Update #17 - Cultist Simulator Status/Upcoming Giveaway (Patreon)

While my last post was scheduled at the usual time on sunday, and was showing up for me on mobile, apparently it got eaten up by something. I'm not sure what exactly happened, but I wasn't covering too much anyways since I was just getting started. So here's what's going on.

Cultist Simulator is weird. It's also massive. The sheer complexity of what you can do and how you do it has catapulted it from "this seems like an interesting idea for a game" to "oh no this process will be like the Aurora 4x video". What's making it challenging to work on in particular is the nature of the game's mechanics being intentionally vague. There is barely any tutorial to speak of, and you're cut loose from any helpful hints within the first few minutes. While a game like Aurora is complicated by the sheer number of options and wondering "where you do what", Cultist Simulator is very much a case of wondering "what you do where". Seeing as how it's also a roguelike, this means that a game can be completely obliterated without you understanding what happened until you've figured out the mechanics. Beyond that, it'll be a while until you understand what exactly you need to do to win a game. I was frequently finding features over a dozen hours in that were possible to be using within the first 10 minutes of a game, such as using an auction house to buy items instead of sell them, or a way to promote cultist followers in ranks and skills. To put it lightly, it's god damn intricate.

The video should be done and out on the 23rd of November. While I was hoping that I could have it out this friday and keep up a more rapid pace of video output, there's just no way with something like this. While I've won some minor victories (endings where you join an anti-cult law enforcement unit and also one where you join a business board of directors) I've yet to win an actual cult victory. When I do win my first, that's when I'll plow through some guides to see if there was anything substantial I missed, but for the moment I'm playing the game as intended which is completely blind. The video will likely have to remain vague for the specificity of some mechanics, but I'm balancing it out so it won't be to an annoying degree. For example, saying that "you can combine cards to level up skills" but not specifying where some of the cards come from. The end result will hopefully be showing people just how much you can do in the game, without ending up as a guide on how to beat it instantly since learning how everything works is where the fun comes from.

With that in mind, the giveaway post for the game will be up on the same day the video is out so people can decide if they'd actually want to try it with the option of having it on either GOG or Steam. It'll include both the main game and the Dancer DLC which came out in October. So keep your eyes peeled for details on that!

Thanks for your support!