Worshippers of Cthulhu: the Demo

It was hard for me to wrap my head around Worshippers of Cthulhu. On the face of it, it’s a standard city builder. Villagers cut down trees, build homes, harvest crops, raise sheep, and other thoroughly mundane activities like that.

The fact that Steve and Sue, the neighbors next door, were begging the high priest (you) to sacrifice them to their dark god so that their last moments would be ones of thrashing in ecstasy as their souls were devoured shouldn’t change your view that much. The sheep need to be bled, the sacrifices need to be fed, and Lou down the street who keeps pounding nails into his skull is only doing the bidding of his inner demons. Or maybe those all too real demons that circle the island.

This island is the portal to Rl’yeh, the underwater city where Cthulhu’s troubled sleep causes storms that smash ships against the sharp-edged rocks. One such ship carries you and some dedicated cultists; unlike most who get shipwrecked here, this is the place you wanted to find. A place that echoes with past civilizations and ancient evils. Just like home.

Your long term goal is to conquer the world, summon Cthulhu, and have him cleanse the lands so that a new civilization could evolve. Your short term plan is to build a home for your cultists, train them and sacrifice them in order to unlock new buildings, attract more ships to your shore to be wrecked and the survivors inducted into your dark army, and summon barely-controllable demons to spread your influence to other lands.

The questline balances horrific with the mundane. One quest might have you digging up clams; the next might have you performing a dark ritual to gain the eldritch favor necessary to unlock a new temple. And then you’re shearing sheep to make robes.

Happy worshippers are devoted worshippers, so you will be carefully monitoring the happiness level of your various cultist families to make sure they have all the tools they need to build happy, albeit short, lives in your care.

The mundanity of the city building portion of the game is so at odds with the sacrifices, demon summoning and the occasional bizarre random event that it’s impossible to take the game seriously. Alice is great at making corn chowder, but Betty is just a natural at draining sheep blood into sacred flasks. Every worshipper has their special talent, and if assigned to the work for which they have an interest, they will gain levels in that and produce more and faster.

When you’re not sacrificing worshippers, you can be training them into the ever darker hierarchy that will inspire even greater devotion to your dark cause.

The demo ends when you first summon a demon to start laying waste to a neighboring island, though nothing seems to be stopping a player from just continuing to build out the starting island. I don’t know how far it’s possible to get, as it requires certain levels of devotion to unlock the next tier of buildings.

I earlier this year played Manor Lords, which does many of the same things, and most of them better. That said, it’s a clever theme and a little different take on the standard city builder. If you like this sort of game, you’ll probably enjoy this one. I wasn’t able to see how battles vs other islands go, but given the sorts of buildings that are unlocked later in the game, I would expect that other islands would retaliate and attack in turn.

The level of challenge in the demo was very low. I would imagine that building out the starting island until it’s full would completely overwhelm the rest of the game. But, we’ll see.