Australian game ‘Cult of the Lamb’ exceeds expectations

Cult of the Lamb has shattered expectations, with estimates reaching 1 million units potentially sold by the end of the first month.

Cult of the Lamb, a game where you control a lamb to create and micromanage your own cult in a quest for otherworldly power, has exceeded the Australian developer’s expectations, reaching number one on the US Switch store since release.

Developer Julian Wilton, speaking to the Australian Associated Press, has expressed shock at the success of Cult of the Lamb. “It’s just blown up, it’s been pretty crazy,” he said, astonished at the sales numbers. “I wouldn’t be surprised in the first month if we hit like a million units, which is just crazy.”

Since Friday, Cult of the Lamb has topped the sales charts for the US Switch store and has seen downloads in the hundreds of thousands on PC via the Steam platform. According to Wilton, pre-order sales alone covered the investment costs of the game.

Cult of the Lamb has a village management system where you can fish and build structures. Picture: Devolver Digital

Cult of the Lamb is a hybrid adventure and town management game. Players control a lamb who escapes a cult sacrifice, and seeking revenge, begins to build their own cult to achieve power. Players can do this either by delving deep into dungeons and slaying monstrosities or building out their cult town to generate resources passively. There are a variety of strategies and methods to achieve godhood, and players can go down any number of these paths.

Indie games often struggle to make it big. With the deluge of indie titles released week after week, even indie games that manage to land a big publisher like Devolver Digital can struggle to reach their audiences. Cult of the Lamb’s combination of cutesy art and environments combined with its dark and sinister Cthulhu-esque story and dungeon tones must have checked the right boxes for a lot of people.

With so many players trying out the hit cult simulator, Wilton and the team at Massive Monster have dedicated themselves to a road map for the next year, fixing newly discovered bugs and adding additional content. With nearly 10,000 positive Steam reviews, Cult of the Lamb has earned the indie studio a hefty sum of cash. “We just got to figure out what to do with all this money now,” Wilton exclaimed.

Written by Junior Miyai on behalf of GLHF.