Game: Honey, I Joined a Cult (Early Access)
Genre: Casual, Indie, Simulation, Strategy
System: Steam
Developers | Publishers: Sole Survivor Games | Team17
Controller Support: No
Price: US $17.99 | UK £15.99 | EU 17,99
Release Date: September 17th, 2021
Review code used, with many thanks to Team17
Two-man development team Sole Survivor Games has partnered with Team17 to release Honey, I Joined a Cult a simulation, strategy game on Early Access on Steam. The game’s name is a big clue to what Honey, I Joined a Cult is all about, as you form and run your own cult taking care of the daily needs of your Cultists and attracting more followers to your cult.
Cult Raided by Officials
When the game starts, you play witness to a short cutscene of a cult compound being raided by Police and government officials. The leader of the cult high tails it out of town and away from the officials to start afresh with a new cult.
After that, you get to customise your new cult, for an early access game the customisation is quite extensive. You can choose to pick one of the ten pre-set cults on offer. With catchy names such as Cult of the Worm or Cult of the Children of Sauras. Or make up your own cult name. You can also customise the cult leader’s clothes, hair, face, and hat. You can even customise the colour of the hat and clothes your cultists will wear.
For my first game, I picked Cult of the Worm and my followers all wore Worm hats. For my second save file, I selected the Cult of Christmas Dawn where all the Cultists worshipped the divine being of Santa Claus. I’m sure you can tell the game doesn’t take itself too seriously and is packed full of humour.
Tutorial
Once you have finished customising your cult, the game walks you through a tutorial. Here you’ll learn how to construct rooms and add furniture to keep your cultists happy. The tutorial is detailed and teaches you basically everything you need to know about running a cult. The overall goal of the game is to gather as many followers as possible and make money to make your cult the best of the best.
Honey, I Joined a Cult is a typical simulation management game, you’ll spend your time building rooms, kitchen, bathroom and bedrooms to start with. Then other rooms to provide activities for your cultist and followers such as meditation, yoga, all in the hopes to make them happy.
Research new rooms
Research and Missions
The cult is just a theme because as after all, it is a money-making business, and money makes your cult grow bigger. There are PR missions to complete, where you can send your cult member with the right skills off to town which helps to raise your profile. Whether or not these missions will be successful is based entirely on your cultist stats which you can raise whenever they level up by proving themselves to be hard-working and loyal followers.
However, PR missions also start to attract the attention of the government. If your cult gets too much heat the government may shut it down ending your game. There is also a research tree where you can research new rooms to build and such, even at this early stage in the Early access game the research tree has a lot of research to work through.
Set a Goal for your Cult
You can make schedules and check the stats of your cultists, but I think this could be a bit more streamlined than it is at the moment. Eventually, you will unlock the ability to set a goal for your cult. At this point in the Early Access game, you can only choose darkness. But it does give you an objective that you have to work towards achieving.
How successful you are at reaching that objective will dictate how your cult, and in turn your game, will end. At this stage in the early access, there aren’t any other scenarios in the game to work towards but hopefully, they will be added later in the development of the game.
Funiture and facilities break pretty often in Honey, I Joined a Cult. So as your cult gets bigger, you’ll spend more and more time maintaining it. This doesn’t start out as too much of a big deal, but eventually, it did feel like I was spending more time assigning my maintenance worker to take care of the broken items.
Visuals and Sounds
Honey, I Joined a Cult is set in the 1970s. The whole presentation of the game smacks of that era. From the games logo to the funky ’70s music, which will have your toes tapping along to the music as you play the game.
The cultists and followers walk around the compound with little speak bubbles above their heads. It’s great fun and worthwhile to stop playing the game for a few minutes and read their comments which are full of humour.
Conclusion
I’m impressed with Honey, I Joined a Cult for an early access game it is pretty well polished. It does need some more development in some areas of the game. But that is to be expected since it is in early access. Honey, I Joined a Cult is an enjoyable game even at this stage in its development, I’m looking forward to future improvements and updates to the game, so my cult of Christmas Dawn can grow even bigger.
Final Verdict: I Like It a Lot 