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Cultist Simulator

ColCol

Arcane
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Jul 12, 2012
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Playing it . The writing and concept are interesting, but the game-play becomes dull and grindy very quickly. I will say it is more game-y than it appears......
 

Haba

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Codex 2012 MCA Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2
As it is, it is not worth money IMHO.

Every game plays the same, you're stuck in with very few options and RNG decides if you succeed or fail.

It's a great idea though.
 

Matalarata

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Finished this on my second try, it's quite easy, really. Haba rng means very little apart from the total time you need to finish a single game, trust me. It's all about cycles and timing, in my third game I tried going on untill I could as a personal challenge, managed to get all cultists, 90% of all lores throughout the game (although I did subvert and combine some so in the end I only had like 75%), more than 300 funds and did more than a dozen expeditions. I then finished it because quite frankly I think you can go on indefinitely.

I could have actually won this on my first game but I made a very stupid error right at the end and I had to continuosly recover from mistakes, since the game expects you to test things out as you go. It's not really trial & error since there's a lot of hints hidden in the fluff but your first game is somewhat doomed by the need to familiarize with the game's mechanics. As a general rule, develop your stats first, then try and stabilize a source of income while fending early game threats like restlessness. You can paint it away before it becomes dread or later on use it as trapping for rituals. Once you have a cult and a steady source of income you can only die if you chew more than you can bite.

Now, to answer my previous questions, since no one did. I suggest you don't open the spoilers if you want to try this for yourself:

-You can pursue different strategies, although the variability is small.

Different ambitions and ascensions play fairly similarly but allows for easier or harder access to different summons and rituals, it's all soft-gated so you can summon everything while playing as any aspect whatsoever but there are differences. In the end though, again, only the total time of your playthrough is influenced.

-There are different endings, just fluff but there are an high number, both major (ascension) and minor like defeats but also:

deciding you had enough of eldritch horrors and just retire to a peaceful life as a clerk, I found it a nice little touch. You can unlock different legacies by losing, once my first char was imprisoned I got the opportunity to play as an investigator trying to puzzle out my old cult.


-The fluff is gud. I like it, especially since you can get a huge numbers of little tips about game mechanics and rituals directly from reading it.

I loved the names of some spells, summons and tomes. Among my favourites the little blurb of text about one of my cultists, a cannibal "who meets his visitors in a dark room, with no windows. Each one of them keeps returning again and again, although each time they are a little less..."


I bought the perpetual edition, if updates keep coming as promised I could see myself returning from time to time. As it stands, since the offer ended and only the basic edition is for sale, I'd suggest to wait for a -50%. It's an experimental game and definetly not everyone's cup of tea. I enjoyed it and consider my money well spent.
 
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Haba

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Codex 2012 MCA Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2
Finished this on my second try, it's quite easy, really. Haba rng means very little apart from the total time you need to finish a single game, trust me. It's all about cycles and timing, in my third game I tried going on untill I could as a personal challenge, managed to get all cultists, 90% of all lores throughout the game (although I did subvert and combine some so in the end I only had like 75%), more than 300 funds and did more than a dozen expeditions. I then finished it because quite frankly I think you can go on indefinitely.


"The Bullshit flows around the core of the Hisptergame

As any student of the Codexia knows, the Hipstergame has no core."

- Haba Knyllarman, The Follies of the Easily Impressed


Rearrange Cards. Repeat.

You won't always be entertained. Keep repeating, and you'll grow bored.


As recorded by the scribes of ancient cocksmith-kings, the fragmented journal details the investigation to the alleged game "Cultist Simulator", a product of the seventh history, the time before the cucks were driven out of Eurastania.


- There is absolutely no challenge in the game
a.) You will only lose your game if you are careless, if you pay attention, you know beforehand when each "challenge" is going to trigger
b.) You can't make a mistake with rituals, the game only allows you to cast it once the requirements are met
c.) High level lores require the exact same tedious chore as the first level lores do. The process is always the same.
d.) Expeditions will never get harder, 10 in skill/lore is always enough to overcome an obstacle
e.) The consequences are always the same. Loot a shrine of a god? You get one card of notoriety.
f.) Later in the game, you can deal with adversaries simply by talking to them.
g.) There is no risk in dreaming. You just keep spamming it over and over again, until Mansus gifts you with what you need.​

- It IS RNG dependant
a.) you get a fixed number of cultists, whose talents are predetermined. If you are unlucky, you can have a game where you will not be able to elevate a SINGLE follower to exalted. Likewise, you can have games where you get 0 heart/winter. Essentially this means that some expeditions cannot be done without specific summon.
b.) the loot for expeditions. You can get 12 influence tool from tier 2 expedition. Or then you won't get a single one, even if you keep spamming repeatable high level expeditions.​

- It features the absolute worst fucking atrocity of an UI
a.) The "challenging" early game involves spamming work, which involves: dragging a card to work tile. Pressing S. Waiting 60 s. Pressing C to collect cards, mousing over the X to close the window. You repeat this every 1-2 minutes. For 20+ hours.
b.) The game loves to dump new cards and tiles over your neatly arranged inventory. You have no way to move stacks of cards. Or lock things in place.
c.) Every repetitive action involves dragging cards and performing menial tasks that have no failure state. Why do I need to translate tomes by dragging the god damn language scholar skill to study tile and then dragging the tome there, waiting 60 seconds and THEN dragging the tome back to study to actually STUDY IT.
d.) The meat of the game is reading lore. Which you read from tiny windows. While being distracted by real-time timers.​

- The game is not complete!
a.) 2/3 of the game are just repetition of the same. Same challenges, same mechanics and the same chore.
b.) The "best" endings you get at the moment are gloriously titled as "standard victories". One of the game winning conditions is such devious challenge as having 3 funds available.
c.) There are no new legacies to unlock if you fail. Just a measly pool of four in total.​

From there on the tome turns in to mad ravings about "decline" and "assfaggots". At the last page of the tome you find a detailed painting.

cultist_simulator_of_shithoarding.png

You have gained Despair.
You have gained Notoriety.
 

Matalarata

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Wrong on some accounts. Cultists are fixed, no random. You can get them all in each game, once you find the timed one (erratic disciple) you know there are no more, untill then just keep talking about lore.

Failing to exalt a cultist? How the fuck did you manage? You just add up numbers. No rng whatsoever, except for the need for the highest materials, which are quite frankly easy enough to get.

In any case, rng only influences the order in which you get things, not their availability. This makes the game even easier, btw.
 
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Haba

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Codex 2012 MCA Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2
In the above screenshot you have an edge cult. With one cultist that has the edge aspect. While having 5 moth, as an example. And 0 winter.

Meaning I can exalt one (1) cultist. You CAN NOT exalt cultist of another aspect.

Now of course I could sit around talking about esoteric issues all day long and eventually get to the 21 limit, but that's a game save that can get any ending and has all lores unlocked. That's a lot of talk spamming already. And there is nothing you can do to make the odds better, it doesn't matter which lore you talk about publicly, or which lore your cult is aspected to.

Ofc for challenge's sake it is a good thing one can't exalt their edgelords, as 10 edge is 100% chance in kidnapping and murder alike. Kek.
 

Matalarata

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Oh, now I get what you mean and I actually agree. You can get all cultists in each game, it's just that doing so is pointless. In any case you don't need it to finish the game and summons are far better for any possible task.

Do you know you can actually 'pause' timed cards? Just place them in any valid slot without starting it's cycle. Eg, summon a Caligine and keep it either in the talk or explore verb without giving it orders, take him out as soon as evidence becomes damning, repeat. That's so gay it isn't even funny.
 

Haba

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Yeah, and summoning a thing to use them in rituals to... summon them again.

The game would be so much better if it was designed turn/phase based rather than this silliness.
 

ColCol

Arcane
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Jul 12, 2012
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G
As it is, it is not worth money IMHO.

Every game plays the same, you're stuck in with very few options and RNG decides if you succeed or fail.

It's a great idea though.

Agree, dull. Very dull. Not even sure it's sale worth it.
 

Nutria

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Strap Yourselves In
I really wanted to like this, but after a few hours it's just incredibly tedious. The vast majority of the time you're playing, you're not making interesting decisions, you're just dragging cards around the table, struggling with the UI. Apparently Alexis Kennedy really believes that's fun, just like he really believed watching your ship slowly chug across the map 50 times in Sunless Sea was fun. I guess we're just not on the same wavelength.

The meat of the game is reading lore. Which you read from tiny windows. While being distracted by real-time timers.

This. My moment-to-moment reward for making progress is unlocking new text to read, and I've got to strain my eyes in order to do it. I bought this game because the prototype demo he released last year seemed so promising. I had no idea that he'd actually use that UI without improving it at all.

There is no risk in dreaming. You just keep spamming it over and over again, until Mansus gifts you with what you need.

I wondered about that. At first I imagined that there must be some downside to it. But the more I played, the more I realized that the game isn't nearly as mysterious as it first appears. You just look at the cards that pop out and do the busywork of putting them together in the right combinations.
 

Pope Amole II

Nerd Commando Game Studios
Developer
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Mar 1, 2012
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Should've been called Cucktist Simulator as only a total cuck would enjoy it. The "gameplay" is nothing but waiting and grinding. And, mind you, I'm not a dumbfuck - I was using cheatengine to play the game at 10x speed so the wait is minimal; it's still boring. The winning strategy is to grind slowly, meticulously and patiently. The absolute minimum amount of effort has been spent on the game so UI is lazy, graphics are lazy, music is generic. Even writing is lazy - it's not that bad but it's really, really curt. And, ofc, the price tag is $20 because why not abuse your reputation to peddle some piece of shit.

In other words, I can only agree with Haba's review above - he wrote pretty much everything that can be written about this one.

This game made me realise that many of the modern games are actually works of art. Only it's not classical art - it's fucking modern art when some fucker shits out a brick and then expects millions to be paid for the effort because it's so nouveaux! Fucking cancer.
 
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Haba

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Quite often they are "art" more than they are games. And as "art" more often we are talking about cheap C-movies than real artistic impression.

And that is the problem today. Modern tools make it too easy to start expressing yourself. You can have a wild idea or crazy design and you can simply start scrapping it up in Unity. Without stopping to think on what is the actual game.

Back in the day you had to start from building the game itself. You'd spend a fuckload of time getting the core of the game working, and trough that process you'd usually see early if your game was fun to play. You know, the basic controls, the pixel dude walking around. Was it responsive, did it feel good? And if it wasn't, you'd tune it.

Now you just take a ready made engine and slap a mediocre design pattern into it. "Good enough! Now let's get to the fun part!"

But for the player, the game itself should be the fun part. Not the underlying message or the clever idea. The bloody game that you spend the majority of the time playing.
 
Joined
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Got a 35% off coupon for this RPG Codex RPG of the year contender if anyone wants it, add me on Steam and gimme a shout. Works with the current Steam store discount to make it ten burgerbux.
 

Silentstorm

Learned
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Apr 29, 2019
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Oh goody, i am glad i am not the only one that found this game boring, the writing isn't bad, i will be fair, but there's just too much waiting around while looking at cards, boring grinding and not exactly the best UI out there.

The idea of making a cult and worshipping old Gods is an amazing one though, just sad it couldn't have been done in a better way, i mean, at least other simulator games let you see more than just cards, imagine if Theme Hospital or something like Dungeon Keeper revolved around just looking at cards and reading some stuff instead of being shown, i bet those games wouldn't be nearly half as fun!
 

Blaine

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Grab the Codex by the pussy
The management game format reveals far too much information and is too game-y to offer a proper Lovecraftian atmosphere. I've played several Lovecraft-themed board games fairly extensively, for example; even the arguably most "immersive" of them (Mansions of Madness) is still very clearly just a game with a fun, dweeby theme.

I imagine that's at least partly what drove the decision to try to present Cultist Simulator in a way that obfuscates much of the underlying/contextual information and reveals narrative snippets.

I tend to think that Cultist Simulator was a good and original idea, and the execution an admirable try—the end result just wasn't very fun to play. That's quite common when brainstorming new and original ideas, and in no way reflects poorly on the game's designer. Sometimes the awesome thing you envisioned inside your head and on paper turns out to be junk in practice despite your talent and best efforts.

On the other hand, developers who churn out an endless train of derivative, unoriginal, formulaic play-it-safeware deserve no such sympathy or consideration.
 
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Nutria

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Strap Yourselves In
I think it would have been a great 5-hour game if Alexis Kennedy could have gotten his head out of his own ass and not insisted on adding so much pointless grinding to the middle of it. He's really obsessed with making players waste their time in his games.
 

Blaine

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Grab the Codex by the pussy
He's probably trying to figure out how to give his games staying power so people don't complain that they're just a few hours long.

In my view, the ideal route to take for this concept would be an extensive and slightly abstracted CYOA with some strategically implemented statistics and inventory/currency items. Each playthrough might take just a couple of hours, but if it's worthwhile to do eight to ten playthroughs, that's a lot of bang for your buck.
 

Nutria

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The problem with trying to stretch them out into 30-hour games is that while I loved both this and Sunless Sea in the beginning, my lasting impression is that I ended up being really pissed off that they tricked me into wasting hours of my life doing stuff that wasn't fun in the hope that I'd eventually win. I'm not buying anything from that asshole ever again.
 

LESS T_T

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Codex 2014
"Anthology Edition":



And the new game, kind of sequel thing, more relaxed they say:



BOOK OF HOURS is an elegant, melancholy, combat-free RPG set in an occult library, from the makers of BAFTA-nominated Cultist Simulator and the creator of Fallen London and Sunless Sea.

Shutter the windows against the sea. Bank the fire against the cold. Listen to the rain rattle on the roof, while you slide books one by one into their ancient nests. For five centuries, the library of Hush House was a fortress of knowledge... until the fire. The collection is ruined, and the Librarian is dead. Your unique talents make you fit to rebuild the collection.

ACQUIRE occult books, by purchase or more underhand means, and STUDY them to solve the setting's mysteries. RESTORE books to address the ravages of time, or PURIFY them to remove their curses and shadowy taints. Enjoy the sweet peace of indexing and cataloguing books to the order you desire, building a library to be proud of, while you defend it against storm, fire, theft and the occasional theoplasmic assault.

And GUIDE the visitors who come seeking your assistance, to choose their paths and stories. Give one uncanny seeker the knowledge they need to rob a tomb; sabotage another's intrigues; or convince a third to stay home with a nice book of poetry. The Librarian's influence extends far beyond the walls of Hush House... and it's up to you to determine how history is written.

BOOK OF HOURS is a rich, non-linear story about the terror and majesty of books, and about alphabetical order.

***

We've just announced the game, so we'll update this page with detail, images and features as we go! Wishlist the game to be kept up to date with development.
 
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Wait, Cultist Simulator is finished? Did they ever add more headquarters buildings? Did they ever add more to do at the HQ? Last time I played that was an obvious bare spot. Been half-assed keeping an eye on it but I don't recall them mentioning working on that, even though they did overhauls to expeditions and shit.
 

Optimist

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My team has the sexiest and deadliest waifus you can recruit.
In my view, the ideal route to take for this concept would be an extensive and slightly abstracted CYOA with some strategically implemented statistics and inventory/currency items. Each playthrough might take just a couple of hours, but if it's worthwhile to do eight to ten playthroughs, that's a lot of bang for your buck.

It's funny how the most common suggestion to fix Kennedy's vidya is to make them "Fallen London with less grind". This includes Fallen London.
 

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