Cult of the Lamb

Cult of the Lamb is a game from Massive Monster that combines action roguelite combat with building and managing your own cult. The player takes on the role of a sacrificed lamb brought back to life by a mysterious entity in exchange for founding a cult of loyal followers in its name. Between expeditions into procedurally generated dungeons full of enemies, the player returns to their settlement, where they must feed, house, and manage believers, construct buildings, harvest crops, and decide how strictly or kindly the cult will be run, with these decisions affecting followers' loyalty and productivity and adding an unexpectedly strategic layer alongside the fast-paced action. The player gradually unlocks new doctrines, rituals, and settlement upgrades, so the role of cult leader keeps deepening as the game progresses, offering more and more ways to shape the community.

On Xbox Series X|S, the game runs smoothly with strongly stylized, cute graphics that contrast with the darker themes of sacrifice, death, manipulation, and religious fanaticism it explores unflinchingly. This contrast between the playful, cartoonish visuals and the darker undertones is one of the main reasons the game attracted such wide attention from the moment it was announced, and why it also draws in players who otherwise don't seek out the roguelite genre.

After its 2022 release, Cult of the Lamb became one of the year's most successful independent titles, praised for its original blending of two seemingly incompatible genres and for its distinctive art style inspired by children's picture books. The game still receives content updates that expand both its combat and management components, and it is considered an example of how an indie production can successfully experiment with mixing game mechanics, which is why it remains one of the regularly recommended titles in the Game Pass catalog.

Why play it: For its original blending of two seemingly incompatible genres and its distinctive art style inspired by children's picture books, it's one of the most successful and most frequently recommended indie titles.