, oh, there's there's subtext here. There's a little bit. So it was cool to see like the play on. You got to have a cult and also maybe religion is not the best thing.
00:25:27
Speaker
Yeah, they um, I feel like we can talk more about this story briefly Maybe like like like at the end kind of give a recap and thoughts on it, but they do drop a lot of hints Throughout this and one of the encounters you can get while dungeon delving is like question mark and oftentimes that will be you know an NPC who
00:25:48
Speaker
sometimes it's sometimes it could be someone who might I don't know if they're the ones that join you if that also always has the follower symbol but you could run across people that could join you and otherwise people who could help you out and would give you like a little bit a little bit more lore or world building as to what's going on which um
00:26:09
Speaker
I don't know if this is intentional or not, but it's not really like thrown at you. It's not like here's everything that's going on. You're much more focused on your immediate needs, on the cult, on things like that, which is the cult mindset, right? You internalize rather than externalize. You're not like getting information from outside. You're focusing on all this stuff going on in your immediate circle. Right. So I'm probably giving the game too much credit there, but maybe not.
00:26:40
Speaker
I do like, again, that it is optional. You don't have the lore forced down your throat. You can wait for a Vadi video on it. Yeah. But if you're actively looking for it, there is story. There is a world there. And it's interesting enough to have me engaged and at least ask some questions as I'm playing of, I wonder what this means. I wonder where this is going. Or to just make some assumptions like, I think the end game will be like this.
00:27:07
Speaker
Yeah, but again, it shows like my investment in it because of how they're kind of dropping those questions and maybe having some things answered here and there or the hopes that it will be answered at some point.
00:27:20
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. It's a good storytelling device where over the course of the game, you're really, um, you're getting the impression that there's more going on behind the scenes and like the best games deliver on those questions in a pretty meaningful way and good games answer those questions to some extent. Um, but really bad games don't even tease it. Right. And this game,
00:27:47
Speaker
has some teasing and some delivering and overall I think it's positive.
Cult Management and Strategy
00:27:55
Speaker
It helps the world building at least. Oh yeah. How did you feel about the cult management side of things? This is where almost all of my time is spent. Same. So this is going to be a fairly broad question. So I'm going to break it out into different parts, partially for you and then partially for the listeners.
00:28:17
Speaker
One of the things you can do with your cult is establish doctrines, which are basically rules that your cult will follow. But for you as the player, it's, oh, my cultists will passively interpret things like death in a good way in certain situations or a negative way in other situations where it will allow you to unlock rituals, which again, depending on what it is, might boost a cult member's devotion or decrease it.
00:28:45
Speaker
Basically, it's a bunch of resource management type stuff for an overall economy. What do you believe in? What do you do? We're pretty much all the doctrines. The other part of it is, I guess, managing economy for building farms or trying to generate resources within your cult and then
00:29:09
Speaker
I guess just how you treated your cultists. Yeah. Like, did you make them all the same type, same name? Were you just like, whatever they came in as, as is fine. I actually had a discussion on the side, kind of about this with, um, um, some other people in discord. And, uh, we were talking about how you can customize the cultist and we're like, it does feel a little bit like.
00:29:34
Speaker
like the obliteration of an identity to change what this person fundamentally looks like and rename them as they join the cult. And I get that that's the point, right? Again, joining a cult, obliteration of identity. But like I started to do it a little bit, like be like, OK, well, I'll make the farmers kind of look like this and I'll make, you know, the people who are going to be gathering resources looking like this.
00:29:59
Speaker
And for some other reasons, I stopped doing that, but also because I was just like, this is a cool character model and this is the only character that looks like this in my colony and they're gone. Like, right. I'm like, I made them look like the pre-order Cthulhu or whatever. And ultimately, like that kind of just bothered me, you know, to the point where I didn't do it unless someone had absolutely terrible stats and then I made them look like a meatball. So I could sacrifice them later.
00:30:31
Speaker
I will say I did do some of the, oh, certain types will look like this. And initially for like good half the game, like, yeah, whatever. That's who that character is. That's their identity. They can come in and do whatever. And later I'm like, oh, I got like a frog thing. That'd be cute. So I made one a frog. I'm like, I'll have you on prayer.
00:30:53
Speaker
And then going forward, I made them all frogs who were praying to me. I'm like, I like this. I didn't finish it. So it was like all of the cult was frogs. But I did start down that track. Yeah.
00:31:07
Speaker
The doctrines are definitely one of the game's strongest points, though. It's a binary choice. Anytime you make a pick, you're completely blocking out the other option for the entire playthrough. And this is one of the things that led to some discussion between me and some other people we had.
00:31:27
Speaker
some feedback to make an efficient choice tree for the doctrines that we've posted to Discord. And it's just like, here's the rationale. We think these ones are good early. Like far too much analysis for this game. Pick this tree, pick this tree, pick this tree. This one's going to be better later on, things like that.
00:31:48
Speaker
A lot of them, a lot of them actually feel like they have a pretty correct choice. Um, but then others are actual big trade-offs, right? Like if you make the choice not to get, uh, so I think you get sacrifice regardless. I think that's like a plot, um, ability. I could be wrong on that. It's I'm going to just say probably us. I don't remember exactly offhand.
00:32:17
Speaker
but like some of the other ones can be very impactful. And I, for winter, so here's an example one, right? For like food, how do you call it manages food? One of the options is feast, which feeds everybody for the day, gives them a lot of faith, which is basically their contentedness. And the other option is fasting.
00:32:43
Speaker
which makes it so their hunger bar doesn't move for three days, right? Doesn't make them happy. There may even be a faith penalty, I don't recall. But I was just like, I'm a good guy and food is kind of a problem. Yeah. Feast, right?
00:32:59
Speaker
Um, but later I was looking at it and I was like, the thing that really sucks is when I'm diving into these dungeons, people start to starve. I really should have taken fasting. Right. Um, cause then I would just wouldn't have that time constraint.
00:33:14
Speaker
But it's something you might not think about while you're playing the game. No, I think a lot of the decisions, at least I made, were very much knee-jerk as far as do I want to be a dick or not? Because some of the options were like, oh, anytime somebody dies, they'll be like, oh, that's a good thing if they were sacrificed. If they die naturally, they're like, oh, that's not so good.
00:33:39
Speaker
I don't remember which option I chose for that. I tried to do things that were as nice to the cult members as possible.
00:33:48
Speaker
I know one of them was they revered the elderly. So if somebody was just old, old people can't work. They don't really do anything. They just kind of walk around. They can't be assigned tasks. So what I would do is I'd let somebody get old. If morale was ever going low from just passively over time or from another ritual that kind of cost some of that devotion, I would marry them.
00:34:16
Speaker
And they're like, oh, a marriage is happening. Hooray. And then one of the stipulations with marriage is if you're married to a bunch of people, which you can do, it doesn't negatively impact, but they might, your spouses might start to bicker amongst each other and become jealous. Yeah.
00:34:32
Speaker
Because they're old, that person is probably going to die soon, so my spouse would die and then I would compost them. And it was a great cycle. And then maybe you could bring them back to life, remarry them again and compost them again. Yeah, if you pick resurrection, right?
00:34:50
Speaker
Yeah, I picked the opposite. There was like respect your elders is one option and the other was like the good die young. And respect your elders gives you like a daily faith bonus I think for every elder you have in your colony, but they can't work. They still eat food. They still need a place to sleep, but they can't work. They're basically free loading. It's just like real life.
00:35:13
Speaker
and you die young is like okay on the opposite side of this if people die naturally from like old age you get like a massive faith penalty
00:35:25
Speaker
But you get faith bonuses when people are sacrificed. So in sacrifice it has advantages and other ways you get resources for it and things like that. So it really does like play into these different approaches you could take to managing.
00:35:47
Speaker
your um your colony and like how you view the followers right are they the resources to feed me the answer is yes but you can play like that's not the case
00:35:58
Speaker
yeah it is if you remember telltale games that small company and what they did towards the end of wolf among us or really any of their games they'll kind of give a breakdown of like hey here's all the players who played this game the choices they made here i would love something like that for this because it's very telling of who you are as a person or at least how you approach in that playthrough maybe you were trying to
00:36:24
Speaker
Basically role play as a sinister asshole or maybe you're trying to be a good Samaritan and that's normally not normally how you play But it'd be cool to see the breakup of oh actually not many people chose a specific doctrine or A lot of people just never cleaned up poop for whatever reason. Uh-huh Whereas I enjoyed cleaning up poop because I could use it to fertilize farms Yeah Yeah, some of the some of the some of the choices are interesting and that was the
00:36:52
Speaker
Out of all the things that made me think about doing a subsequent playthrough, using some of the other doctrines was probably the biggest motivation. Like I picked the ability to ascend followers instead of murder them. And as I was going through the game, I was like, well, my ascension ritual, which is basically the same thing as sacrifice. You get like loyalty instead of other resources, which in the end game is kind of better if you want to like raise the level of your
00:37:21
Speaker
followers, which you can do. Um, but the outcome is pretty much the same, but if that was on cool down and sacrifice was on cool down and I had a troublemaker, I was like. Just squinting at them. It was like tapping my watch waiting for the sacrifice cool down to finish, but I could have just taken murder and straight up killed people. Right. So a lot of fun choices to make. Yeah. Also, if you turn somebody into a demon, doesn't that permanently take them?
00:37:51
Speaker
Now they come back once you return. They'll just have tiredness because they've been awake for the entire time that you're out adventuring. Interesting. OK.
00:37:59
Speaker
Yeah, so I picked resurrection, which was kind of funny because I also picked like the sacrifice things. So when I resurrected people, the followers would take a faith penalty because they're like, why are you resurrecting people? We believe in sacrifice, right? Which I thought was kind of nice. But I basically had like
00:38:22
Speaker
essentially a lich crew of people that were bolded in my spreadsheet of followers. I was just like these ones are the efficient demons and I like leveled them up very high. I think the highest level person got to like 25. Jesus. And she died many times and it was never the end because I still had use for her.
00:38:46
Speaker
My time on this earth is finally... No, it's the uh, the oogway. My time has come. Uh-huh. Yeah. Um, I don't know if I could, I could pick a forgo resurrection. It's, it's really powerful. And if you have a good follower with really good traits, cause followers could have like a couple different traits. Some of them are like level faster or they, um, won't dissent, um, or list two dissenters or they work harder.
00:39:15
Speaker
or pray harder, you know? Those are all options there. So if someone had those good attributes, why would I let them go, right?
00:39:25
Speaker
I know I've seen attributes when I pick people up and like, oh, okay. And then I never gave it a second thought after that. I'm just like, this is a body who will either work the farm or pray to me. Basically, there was like the two engines I had going at the time. I wasn't heartless though. I made sure that they had a shelter to sleep in that would not be destroyed by rain or time.
00:39:50
Speaker
I was very sure about that, that I always had enough beds. And then when people started dying off, I'm like, oh, I have extra beds. I should go get some more followers. This one's going to the poop dungeon. But yeah, I didn't ever have your ragtag, your dependable crew. I just had random people. And towards the end,
00:40:12
Speaker
at some point, I needed a certain number of followers. So I would just go to Helob. And I think it's pronounced Helob because I think it's a male she-lob. Yeah. It took me too long. They pronounce it Helob in the trailer. I'm like, that can't be the joke, right? That's not right. But I would just go and buy followers or go out on a run and look for specific follower things.
00:40:36
Speaker
But again, I was just treating them as I need a requisite number of bodies to do X. They were provided for and cared for. I didn't like specifically sacrifice. I think I sacrificed like three in total. Okay. I think it was 11. For you. Yeah. Oh, damn. Did you sacrifice any to a certain NPC?
00:41:01
Speaker
I don't think so. I know what you're talking about. I actually forgot to go back and engage in that content entirely after I found that area. That was one of my favorite little side areas on the map, just for thematic reasons.
00:41:19
Speaker
I spent a lot of time there. There's a lot of resource management gathering, all of that stuff. But the impression I really get is if you love that aspect, if you're like, this is the awesome stuff, this is what I want. Games like RimWorld just have that in spades and so much more depth for it. Because you ignored the traits. They, for the most part, don't really matter.
00:41:41
Speaker
Like there's minor bonuses or penalties, but like in RimWorld, it's like this person is addicted to cocaine and you're like, huh, okay, that might complicate things. Or this person starts fires when they have anxiety and you're like, that could be bad, right? You can't ignore them. Fire also makes them anxious. Figure that one out.
00:42:04
Speaker
They actually, it actually doesn't for Rimworld. For that particular trait, if they start fires, they'll just like watch it and they're like, their contented nestle just raised. They're just like, perfect. As like their house burns down or whatever. They're like, this is fun.
00:42:18
Speaker
But I feel like a system like that, it's got to be a lot more, it becomes like complex variable management. Yeah. Where it's like, Hey, how do these things interact together? Cause if you just had like one person who's like, fire makes me anxious. Okay. Don't start fires. Easy peasy.
00:42:35
Speaker
or vice versa, start fires and they'll be happy. It just becomes when you have all of these other things at play. Whereas these cultists didn't really interact too much. They'd occasionally talk to each other, maybe bicker a little bit. But the most interaction I saw between them that would have been negative is like asking one of them. It's like, hey, I think it'd be really funny if we fed this person poop, which seems to be a very common side quest that everybody has encountered.
00:43:07
Speaker
And the follow up, I wonder if we could do it again, which is great. How many poop meals did you make altogether? Probably like three or four, because there's there was a not just for that quest though, there was a
00:43:24
Speaker
There's a personal trait that's called like the hunger. That's like if you eat a poop meal during the day, you get a temporary heart, a blue heart. Oh, yeah. And I think it's bugged because I was like, great, I did it. I got the heart. And the next day came around and I was like, I'll make another one. And I couldn't eat it. I was like,
00:43:47
Speaker
I guess if anyone's hungry, you know, you can eat this. I left it on the ground.
Resource Management and Gameplay Depth
00:43:51
Speaker
But I think it's bugged because I just got a heart every single day, regardless of whether I tried to eat anything from that part on. Jake just waits patiently and then walks up the final boss, not even dodging, just wailing on it. Just tank it. Yeah.
00:44:10
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it worked, but I will say like the food aspect, it is nice to you're like, oh, I just can't make like a shit ton of meals and they will just drop and like the food doesn't decompose or go away. So if somebody is hungry, they'll just come and eat the food and then your net cult hunger will go down. So that's just a cool thing.
00:44:32
Speaker
Yeah, they have their personal hunger too, but it's all reflected in this average hunger UI up in the corner. The meals have different effects, which is cool. It's very similar to Breath of the Wild, actually. You mix a couple of ingredients together and get something good. One thing I did appreciate about the game was
00:44:56
Speaker
Hunger is much more of a problem in the early game. If you take the money making ritual, which I recommend, you get money based off of the level of your followers. And if you have someone who's level 25, they're going to give you a lot of money. I think I got like 2000 coins plus every time I use that ritual in the late game. But it's like you do that. You complete the fishing things and eventually get to the point where you can like buy fish and.
00:45:24
Speaker
Once you just buy a bunch of fish, you're like, OK, I'll just make maxed out meals with no other commitment to do anything. And I kind of just stopped farming at that point. I was like, ah, you guys can if you want, but you don't need to. See, I went the other way where I specifically went out of my way to do forest runs to collect grass so I can make farm plots. Yeah. So I got to make more. Oh, fuck, I'm out of grass. And so I just go out.
00:45:51
Speaker
It was really funny that such a basic resource, it's completely unattainable on the actual compounds, right? Yeah. I was surprised by that. Because certain other things, you can build something like, hey, you can collect wood from this. It costs wood to make, but generates obviously more than it costs. Then they have that for stone and other things as well. And then grass is like, go get it. Yeah, right. No, that's exotic.
00:46:19
Speaker
But thankfully, it's only for low tier stuff. Yeah. So I think at a point, you've collected all the grass you're going to need, and then you moved on to other resources or refined resources. Yeah. And you're likely to just get some running missions, like grasses on all the maps. Yeah. Did you ever do the altars? Altars, altars, altars.
00:46:42
Speaker
There's a specific altar you could make under faith, where basically, eventually like followers would just go up to and be like, Hey, thanks leader for being so great. And then they leave a present there. I was like, Oh, that's cool. But I just had the one initially for like, I'll make it and see what it is.
00:47:00
Speaker
But then when I saw that it could make whatever resource, I was like, yo. So I just made a corner of just all of these things. I'm like, here's my random resource generation for me. I'll refine gold. Thank you. It was huge. Yeah, I never went beyond the one, but that's actually a really good idea.
00:47:23
Speaker
There's also like a lot of decorations in the game, and this is where they kind of lose me, right? So back to the point of this game is not remote, I think it's smart that they didn't include all of this complexity. It would have been a different game if they did, and it would appeal to different people. It's not meant to be that complicated.
00:47:43
Speaker
But for some reason, they went absolutely overboard with the decorations to the point where it's like they are trying to do an Animal Crossing thing, right? And I just didn't care, I guess, to engage with that system much, particularly not proportional to the number of decoration drops I was getting while running through dungeons, right?
00:48:10
Speaker
It's cool, but this game isn't Animal Crossing. You're not going to be here for months or years for your village. It doesn't take that long to beat it and there's no progression past the point.
00:48:25
Speaker
Right. I think it's more just, again, the investment of when you go back. It was nice to see the slow progression of, oh, I have more houses now. I've rearranged things to look aesthetically pleasing. Got my farm stuff over here. I had all the outhouses up top, and then the shit collection underneath, and then the farms underneath that. And the compost was right next to the outhouses. So I had this poop management system at where it was flowing.
00:48:53
Speaker
But it was cool to design the flooring a little bit. So under the prison or the stocks, I had brimstone or lava. This is where the bad people go who don't agree with what I'm saying. And then under all the shrines where you could pray and generate random resources, I'm like, oh, we'll make that a fancy area.
00:49:15
Speaker
Gotcha. So I did do some things and it was nice to go back and it was pleasing to the eye and be like, ah, this is my cult. Right. Which is unfortunately named Cult of the Lamb because I wasn't feeling inspired that day. But it's a nice thing to engage with if you want.
00:49:32
Speaker
If they didn't have that option at all, I could see people be like, oh, I can't really design my college, just whatever. That doesn't feel good. But if somebody's like, I come from a bit of an amacrossing background, I want to spruce it up a bit, it was nice to have those options. Yeah. I wouldn't argue against them in the general principle. I just didn't.
00:49:52
Speaker
I could have used more combat depth instead of decorations. That would have been my argument. I think they're different teams, you know, or different people working on it, but my cult was named captains of crunch. Um, so clearly my lamb was named crunch and all of the followers were captains. Um, yeah, no, it's,
00:50:14
Speaker
It was fun. One of the things I do like about that is whenever you return, you see the name of your cult pop up there, like the area transition dialogue. And this is a stupid thing. Fundamentally, this is incredibly easy to do while programming.
00:50:30
Speaker
I don't know why people don't let us like name areas a little bit more. And then you just have it pop up. You know, whenever you enter that area, like this is your sanctum and it Jordan, the area you named it shows up. Like if they did that with my apartment, I'd be so happy. Give me a title card or like a sound effect that plays. Uh-huh. It's just a nice transition. It's like, Hey, this is my personalized thing. Yeah, it is. It's cool. Yeah, absolutely. Yes. Um,
00:51:02
Speaker
All right. I think, yeah, that's a good amount of stuff in the cult. Anything else you'd mentioned in the cult management part? Everything covered pretty well. The certain buildings and whatnot.
00:51:19
Speaker
I think that's most of it. It's just, again, depending on your play style, I didn't find myself using all of the structures or options so much. Like I didn't really go any like I made the demon building once, tried it once, like not for me. I think I think that one's more helpful if you're struggling a little bit with the combat, because some of the demons are literally just make the game easier. One of the demons is start with more blue hearts. And as you level that.
00:51:47
Speaker
follower up you get more and more and more and more blue hearts so like it's it's kind of like something to help you more in your favor and other ones are like the one that was really really strong is enemies that drop fervor which is the magical the magical juice your mana they drop more of it
00:52:09
Speaker
And as that follower level goes up, they drop more and more. Oh, no, no, no, correct, correct myself. That comes from a tarot card, but your maximum fervor goes up. And so what happened is there's achievements for beating the bosses without taking damage. And you can do that.
00:52:27
Speaker
If you enter the boss room and then just spam this cast spell button as fast as you can, cast out like nine instances of the spell and then just one hit the boss. It's a valid strategy. Anyway, so that's my aside. I like the demon stuff. I recommend that, particularly if you're going for a longer play session. That sounds like a cool thing. Maybe if I ever go back to it, I'll check that out.
00:52:55
Speaker
The flip side, though, is like for the most part, the game is not that hard and you don't need to. Right. So I played on normal difficulty, which is always like the developer recommended thing. And I thought it was fine. Like I think there were.
00:53:13
Speaker
three bosses that didn't beat on first try. And there are a lot of ones that I abandoned the run. Cause like I got to the boss door and like, I have one heart of health. So I just, I was like, well, let's not do it. Let's go back and try again.
00:53:28
Speaker
Yeah, it's I played through on hard and I probably died like four times, something like that. But there's even ways to mitigate death past a point. You can take an option. So it's like if you die, you can sacrifice a follower to like get health back. I did that. I did that once because I was kind of curious on it and I incidentally had died. And the better the follower is,
00:53:54
Speaker
The more resources you get when you sacrifice them and that can include temp health and stuff like that So like a full heal plus temp health and all of this stuff if you sacrifice the guy That you're just gonna go back and resurrect like let's be honest, right?
00:54:09
Speaker
Sacrifice does not preclude resurrection. In fact, I had a strategy called the yo-yo, where I had a character that would get leveled up a lot for resources. And I'd be like, you're ready. Sacrifice them, immediately bring them back. Thank them for their service. Send them back into the fields. Jacob with that Lana Del Rey strat, born to die. Yeah, no, it's it's good, though.
00:54:40
Speaker
Okay, we've talked about some things, probably mild spoilers up to this point. How do you feel about the plot of Cult of the Lamb?
00:54:51
Speaker
Does it have a plot? Interesting. I think pretty early on, like you get what the concept is. You're like, okay, yeah. I was saved by some god and the god wants me... Yeah, the one who waits and this god wants me to go kill these other gods and free him.
00:55:14
Speaker
I'm sure that's going to go great and there's no there's nothing else going on. That's it. And then very quickly as you go through, it's like, are we the baddies? And yeah, you started a cult and you're just murdering people. Now, to be fair, I don't think the other cults are great either because again, they are cults.
Final Boss and Post-Game Thoughts
00:55:33
Speaker
Yeah.
00:55:35
Speaker
But it's just that rotating cycle of like who's in power type thing. But I don't think it should surprise anybody at the end that the one who waits is a final boss. Yeah. Because at the end, you have the option to give up your life to free him. Because essentially, in the same way you did sacrificing your follower again and again and again for your own gain, he's like, yo. Yeah. You're my. You have the ground. Yeah. Yeah. Sacrifice that guy.
00:56:05
Speaker
to regain his power. Exactly. So he gives you at the beginning of the game, there's actually like a kneel. It's not an option. You have to kneel to be sacrificed at the beginning, which kicks it off because they sent you to the one who waits.
00:56:18
Speaker
He gives you the crown, which is also transforms into your weapon slash pickaxe or whatever. But that's his crown. And all of the other bosses have their own crowns. So you can kind of be like, interesting, interesting. I think I see where this is going. So you either give it back or you don't by sacrificing yourself or not. But it's a full circle thing. It has the same prompt to kneel or to resist, to refuse.
00:56:48
Speaker
And I like that. I like when games just like, and we've made 360 degrees and here we go, you know, back to the same choice. I assume that if you do accept to give up your life at the end, that you just die and the game ends. I think so. Yeah. OK. Yeah. I didn't choose that by the way. I didn't. I didn't. All right.
00:57:11
Speaker
You do have a choice afterwards, too. So I like the boss fight. I think it's probably the best boss fight in the game. He's got like two elites that you fight first. It's not particular. I don't think it's the hardest one. But for thematics and like the area and like diversity of moves, they do a lot more in that fight. Yeah, it's relatively complex compared to everything else in the game. Mm hmm. But once you beat him, you have the choice to either spare him or not. Right. You're like, hey,
00:57:41
Speaker
You could join my cult or you won't. What choice did you pick for that? I had him join my cult because I wasn't going like super murder heavy. I was also curious to see what would happen. Yeah. And interestingly enough, you can't change their name. Yeah, I think he's always the one who waits. I believe that's right. I forget if you can change the form or not.
00:58:06
Speaker
I think you just can't change. He also has a unique trait. I know you weren't really looking at the traits. I did see that one. Yeah. He's got immortal, which is pretty cool. You can still sacrifice him though. I sacrificed him to see if I would get the achievement for killing him. And I was going to give the game props if they had coded that. It doesn't. So I just resurrected him again.
00:58:32
Speaker
He is also, he has a bunch of bad traits. He's like a dissident and all these other things. Um, cause he was a God. Of course he's going to not just be wholeheartedly in favor of you, but yeah, that's funny. I thematically like that fight. I think the most. Mm-hmm.
00:58:53
Speaker
Cause again, like they do more with it. It's very much like you didn't play old Mega Man. I know we like had that one episode a long time ago, but do you remember like the Sigma boss reveal?
00:59:06
Speaker
I remember the Sigma reveal. No, I don't prefer Mega Man though. So initially you face Sigma's dog, and then you face Sigma who's just dashing around, and you just follow a very basic pattern. And then you're like, oh, I've beaten the final boss. And then it kind of goes black. And you see some stuff light out in the background. And what was the background for your entire previous fights?
00:59:30
Speaker
Like his head kind of goes into the background and then it starts to animate like this is the boss. So it's that kind of same vibe of like a larger than life thing. Yeah. You're fighting the stage kind of. Yeah. And it felt cool.
00:59:48
Speaker
I liked it. I would play DLC for the game, but I want them to make a couple fixes. We should probably end on a positive note, but I got to throw in the negatives, okay? When you sign people jobs, they're not guaranteed to stay on that job. Sometimes they're just like, nabra, and they just walk off and do something else.
01:00:11
Speaker
or someone else takes their drop. It gets a little bit better if you give them the necklaces that make it so they don't need to sleep. But they do get like bags under their hands if you do that. So it's pretty funny. My humorous example of that is I was like, OK, I'm tired of cleaning out the toilets. I saw that there was a prompt to make someone a janitor to clean out the toilets.
01:00:39
Speaker
So I signed one of my villagers this, I think they were like newly indoctrinated. The villager like walks around. They're like, all right, I'm going to the toilet, see the toilets, throws up, walks away. They didn't clean up the puke. They didn't clean up the toilets. They just left. And I was like, this is not a classic new guy shit. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, not going to work for me.
01:01:05
Speaker
So I want them to fix that. And there are some other issues in some of the dungeons where the enemies don't spawn in as rapidly as they're supposed to. Or in my case, they stop spawning in entirely. And I just had to recall out because I couldn't complete it. The enemies just wouldn't show up. I didn't have as many bug bugs, maybe one or two things that acted a little bit odd.
01:01:28
Speaker
But yeah, I do imagine that this game will have DLC at some point. And I do have a note here that I wish the game had a little bit more content depth, or just more of something, because it was relatively short. I think it was a fine amount. I did really just enjoy the game overall. But at this point, I'd be curious to see what they would add. And if you asked me, hey, Dave, what would you want them to add on DLC? I don't fucking know.
01:01:56
Speaker
Yeah. I assume like another area, another boss, but like they'd have to expand in other areas as well. I'd imagine.
01:02:04
Speaker
I think what you do is you do something like what don't starve it did has done. And you introduce like a completely different locale, right? You have to make a new cult in this other location from scratch, but there's going to be new buildings. There's going to be new dungeons, new weapons, new skill trees, things like that.
Impact of Cult of the Lamb and Indie Games
01:02:21
Speaker
Um, just because of the kind of vertical nature of building up everything in your cult, um, it'll be more engaging if you have to overcome.
01:02:32
Speaker
start a little bit lower in tech, I should say, without like infinite money. So you're talking like blank slating pretty much. Pretty much. I think blank slating, maybe bring some followers with you or something when you start out.
01:02:50
Speaker
It could be reasonable, but for people who have hard packed in their colony, basically, or their compound, they've finished building it all, that you don't want to have DLC dropped. It's like, here's some new buildings that you're going to need to build. And new followers, you got to indoctrinate in things when they're already at 100% capacity.
01:03:13
Speaker
I think it would be less stressful, especially for people coming back to the game. If it was like a little bit more of a standalone expansion or separate menu option or something. I don't know. I feel for me personally, like right now I've played through it. I've done all that I want to do. I don't really want to build anything else, even though I haven't built everything. I don't really want to go out anymore. Cause why? Right.
01:03:44
Speaker
So like I enjoyed my experience with it and I'm now good. Hmm. Yeah. I mean, that's where I'm at too. That's a good game. Um, yeah, I think, I think right now with all of the recollection I'd have on it, if it was a, if it was a five point scale, I'd give it a four, if it's a 10 point scale, I'd probably give it an eight. Um, that's a great game. It's going to be very successful and it has been very successful because like,
01:04:13
Speaker
There's just aren't a lot of massive games dropping. And so this one really exploded. And, um, I don't know if I've seen a devolver digital game like be this successful before. And I suspect, um, yeah, definitely not fall guys. Did they, did devolver publish fall guys? I didn't even know that. Oh, wow. Yeah. So fall guys second, but then this one first, obviously, um, fall guys, what was that? That was probably free.
01:04:42
Speaker
Is Fall Grace free? It is now. Okay. Was it on launch? Yeah, that made them a lot more money. That was in the Among Us days. It was guaranteed to make them bank. That probably launched the company, actually.
01:04:58
Speaker
It is nice to see something like this take off in an indie space. Cause again, like there are a lot of triple eight games that are good, but at the same time, like you see a lot of issues as far as game crunch. And it doesn't really, if they have like a sequel to something, it doesn't always necessarily differ. Or there's like, what's a trope that's easy they'll sell. And they just, you don't feel the heart and soul in a lot of those games in the same way you do is like indie.
01:05:28
Speaker
Like the aesthetics of this game alone had me interested. Oh yeah. And they're like, Hey, it has mechanics. I'm like, okay. Yeah, it's already cute. I'm down. Then at least check it out and follow up. Yeah. And that was the same hook for me with tunic. I'm like, Oh, this looks cute. I'm interested in what world you're doing. Tell me more about it. Let it come out in four years.
01:05:49
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's a complete package. And like you said, it's, um, the term indie darlings overused, so I'm not going to use it, but it is very much in that space, uh, showing that Andy can stand up against triple A titles and take a bit of our play time away from Dota and Starcraft and overwatch and all that stuff. Um, at least for a week and hots. That's the other one. But, uh,
01:06:20
Speaker
Any, uh, you've had the entire episode to prepare, Dave, any words of wisdom for the audience? Don't start a cult. Don't start a cult. Okay.
01:06:30
Speaker
Here's the better one. Don't be in a cult. People are like, oh, but I'm not. Are you not? Think about it a little bit. Are you in a religion statistically? I'm not saying they're like one to one, but they do operate on some of the same mechanics.
01:06:54
Speaker
In general, don't accept anything blanket. Don't blindly agree with something just because you want to be a part of a group. Dissent, dissent, dissent.
01:07:05
Speaker
Yeah, especially blankets actually historically don't accept blankets. If it's just like, Hey, these are free and they're not disease written. No, they probably are. Um, but if you guys have any ideas that are not disease written, um, or thoughts on cold to the lamb, I know a lot of people were playing it. Uh, feel free to send those in to soapstone podcast at gmail.com, or you can join the discussion on Facebook before, uh, Zuckerberg runs it into the ground.
01:07:32
Speaker
Facebook.com slash soapstone podcast. And as always, we'll see you in the next one. Have a good Thursday evening.
01:08:23
Speaker
Bye!