i was talking about cult of the lamb with a friend who had recommended this to my partner & i because of its cute artstyle & base-maintenance mechanics, two things we both enjoy. our friend -- a die-hard rogue-like fan -- and us -- folks who hadn't ever really played rogue-likes beyond, well, rogue -- both did not love this game. it's not bad, but it's not good. so if this rogue-like doesn't appeal to those experienced with the genre, nor those who haven't gotten into it yet, then who is this game for?

my answer is: streamers.

cult of the lamb is a game made for streamers. beyond the ( honestly great ) twitch integration, the game presents itself as a simple, easy, hands-off experience, where you don't need to dedicate too much attention to what's going on in order to proceed. your followers take care of your base for you while you're gone, you kill baddies, you die without much consequence, you head back out, you win. as i said, this isn't a bad game; but when you are not playing this live with a large number of people participating with you, it isn't as fun as it could be.

playing solo results in you having to work harder & grind more to keep up with maintaining your cult, which ultimately ends up disrupting the flow of your outings & makes it feel like you're always on a timer. even if you feed everyone & keep everyone happy, you cannot ever do deep dives into the various dungeons ( presumably where the game gets challenging & fun ), because inevitably your base needs you back home to feed them again; as a contrast with live play, the twitch integration allows for one's chat to manage themselves, so that the streamer can stay out & seamlessly enjoy the bulk of the game.

the simplicity of combat also lends well to streamers, who want to balance between gaming & conversing with their audience. which is a shame, really, because if the dev team had not compromised combat ingenuity or creativity for stylish but ultimately plain battle mechanics, this game might have actually been worth the rest of the hassle.

the art IS cute though, i will admit. and the soundtrack is excellent. i am a renowned sucker for 2d sprites on a 3d background & chill beats! but good art & music isn't enough to sway me when the foundation of the game isn't especially compelling.

as a final note -- we played this on the PS4 & it was buggy to the point of breaking our game, several times, resulting in major resets & loss of progress that almost made us drop it entirely. bugs on release is unfortunately to be expected these days, from small & big studios alike, but that doesn't make dealing with it any easier, and for a game that we already weren't super excited about, having to redo a ton of work was the bitter cherry on top of this lukewarm experience.

there are plenty of games out there obviously & explicitly made for streaming ... but cult of the lamb presented itself as a single-player experience that was enhanced by streaming; as expressed here, i feel that they failed in this sentiment, as the "enhancement" feels borderline mandatory, rather than purely additive. i feel it's possible to make something like what this team was gunning for, but as it stands, cult of the lamb did not deliver. i am curious to see what sorts of other native-twitch-integration-type works get made after being inspired by this one, though ...