Cultist Simulator is a tabletop card game where the goal is to form a cult and ascend to a higher plane known as the Mansus. While the game describes itself as a roguelike narrative card game, each individual run may take significantly longer than a traditional roguelike, potentially spanning multiple playsessions. However, from personal experience, I know that your first few runs will end swiftly in death while you are learning the mechanics.
You start with a single card and a single verb, and the game is played by dropping one or more cards into a verb in order to perform an action and gain more cards. For example, dropping a Health card into the Work verb generates Money and Fatigue, and Fatigue decays back into Health after a 60 second timer. (Don’t worry, the game has a double-speed mode.)
The game teaches you nothing and expects you to discover everything through finding rare books to study and research, and reading through card descriptions and interactions, as you try to figure out how to ascend without succumbing to death, starvation, illness, madness, or being arrested by the detectives investigating your cult. If you’ve ever played the Call of Cthulhu or read a Lovecraft novel, you’re essentially playing out the antagonists perspective from those.
As you learn more, you can grow your cult, uncover more forbidden knowledge, learn and perform rituals, explore hidden locations to find more books to study, and walk the doors to the Mansus and ascend.
Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/718670 £14.99
Humble Bundle: https://www.humblebundle.com/store/cultist-simulator £14.99
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