Worshippers of Cthulhu

A slow burn Lovecraftian city builder that doesn't live up to expectation. Play as the head of the cult of Cthulhu, leading a sect of the cult that has washed up on the shore of an island after a shipwreck during a storm. Establish a small city, harvesting resources from around the island to build homes, industry, and the means to become self sufficient in terms of food. Your ultimate goal is awakening the slumbering elder god Cthulhu, performing rituals to extend his patience with the cult, and fulfilling his wishes at dreamspires on different islands. Managing the levels of faith, general resources for survival, Cthulhu's patience, and local defenses are the main points of concern while playing through a chapter of the game. Faith is a general resource used for construction, upkeep and rituals, generated by your followers and dependent on their level of zeal and ascension. Resources like wood, clams, corn, sheep, cows, coal, iron, sandstone, etc... can be generated through industry, being used to manufacture other goods your cult might need, such as robes, carved idols, planks, refined metals, etc... to keep them happy and alive. Maxing out the needs of specific cultists will enable you to ascend them to the next tier of the cult, so you can assign them to work in more advanced forms of industry for the cult. Fanaticism is another resource that can be generated via your followers by carving symbols into their bodies to sway their industry specialization; alternatively, fanaticism can be obtained by making decisions on events that pop up requiring your input. Cthulhu's patience seems to be the main way to end up losing the game, keeping you under something of a time crunch as the game goes on. Followers can be sacrificed in rituals to keep adding time to the bar, although making certain positive decisions during events can add time to it too, or decrease it if you choose incorrectly. Completing a dreamspire will take the cult a step farther in awakening the slumbering Cthulhu, also increasing his patience and netting you some captives to do with as you please in service of the cult. Occasionally, your islands will come under attack by ships and horrors of other cults, requiring you to shore up your defenses with stationary defense turrets and summoned horrors of the deep. Horrors require resources in the form of faith, blood, and human sacrifice in order to spawn a unit to use for attacking ships, enemy horrors, and destroying land-based fortifications. You can only spawn a specific horror before requiring higher tier cult members to sacrifice in order to bring it forth from the depths. Unfortunately, the game itself is something of a drag, being a slow slog to hit goals, build up resources, and generally just get anything done. As much as I wanted to like this one, I found myself terribly bored by the repetition. This should have been a game that was right up my alley, but just didn't end up doing it for me at all. I tapped out of this one close to the end of chapter two. [quote]Follow [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/45701624-CthulhusMonocle-That-Next-Fest-Guy/]CthulhusMonocle - That Next Fest Guy[/url] for more game and Steam Next Fest demo reviews.[/quote]

This game was a let down. By half-way through chapter two (out of 4) I was over this game and its insane amount of waiting around for resources to build up. The chapters are long, annoying and just drag on. Chapter 3 really decides to ramp up how annoying the game design by introduced bones and runes. It's just a city builder that isn't really well thought out (as a city builder) and with a mildly decent story (though unoriginal and with annoying characters)

Having to give this a thumbs down because some of the design choices for city building are really questionable. The effigy sacrifice system turns Cthulhu from being an inscrutable Elder God into a micro-managing local council. I can understand using ritual points to unlock new buildings, but why does Cthulhu demand that I have earned enough Cthulhu Coin to build each item of municipal infrastructure on my island before he will allow me to manufacture robes?

So... this is a game that I desperately wanted to like. I had extremely high hopes for it, honestly. But, the gameplay itself is just tedious. Many of the systems aren't entirely clear on what they want you to do, and the most unforgivable offense here is that somehow this game, even on low settings, managed to stutter constantly. The game has been out nearly a year, and it still plays really rough. Honestly, I just can't recommend it. 4/10

This is one of those games that i wish steam had a star rating system in stead of just good/bad. Its a decent game and ultimately im going to recommend it. That being said its short for story mode. 30 hours in and ive done it all and I really dragged it out way further than what i needed to. Id say i could have finished it in half that time. So if you pick it up, grab it on sale. Some of the cinematics are buggy and do not look good at all but it was worth the time spent on it.

[code]Had this on my wishlist since the reveal at the 2024 Future Games Show. After two years I went for it and I'm sad to report that after just 4 hours, I'm burnt out on the exhaustive gameplay design. The intrigue really wears off as the chapters and objectives drag out as you're subject to timers on everything and repetitive gameplay. I've recently played a lot of other city builder games (Whiskerwood, Corsair Cove and Going Medieval to name a few) and out of those mentioned, this one is burnt me out the fastest. (Corsair Cove being my favourite so far)[/code] [h1]Things I Like:[/h1] [b]+++ Cosmic horror / Cthulhu $#!T:[/b] My opinion of H.P. Lovecraft is pretty much that "Horrors beyond my comprehension (I dont get it)" meme. But I like this cosmic horror / Cthulhu extended universe that has been created long after his rather monotonously written works. I liked the Dagon (2001) movie, Bethesda's Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth (2005) and recently Still Wakes The Deep (2024) among lots of other cosmic horror media, so the world this game is set in intrigues me. [b]++ Easy, relaxed City Builder:[/b] No difficulty options, a slow-burn, pause button enabled, the ability to remove the 'doomsday timer' at any point and not needing to rely on sound effect cues makes this a game to relax to. Combat does make you focus because the draining of unit health makes you want to make the most of your time before the death clock ticks down. [b]+ Cult $#!T:[/b] There's a few sicko mini-games where you maim or sacrifice your own citizens for more resources. Like I said, it's sicko $#!T like burning people at the stake or slicing up their back, but it's thematic and unique. [h1]Things I Dislike:[/h1] [b]--- No new updates since April:[/b] As of writing, no updates in the last 4 months. [b]--- Boring, Grindy, Repetitive, Tedious Gameplay:[/b] Combat and enemy design is really boring. It doesn't scratch the itch. You don't get to be cunning and spread terror, you just summon a unit who's health drains over time, try to do as much as you can in the time given, then it dies and you have to get the resources together to do it again and again and again. Mini-games are interesting the first few times, but quickly wear you out, doing the same thing every time(r). Everything is on a timer, so you're constantly waiting for things to happen as objectives get further away and timers get longer and longer. Another example of tedium is... [b]-- Moving Citizens between bases:[/b] Each house only has space for 1 person. Empty houses auto-allocate homeless citizens, regardless if their specialisation is better in one base or the other, so you have to move them or respec them (which of course they only let you do once every 5 mins, yet another timer). To move a citizen from one base to another, you'll probably have to build a new empty house at the destination. After doing so, you have to click a button, find the citizen you want from a list of all citizens (I have 100s) and move them in. You might have to do this several times, every time a new set of citizens arrive. It's so exhaustingly tedious, I started sacrificing citizens just so I didn't have to deal with it. [b]- Missing must have Hotkeys:[/b] It's too much mouse-work. DEL doesn't deconstruct selected buildings, you have to open a menu to select the deconstruction tool to deconstruct. No hotkey for scrolling between bases. No hotkey for houses. No hotkey for upgrading. No hotkey for opening commonly used menus. Simply inconvenient. [b]-- Stuttering:[/b] Game stutters quite often. No clue as to why, it's not a very large or impressive game, and my PC is awesome so something must just be poorly optimised. [b]-- Poor graphics:[/b] Completely unimpressive. Just not a game you'll be taking screenshots in. [b]- Poor Lip Sync:[/b] On the 3D Character portraits that pop up. If you can't hack it, just do a 2D portrait. [b]- An overpriced DLC:[/b] Paradox / Stellaris-style greed with a £5.89 'text box' DLC you absolutely do not need.

A nice city builder in Cthulhu theme where humans are expendable resources just like real HR departments. You gather resources and build houses, managing your cultists. It´s easy to win but requires some planning if you want higher tier buildings. Story line and decisions are very well executed. If you like the genre and theme, you will certainly like this game.

ph´nglui mglw´nafh Cthulhu R´leyh wgah´nagl fhtagn

Cool theme, but should not be a city builder. Every mission that you do is time-gated somehow. You can have the perfect village, but you gotta wait on more people to show up. They also got missions where you got dig up bones and relics, which takes 10 minutes alone per thing. So unless you like to setup everything and just wait for something to happen, then maybe its for you. Maybe this is more for people who have never played a city builder and like to read every bit of detail to waste time until they got 30 of whatever goods, or just clicks the 3x speed button ALL THE TIME. I just feel that if I have to stop my enjoyment and click a 3x speed button to fast forward at anytime in the game multiple times from the very beginning of the game...its most likely not very well done with the idea of fun in mind.