Can you walk us through how you landed this huge contract? TAHLIA: In April 2020, you signed a publishing deal with Devolver Digital. So we had to work hard at iterating – in fact, the game didn’t really come together until right at the end! When you make a Metroidvania, for example, you can look at other games and see how they solved design problems, but with Cult of the Lamb – at least in terms of the structure and rituals – we weren’t able to do that. We always knew that both sides of the game had to feed each other, but because we were trying to do something new – or at least combining two familiar things in a new way – we had to experiment to find the most fun and intuitive way to do that. JAY: The most difficult thing was the game design. TAHLIA: Did creating Cult of the Lamb present any unique challenges? We want to support it, improve it, and continue to add more content to it for as long as we can! We haven’t been together as a team since before the pandemic, but we’ll all be at PAX Australia, so we can finally celebrate the amazing success! In the meantime, we haven’t stopped working on the game. JAY: It surpassed even our wildest expectations! Because it’s all happened so fast, we’re still trying to figure out what it means for us and the company. What was that experience like for you and the team? TAHLIA: Case in point: you sold one million copies within the first week of release. At one point, it was a ‘create your own hell’ game, but because the characters were so cute, you never wanted to punish them! When we tried the cult theme it all clicked into place very quickly. After that, it took a lot of iteration and experimentation before deciding on ‘the cult’ as a theme. I noticed that no one had tried combining. Our previous games had been very linear, which meant people would have exactly the same experience every time, whereas games like The Binding of Isaac and RimWorld created unique experiences every time you played. JAY: It came from the idea of combining two genres: roguelikes and sim colony managers/base-builders. TAHLIA: Cult of the Lamb captured people’s imaginations early on – it’s a pretty unique story you’ve brought to life! Can you recall the initial spark for the idea? Being able to get so much experience in such a short space of time taught us how to move fast, and as a result, we’ve always been able to produce high-quality work very quickly. JAY: We started out making tiny flash games for browser, which meant that between us, we’d made more than a hundred games over a few years. How did this small but mighty team come to be? TAHLIA: Massive Monster has consistently punched above its weight. Some other games that have been really important are RimWorld, Crusader Kings II, Dead Cells, Enter the Gungeon, Stardew Valley – the list goes on! Third, Cult of the Lamb, of course! This game has already influenced my life in so many ways, and the journey has only just begun. Without that game, I wouldn’t be in this industry. I went home and drew my own version of the game on paper! The second would be the first game I got sponsored for that gave me the career I now have. It blew my mind and sparked my imagination. JAY: Monkey Island was one of the first games I saw when I was a kid. TAHLIA: To kick things off, what would be the three to five games that have had the greatest influence on your life? Here we speak to design director Jay Armstong about cult-making and his advice to up-and-comers. So we build our village, perform god-appeasing rituals, conquer rival cult leaders, and deliver sermons all in a day’s work. As the team describe, the single-player roguelike casts us as ‘a possessed lamb saved from annihilation by an ominous stranger’ who must then repay their debt by ‘building a loyal following in his name’. Cult of the Lamb certainly ticks those boxes. The award-winning studio, founded in 2016, had already tasted success with previous releases, The Adventure Pals (which made a cool US $1.2 million) and Never Give Up, but their latest has taken things to a whole new level – so to speak.īased between Australia and the United Kingdom, the team is on a mission to create games ‘bursting with creativity with a focus on personality and play’. In the buzz that followed, it became clear that the indie developer behind it, Massive Monster, had struck gold. Soon after its announcement at Gamescom 2021, Cult of the Lamb shot to the top of online wishlists everywhere. Who knew so many people craved an opportunity to build their own cult?
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