Cultist Simulator

A game about games, a game about existence, about living and dying and dreaming, about quests and temptatons and betrayals and sacrifices. It might entertain you. It also might change you.

Bought this game and I’ll never play it because there’s no tutorial and I’m confused.

The only way you’re gonna be able to play this game is if you go elsewhere and investigate other peoples work. Ones who’ve already figured it out because it was poorly designed -the on boarding was anyway. If a game makes you stop playing it then walk out the chair to other sources in order to learn the rules that it intentionally didn’t share. There’s something of a problem there. I’d call it a stubborn mist step. The simulation of discovering cult knowledge should have mystery and testy initiation…. Discovery should feel magical… but they accidentally applied it to the UI and the game itself… so now it’s kind of difficult just to do basic things a lot of the time.. like comprehend UI and rules and goals. The frustration puts you in a tail spin because you actually believe that you’re playing a game.. No, it’s not a game.. it’s eventually a game -a top shelf game.. but it’s the equivalent of telling a family, “Come out to my place. We’re going fishing, and its just a plane ride away”, but then leaving out the fact that it’s mysteriously 25 below zero where you live and the lake is under 10 feet of ice. To approach it as if it is a game- is wrong -and you will hurt yourself if you do that. The game is under the 10 feet of ice that you need to excavate. So you’re not playing a game, you’re operating a tool that looks deceptively like a game for maybe the first day or two, because it has no rule book. No rules = no game.. So first, you have to excavate the rules in pure darkness -using the tool that- at this stage -appears to look exactly like a game .. you are an archaeologist and your job today is to go in the football field and find all 10 needles that we hid at various elevations under the ground. The needles represent the rules.. so I did what everybody did. I went on the Internet and cut my time in half +not to say that my time trying to learn all of this was short. That’s the result of the games stubborn misstep design for a lot of players. I couldn’t help but feel like I was doing other people’s jobs .. I went on the Internet to the wiki, and I went to the community forums where I met a whole bunch of other unpaid interns as well. Some of them were happily participating. If you’ve never played this, you just need to understand that you need to do a lot of work before you ever play the game.. don’t be fooled and think that you’re playing it when you hit the start button. I’m here to tell you that the game is good when you gain board literacy. I recommend begging, borrowing, stealing and cutting whatever corners you have to in order to experience it. GPT or your AI of choice is a free tutor and they won’t tell everybody how stupid you are and all the dumb questions you asked after you leave the room (the way that the real tutors do).

The task for making money should be automated.

This game is unique and the things that are good are so good that if you have remote interest or think you might then you should absolutely play it. I would rank this among my favorite games even though I’ve never finished a single game. And there is a the catch: I think it is deeply flawed *as a game*. The core mechanics are those of a “plate spinner” w/ exploration (of card interactions). But the games are looooong. This means that even though losing doesn’t feel too bad (as it works well attractively) that you have to slog through the plate spinning elements but without the exploration and while, eventually, already being familiar with the narrative. Combined with the game being quite long and the plate spinning nature making it easy to just *miss* some debt you have to pay or lose that game — … well, ai can almost not imagine playing a game to completion *despite* loving it. —- But what’s good in the game is excellent, so even just a fraction of the completed game still makes it rank among my favorites. (This is, imo, typical of this author btw — great atmosphere, great text, good use of mechanics to enhance narrative … but the mechanics aren’t good enough for me to finish any of their games. They’re like half-complete masterpieces. … which sort of works in its own way. :)

Games can sometimes get away with an absence of a tutorial. Learning how to play can be a thrilling experience however in Cultist Simulator the only feeling you achieve from playing is nausea. The music repeats in the background as you play and struggle to accomplish anything meaningful. When a game is meant to be learnt through trial and error this process should feel rewarding however when playing Cultist Simulator you simply feel sluggish and exhausted. Cultist Simulator is a great experience with incredible gameplay, that is if you can make it past the monotonous and exhausting gameplay which is required in order to reach a point in which enjoyment is possible. Overall it’s up a potentially great game held back by poor design decisions and a lack of clarity, 2/5.

This game has no tutorial, so be prepared to put in some time to figure stuff out. Once you get the hang of it, it’s difficult to put down. Pro tip for beginners, USE THE PAUSE BUTTON!

Unlike any common game. It’s just new and really cool!

I woke up to find that I was charged $2+ at 3am for this app. I didn’t purchase anything for the app and it didn’t appear in my subscriptions so I know there shouldn’t be any charges. I liked the app, but now I just have to delete it and hope to get a refund.

There is no tutorial for this game and I think that makes it extra appealing. Life has no tutorial and we often have to seek out things we’d like to know. Thank you game devs and past generations who have paved a path :)