Saturated with intrigue, Cultist Simulator is an innovative & unique singleplayer roguelike card game w/ a steep learning curve. Highly replayable due to branching events, experimentation, & RNG. Non-existent tutorial, but community is helpful. Week 1 buy grants all future DLC for free, for life

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* Starter's guide & helpful links follow review.

☑ Content quality is a value at full price.
☐ Positive experience, but wait to buy when it's on sale.
☐ Negative experience. Wait for improvements before buying.
☐ Very negative experience. Save your money.

+ Active pause.
+ Achievements.
+ 1920's setting.
+ Legacy system.
+ Alluring premise.
+ Very well-written.
+ High replayability.
+ Apocalyptic humor.
+ Fast forward option.
+ Simple & effective art.
+ Mouse zoom for tiny text.
+ 20-40 hours of gameplay.
+ Eye-pleasing color palette.
+ Very helpful & friendly community.
+ Music invokes a feeling of mystique.
+ Plays smoothly. No bugs that I ran into.
+ Study lore & discover forbidden secrets.
+ Hints when clicking on icons & empty slots.
+ Authorities can be alerted to your "activities."

~/= Waiting for a critical card to turn up can be like waiting for the stars to align, but that's the nature of the game: to play the hand that you've been given wisely.
~/= Static screen hints default size is too small. Go to Settings & switch to 100%+

- No tutorial.
- Some grindiness.
- Late game can be convoluted.
- Timers try my patience ...at times. :P
- Add mouseover tooltips for Legacy selection cards.
- Automatically PAUSE gameplay upon returning to game.
- There are times that no matter how well you play, the RNG will just totally screw you.

Cultist Simulator is not a quick, pick-up-and-play card game, but it sure is devilishly entertaining once it clicks. Be prepared to devote some time to learning, mainly because it is so different from other card games. Part of the challenge getting started is wrapping your head around all the combinations of how the cards interact with one another. It can be daunting at first, but once you've dedicated some time to it & have a bit of a handle on what you're doing, it's smooth(er) sailing.

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https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1398521932


Cultist Simulator starts you off with a single Work Verb. This is a square-shaped icon on the game board which you will click on to reveal its empty card slots. Clicking on an empty slot will reveal what types of cards you can place there. You will see a description on the tooltip, with some Aspect icons at the base of it. Clicking on those icons will give you a description of the type of Aspect that can fill that card slot. In this case, your starting card, Menial Employment, fulfills the requirement as an "Aspect: Job" & may be dragged over & added to the empty slot. This enables you to begin work as a miserable hospital porter.

• Side note: Clicking & beginning to drag a card will highlight the Verbs in purple that the card can be used with.

To begin your job, now that you have added the Menial Employment card to the Work Verb, click START, & the Work Verb timer will begin. Once the timer has elapsed, open the Work Verb, & you will see 2 new cards: Funds & Health. Collect them all, & they will now appear down on the game board area. You will notice a new Dream Verb has appeared on the game board with its own timer. Once the initial Dream Verb timer elapses, you will see that another new Verb has appeared: Time Passes. Without adding any cards to the Dream Verb, let the Time Passes Verb timer run down to initiate the next Verb: A Bequest Arrives.

• For the purposes of getting started, I'm leaving the Dream Verb (& Contentment card) be, but it's helpful in discovering lore & recovering from negative statuses. Dreaming can also eventually cause you to go insane.
  
  
• The mini magnet icon on a Verb means that it will automatically grab a card (like how the Time Passes Verb will grab the Funds card each cycle of its timer for example, whether you add Funds manually or not).

The Bequest Verb delivers news that the old man you dreamt of at the hospital named you in his will. Allow the new Bequest Verb's counter to run down to award you with 8 new Funds cards plus 3 others. Collect them, & at this point, you will also see on the game board, a Bequest card, a Reason card, & a Passion card. Pause the timers while you consider your next actions, because the Time Passes Verb has just grabbed one of your Funds cards (due to its magnet icon). This is your recurring expenses upkeep (every 1 minute on the Time Passes Verb timer). Keeping yourself stacked with Funds cards is important, as running out of them will eventually affect your hunger & ultimately your Health, setting you up to lose the game. Negative effects like hunger, ailments, & injury cost Funds cards to remove. The late game will also introduce additional money sinks.

• Be careful how you use your Health card(s) as they are critical to keeping yourself away from a losing scenario. In the early game, they can be added to the Work Verb with a chance to be turned into an Injury Card (use Funds to fix).

The Bequest Verb has now changed into the Study Verb despite having the same light bulb icon. You also now have a Bequest card that you will add to the Study Verb. Notice that while having the Study Verb open with the new Bequest card slotted in it, that it opens a new "Approach" card slot. Make a decision to add either your Reason or Passion card into this slot & click START. Remember, you can click on empty slots & tooltip icons for additional hints & descriptions.

Now that your Study Verb has been slotted with the Bequest card & either the Reason or Passion card, it's time to unpause the game. Allow the Study Verb timer to run down to receive additional text cards that you can add to the Study Verb when you wish. Most likely the Time Passes Verb timer also ran down by this point & grabbed another Funds card from your stash. Pause the game while you consider your next moves.

• One of the best ways to keep money flowing is by climbing the corporate ladder of Glover & Glover. You can open this opportunity up by adding the Reason Card to the Work Verb. Be wary, your boss will be a hardass & demand a perfectionistic work ethic...

You should now have a basic understanding of how the game flows & can begin to experiment with how using different cards & combinations on various Verbs branches out the story & gameplay. As storylines unfold, your play area will fill up with cards & Verbs that will allow you to do a great many things like founding a cult, sending disciples out on missions, summoning "things," etc. 😈


➥ Community Discord: https://discord.gg/ub2tE6Y
➥ Beginner's Guide - by Tssha
➥ Reference Guide (w/ spoilers!) - by Escapade84

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* For my 11k character review & guide version, CLICK HERE.[sklurb.tumblr.com] (Steam limit is 8k)

I hope you found this helpful!

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Follow us & discover a hidden treasure. 💎🏃🏼🏃🏽‍♀️

"H.H. Holmes meets Dungeon Keeper & Oxygen Not Included." An OCD-fulfilling base builder with an art style that brims with eerie personality. Prepare to micromanage!

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➥ NOTE: Patches are incoming to begin addressing common issues.
* 1st patch deployed 5/21
* 2nd patch deployed 5/25
* 3rd patch deployed 6/11
* 4th patch deployed 6/23
* 5th patch deployed 7/26

☑ Content is a value at full price.
☐ Positive experience, but wait to buy when it's on sale.
☐ Negative experience. Wait for improvements before buying.
☐ Very negative experience. Save your money.

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If you've played games like Dungeon Keeper, Oxygen Not Included, Rimworld, Judgment: Apocalypse Survival Simulation, Fallout Shelter, etc, or if you are a serial killer like H.H. Holmes, who built a hotel of death in real life, you will note many familarities in gameplay and hit the ground running. MachiaVillain's spin on the base building management genre is that you must establish your base as a haunted house and lure victims into it for traps, jump scares, and murder. You will have to abide by the parameters that the League of MachiaVillain community places on you, which ultimately comes down to some generalized horror movie rules. Some examples of these rules are, "Kill the virgin last," "Do NOT kill the dog. EVER," "Kill them only when they are alone," and "Kill them at night." It's important to note that cleaning up after your kills is conducive to maintaining a properly run murder house and low suspicion level.

To ensure that you are equipped for success, you are provided with a menu of primary actions that branches out into diverse sub-menus loaded with minion commands, gathering prioritization, structural components, craftable items, decorations, utility, storage, business functions, marketing, laboratory, researchables, crypt management, monster recruiting, and more. Additionally, you have ingame access to archived tasks, events, and instruction, as well as League rules, rank tracking, startup guide, and access to the MachiaVillain Wiki site.

You will have a variety of monster minions to pick from initially (you begin with your choice of three), or if you are not satisfied with the selection's ability and personality statistics, you can reroll for a new lineup. Additional minion slots are unlocked as you rank up. They can be assigned multiple tasks at once, with the number of simultaneously allowable tasks based on their limitations or bonuses (like Brain Excrescence, which adds +2 jobs for that minion). Their individual tasks include Building, Chopping Wood, Mining, Collecting Plants, Maintenance, Storing Resources, Extinguishing Fires, and Refilling. Room tasks include Factory, Home Office, Kitchen, Laboratory, and Training. Their loyalty rating will determine how well they listen to you when it starts to hit the fan. They will also encounter hazards and dangerous creatures when they are out and about running their errands and fighting will be a viable option...if they have the skills, stats, and resistances to do so. Be mindful that they are always well-rested and well-fed (like me).

Obviously, with a game so finely detailed and encyclopedic, this wall of text barely scratches the surface of the varied sandbox experiences you will encounter, but you get the gist. The convergence of your efficiency, planning, design, marketing, minion attributes, environment, hazards, job assignments, etc, plus randomized circumstances, will create some wildly diverse and memorable magic moments. At full price, there's a lot of bang for your buck here.

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Trackable Resources:
Gatherable resources - Wood, stone, metal, and plants
Food - Bones, smoked meat, and smoked brains
Additional items - Gold coins, gold nuggets, and healing potions

Crypt monsters initially available:
Zombie, Mummy, Skeleton, & Psycopath

Unlockable crypt monsters:
Werewolf, Dracula, Toxin Master, Frankenstein's Monster, Pumpkin Head, Medusa, Dr. Frankenstein, Tire (yep, w/ psychic powers even!), & Clown

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+ Manage a murder mansion & crypt to lure unsuspecting victims into a creatively designed demise just like H.H. Holmes![maskofreason.wordpress.com] :P
+ Darkly comedic presentation. Murder is fun!
+ Feeds my OCD.
+ Mad scientist lab.
+ Option to speed up time.
+ Swimming pool w/ a shark.
+ A crypt w/ unlockable monsters.
+ LOVE the cute & spooky theme.
+ Random sandboxy magic moments.
+ The "sketchy" artwork is cool as hell.
+ Sound design is mischievous & whimsical.
+ Suspicion meter adds a neat layer to gameplay.
+ Mouseover descriptions for just about everything.
+ I enjoy watching & listening to how busy all the little minions are.
+ Lots of options for customizing, building & decorating your mansion.

~/= More simplified than Rimworld. Also, no story generation element.
~/= Annoying pause screen vignetting effects that can be toggled off in the settings.

- Gathering gets grindy.
- Voice acting is kind of "meh"
- Some bad grammar & broken English.
- Some critical items are costly to make.
- Combat & targeting can be frustrating.
- I like the geeky humor, but some of it falls flat.
- Not many keybindings beyond camera control.
- White text on light beige background is washed out.
- It can be too "micromanagey," like Oxygen Not Included was.
- Several bugs got through. ▶ Some have been gamebreaking for other players.
- Yellow text is hard to see w/ illustrated backdrops. Needs a prominent drop shadow or wider text border (or both).

H.H. Holmes was the original murder mansion base builder. He would have loved this game.

-END

⭐If you found this review helpful please consider giving it a thumbs up! (Thanks!) 👍🏽

@ShesLevel18
Curator: She said she's level 18 🤘

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