I have too many hobbies. It’s true. I think, if I only had one or two, I could really get good at one of them and have more fun and stuff. Like, I could really get good at Irish flute or mandolin, and start playing with some of the local sessions. Or I could get better at gamedev and maybe join the ranks of those solo devs who come out with their purest visions of their perfect game. Or get better at writing and finish those stories I have in my head. Or get better at painting minis and gaming in person.
Or start really going through my boardgaming backlog and get some sort of side hustle going with these. But we are where we are, and most of the time, new board games have to wait until the family has a free night where we can all meet up.
CULTivate is a simple game based on real life situations you’ve probably encountered, such as being lured to join a cult by some charismatic leader only to be put to work in some sweatshop under horrible working conditions. I mean, who hasn’t?
In CULTivate, it’s finally your turn to recruit people with low self-esteem to work for you. And you don’t even have to leave your current cult to do so.
Choose one of five cult leaders; I like to do this randomly. The front of the character board describes how the cult leader got their start (such wonderful stories of the trials they faced, how hard they worked), and on the back, three different heroic tasks the cultists you recruit will take on. In the picture above, cultmistress Shirley U. L. Dye is recruiting lost, orphaned and homeless children to come work on her cruelty-free, hand-dyed tee shirts.
The other tasks are hiring influencers to model her environmentally-conscious creations, and putting scientists and academics against each other to find the most socially aware dye for the clothes. We’re the good guys, after all.
The goal is to fill your card with recruits and match pattern you chose at the start of the game; in the board above, you can see I have all the children at their workstations, and a couple others besides. I kept explaining that it was “for the CHILDREN!” as I recruited kids from the other cultists at the table. Some of them might not have had the kids’ best interests at heart! But my white paneled van that served up free candy to one and all did the trick.
Each player has four cards; those cards are a mix of “recruit a certain kind of follower” and “take that” cards that mess with opponent’s boards. There’s also “veto” cards that stop other cult leader manipulation, and “investigator” cards.
Investigators are the worst. When you draw an Investigator card, an undercover investigator joins your cult. They block further people from finding new meaning to their lives, prevent you from ending the game, and score negative points at the end. You can pay points in cultists to remove them, or, better yet, put them off your trail and onto someone else’s board.
It’s a fast game; we played three rounds and it wasn’t even a late night for us. The cult leaders are such terrible people that you just have to lean into the absurdity of it all.
Highly recommended for a fast paced, “take that” game when you’re not in the mood for a deeper game.
