Steam Deck Playable!Welcome to my review of Honey, I Joined A Cult. This is the debut game from developers Sole Survivor Games and is published by a renowned publisher in the world of gaming, Team17 (Worms, Ship of Fools).
Honey, I Joined A Cult sees you create your own cult, build a commune (base), and more. The game is set in the 1970s and is inspired by games such as Theme Hospital, Rimworld, and Prison Architect.
Worship The Relic!
So how did I get on with Honey, I Joined A Cult? Continue reading to find out! You can also check out our previous reviews when you’re done here.
The Game
Upon starting a new game, we’re given the option to see the tutorial or not. I like that. Sometimes I like to dive into a game head first and learn how to play it myself without the tutorial. However, I did actually run through the tutorial on this game.
When you start a new game, you’re also given many choices before starting. You can customise your leader, his/her name, look, outfit, and more. You can also put some information about your cult for example the name and your “Divine Being”. There are also customisation options for your cultists and your main room where your relic is kept.
Once you’re in-game, you’re presented with a boatload of on-screen buttons and options. However, don’t panic! These are your typical buttons for a base-building game. We have buttons such as build, rooms, objects, compound, and more. These all contain various options for building your new base for your cultists to live and help your cult thrive into a new world order.
You can build rooms such as a toilet (hey, everyone needs one!), bedrooms, a research office, canteens, and much more. Of course, I want to leave some of this a surprise for you to find out for yourselves!
It’s not all just about building up your base though. You need to ensure you have an income. The world isn’t free you know! You’ll need to persuade some key people in the community around you… You know the types, of wealthy, influential people that would make Patrick Bateman look poor.
You’ll need to watch out though. Not all of the locals are a fan of cults and will be trying to make your day as bad as they can, at all costs. The government, journalists, cultists’ families, the police, they all hate you.
You can also send your cultists on missions. If they succeed, you will possibly learn a new room and objects.
Key Features:
- Maintain and grow cult influence: Recruit cultists and followers to maintain the organisation’s smooth operation; keep them entertained and happy to grow its money and influence
- Base building: Build the cult from the ground up and design the layout from ‘hypno chambers’ and bathrooms to monoliths and bedrooms
- Groovy missions: Complete missions to unlock resources or fulfil the leader’s demands to keep their ego in check
- Counter threats: Overcome threats from nosey journalists, oppressive government bodies, and rival heretical cults
- Cult themes: Choose the cult’s focus of worship, affecting the tech tree, missions and unlocks available
Look & Sound
The graphics are pretty decent. They’re basic, but look very good. The art style that has been chosen reminds me a little of Prison Architect.
Of course, there really isn’t much going on here so the game runs very well. I also believe it will run very well even on lower-end hardware.
Audio-wise, the music is very catchy in Honey, I Joined A Cult. It’s reminiscent of some funky 1970s music. The sound effects are pretty spot on too. They suit the game so well, they have a very nice charm to them that just brings it all together.
Length & Replayability
Of course, with this being a base building/resource management game the hours are endless. You can literally keep going until your computer explodes and you have no other way of playing the game.
The game has 31 Steam achievements for you to unlock. Honey, I Joined A Cult also has 6 Steam trading cards for you to collect.
Conclusions
Honey, I Joined A Cult is a fantastic game. It had me hooked from the moment I started learning how to play. I love how quirky and comical it is. The game also ran very well on the Steam Deck. The Steam Store has the game marked as “Playable”. Fortunately, the game also supports Steam Cloud so you can play on your PC, quit the game, let it save to the cloud automatically and then launch it on your Steam Deck.
However, during my time playing it on the Deck I did struggle to read some of the on-screen text. But it does warn you of that as well as the Steam Deck having a quick magnifier built in. For those reasons, I will not mark the points down for my score below.
Speaking of my score, I give Honey, I Joined A Cult a score of 10/10!
Absolutely fantastic work from Sole Survivor Games.
A code was kindly provided for us to review this.
