Crazy Goat Games is a very unique development studio. Back in 2014 they released Brave Furries, a small and cute puzzle about how to return the kidnapped princess of furries. In 2019 their game Repressed saw the light of the day: it is an indie adventure where you are but a shadow.
It was followed by The Dragoness: Command of the Flame in 2022, a kind of mix of Heroes of Might & Magic and an RPG, met with a rather chaotic reception. In the summer of 2024 they released Republic of Pirates, a city-building simulator of a pirate port, and a very nice game, by the way.
The studio had been looking for its own style since its inception, sometimes successfully, sometimes less so. The pirate citybuilder was welcomed in particularly warmly, and the studio apparently decided that this is the style of games to pursue. Enter Worshippers of Cthulhu, the latest project from Crazy Goat Games that entered Early Access on October 21, and the center of today’s attention.
For starters, it is a city building simulator mixed with the Chthonic horrors of the Lovecraftian world. Can you imagine it? At first, neither could I. Even after reading all of H.P. Lovecraft, when I saw this game on Steam, I realized… I. Want. To. Play. This. So much.
I always wanted to see unimaginable horrors, Ancient Gods, cult rituals and more. There are plenty of Lovecraft games that are released quite frequently, and get good reviews. Just to mention some: Sucker for Love, Alone in the Dark, The Sinking City, Dredge, Sunless Seas, Sundered, Forgive Me Father 2, and many others.
But I wanted to see it from a Cultist’s perspective, so that the sight of the Gods would chill the blood, the rituals would show the cruelty and would not be censored or softened to make the game more appealing.
Worshippers of Cthulhu gave me a chance to see everything I wanted. The game doesn’t throw them at you right away, but there are rituals and Lovecraftian creatures, horrors from beyond, and even Messengers of the Ancient Gods. Eternal night, a depressive atmosphere and the heavy breathing of the Gods behind you, that’s what the game immediately greets you with. And just from beyond the hearing range, you can sometimes hear the scraping of someone’s claws.
The game begins with the cultists finally finding an island where their buried and sleeping god Cthulhu has an altar for worship. As the head of the cult, you begin to build your first settlement, make the first sacrifices on the altar-carved idols of your god and…. He answers you. And not just answers, but sends his herald.
The sacrifices grow, and soon turn to the disciples and slaves captured in battles. The god’s thirst drives you deeper and deeper into the depths of despair. Worshippers of Cthulhu is a an unusual mix of genres and ideas taken from various games – Anno, Tropico, Frostpunk, Against the Storm – and that makes the game unique.
The game is inspired by the 1926’s short story “The Call of Cthulhu”, which tells us about the Old God, sleeping in the City of R’lyeh. This god influences the minds of people, sends them visions, penetrates their dreams and constantly whispers something.
The world of H.P. Lovecraft is interestingly integrated into the game’s ideas, adding some spice to the standard urban development process.
Worshippers of Cthulhu is a city builder with colonization and indirect control of your followers. You will get to build your settlement, satisfying the needs of its inhabitants, presenting sacrifices to the old god, and protecting the colony from many dangers and enemies as your cult seeks to awaken the ancient cosmic entity, Cthulhu.
You, as the leader and manager at the same time, will conduct dark rituals, pass laws, decide who will live and who can be sacrificed, burned at the stake or thrown into the abyss of the altar. Your goal is to create a prosperous city-cult, which will capture other cities, leading them to the faith in the Great Cthulhu.
However, not everyone wants to follow your faith, even considering that it can quite literally present your god before their eyes. Your colonies (yes, there will be more than one or two) will be attacked by both people who do not want to see the truth of this cruel world, and even other gods, through their followers and worshippers. For example, already in the 2nd mission you will encounter the “King in Yellow”, whose followers will try to destroy and annihilate your cult, because the “King” does not want Cthulhu to awaken.
It is up to you to build production chains for the development of your settlement, from the most basic such as wood extraction and processing them into planks and boards, to more complex ones, including the extraction and processing of several resources and their subsequent combination into a single new composite.
Your colonies will be located on islands, each of which will have its own bonuses and debuffs to keep in mind.
For example, on one island, corn farming will receive a penalty of -50%; and on another, wood acquisition will be buffed by +25%. It is up to you to decide what building to construct and where to do so, but on the most basic level it does mean that it is more profitable to take advantage of these buffs for various factories.
Fortunately, you don’t need to transport resources from island to island, as you have a single unified warehouse. It is there that all resources will be available to all islands at once (this convention allows you not to get caught up with the already sometimes complex logistical processes).
The game’s main currency is faith, which you earn from your followers. They generate faith on their own, but the higher their performance, the more you get. At the beginning of the game and for some amount of time after, you will be losing this resource heavily.
Once you satisfy the needs of the population, for example with shellfish, robes, boiled corn and the Elder’s Temple, you will gain more faith, which in turn will open up ways for you to further develop the colony.
Infrastructure development is achieved through the research, the points for which (Eldritch Favor) are acquired through sacrifices. A small wooden Idol will give you 40 points, 20-30 of which will go to opening a new factory or workshop, and the rest to constructing buildings.
Meanwhile, a luxurious offering that consists of an Idol, food and fabric, as well as a careless slave or cultist will already give you much more points. Whether you need a cultist sheep breeder with little faith, or his fate is that of the sacrifice is up to you to decide.
Yes, all your cultists have their own “professions/specializations”, someone is a woodworker, someone saws wood into boards, someone gets mollusks, there are currently 36 processions in the game, 39 resources, which inspires both respect and fear.
You will also need to build additional buildings to turn by-products into full-fledged goods. These include things like turning sheep wool into clothing, corn into boiled corn, and so on. These chains are quite simple and intuitive.
This is the crux of the game, as you need to increase production simultaneously as your follower counts increase. Each of your followers has a specialization that they excel at. These specializations allow them to do a specific job extremely well. Once you match a specialization to a job, production time will decrease, and they will gradually increase the level of that specialization.
However, you can also change this specialization, after the ritual of carving symbols on the backs of your cultists – you can change their profession, sure, but only once. No joke: you are given a knife in your hand, a book with patterns, and you “dedicate” the acolyte with your hand, creating a sadistic masterpiece on their back.
The religious Faith has not only an economic background, but also a social one as well. Your cult must believe, non-believers are killed or turned into believers. However, no one will directly tell you that this action will give faith, and this action will lead to the receipt of resources.
I am talking about the events in the game. As the cult grows, messengers of your god will appear to you, small events from the lives of cultists will be presented, be it a dead mutated fish found in the sea, or a huge whale washed up on your beach. All events will give you the right to choose, but you should be wary of your choices, because the consequences will be yours to deal with as well.
Rituals will give Faith, Rituals give points for research, Rituals allow you to change professions, and Rituals will also allow you to calm the Wrath of the Ancient.
Lovecraftian gods don’t know forgiveness, and as you complete quests, you will unlock a patience meter. It shows how long you have to complete the Elder’s tasks. Finishing quests and certain events will increase the timer. Conquering other islands is done through battles at sea, you can create chthonic creatures from your followers who will fight the ships and defenses of the Unbelievers.
Having destroyed everything, you will receive the colony for your own use. It is up to you to decide whether to destroy it completely, killing everyone, or to kill some, or save everyone – with the possibility of retraining them as followers. And then you rebuild the colony again on a new island.
The Herald will give you a chain of quests aimed at awakening the Ancient One. Find the Black Spires – Spires of Dreams, find the Necronomicon, defeat the “King in Yellow”, and many others. He also transmits the will of Cthulhu to you.
The game’s visuals are gloomy, they exude cruelty and hopelessness, but not the kind of desolation that comes with death, but rather the one that comes with life. Your cities are alive, people walk, work, communicate. Sacrifices are colorful and beautiful, from the basic tentacles that take away idols to the scene where you, as the Head of the Cult, burn victims, choosing the color of the flame for the fire. The eternal rain brings grief and despair, but it didn’t seem too annoying to me.
The sound in the game is on point. Constant whispering, screams of victims, the sound of people working, the accompanying music is also pleasant. The graphics themselves… are 5-6 years old, in my opinion. There are no particularly beautiful details that made me gasp out loud, but the islands themselves are made with interesting details.
The ruins of temples, ancient buildings, sunken ships and many other details brighten up the game. As a result, for now, I will keep an eye on the game. It would add to the game to rework some mechanics, and add new ones.
At the moment, the game has only 3 missions, the completion of which will take 12-15 hours. There is not enough content, but seeing how the developers adhere to the canon, how they work on their game, I will wait for it. And the mixture of several games looks extremely interesting. I hope that the team listens to the reviews and will work on it
The game is currently available in Steam Early Access. The team expects Worshippers of Cthulhu to stay in EA for about a year, but the developers admit at not being sure. The current version includes all the core gameplay features, with the community feedback being used to gauge new features.
