I’ve been playing cultist simulator recently and it’s such a neat little game. It is for certain not something that will appeal to a wide audience however. If you play games for their mechanical aspects this is not for you, the actions you take is just shuffling cards around on a board. If you’re someone who tends to go look things up in a wiki then don’t even bother. But If you like researching, experimenting and figuring things out yourself this game is brilliant because that’s what this game is about.
Your role is to learn about the secret mysteries of that world, starting a cult is only a means to the end of finding the hidden truths. So you research, explore dusty old bookshops for forbidden texts and soon you start catching glimpses of possibilities. Eventually you’ll start understanding the hidden rules of the world and how things fit in. Scraps of text you came across early on will suddenly flash back into your mind and make sense out of something you found hours later. At first you will not understand anything and you will fail quickly, but you will slowly start to figure things out.
I found quickly that I wasn’t just playing the role of a supernatural investigator in game. I had to be the supernatural investigator myself. This game character merely an avatar through whom I could interact with that world. Failure became a resource as now I could inhabit a new hapless victim to do my bidding with whom I would share my accumulated knowledge. As they got arrested, lost their minds or got eaten by monsters I remain, my knowledge growing and …oh look at that.
I’M the supernatural being invading a world, possessing a suitable host to do the work that will grant me ascension. This hapless fool is merely a vessel that will be shed like a cloak as soon as I can take my rightful place among the hours.
This game is amazing.