Video Game / Cult of the Lamb

"Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sins of the world." ...Yeah, right.

"Praise the Lamb, conduit to great power, promised liberator of the One Who Waits below.
Yet sacrificial beast, take heed; for a Crown cannot sit upon two brows."

— Opening narration

Cult of the Lamb is an action-adventure/strategy/life simulation game developed by Massive Monster and published by Devolver Digital. It is playable on PC, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S, and Xbox One.

The player takes control of a lamb saved from being sacrificed by a mysterious entity, known as "The One Who Waits". The One Who Waits blesses the lamb with powers, and gives them a holy mission; go forth and make disciples of all animals and forge the One True Cult in their name. After you use your newfound powers to defeat your captors and free the other animals, they begin to worship you in gratitude and become the first followers of your new religion. Recruit other animals to worship you, build your following, and defeat other religious groups to spread your Word and become the one true cult.

The game's teaser trailer from Gamescom 2021 can be viewed here alongside a Console Announcement Trailer from February 24th, 2022. The official website can be found here alongside the game's official Twitter page.

On the 24th of April, 2023, a content update titled Relics of the Old Faith was released. This update added new story content to play after the end of the original game, new characters to interact with and new gameplay mechanics, the most prevalent of them being relics, artifacts that grant powerful abilities when equipped and used during crusades.

The 16th of January, 2024 introduces the Sins of the Flesh update. The update adds in new content that features a new progression system for followers (allowing them to ascend to disciples), a new weapon type in the form of Blunderbusses and the ability for your followers to procreate and have offspring to indoctrinate.

The game was released to all consoles on August 11, 2022.

Oni Press took to Kickstarter for a tie-in comic called Cult Of The Lamb The First Verse.

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Tropes appearing in Cult of the Lamb:

• Action Bomb: A wide variety of these appear in Anchordeep, ranging from relatively helpless explosive jellyfish which serve mostly to be swatted towards other enemies, to living land mines, and suicide-bomber squid, which charge towards the Lamb and explode on impact.
• Ambiguous Situation: When you take the "Belief in Life After Death" doctrine, the death animations change appropriately. Are you altering the appearance of the cult's magic according to your stated beliefs... or did you just will an afterlife into existence simply by declaring one to exist? If what the Mysterious Mystic in the Relics of the Old Faith expansion says at the end of the game is to be believed, the latter is what's happening, since they mention that the Lamb's influence is shaping, not just the laws of this world, but also the laws of the next.
• And I Must Scream:
  • The statues in Midas's Cave are shown to move about and laugh in response to his remarks, and the Lamb can even interact with a large one in the upper-left corner, suggesting that those turned into such are still alive and conscious, but otherwise unable to do much of anything about it. You can sacrifice your own followers to Midas and turn them into golden statues as well, subjecting them to the same fate.
  • Adherents of the Old Faith in Anura perform sacrifices by tying their victims to giant mushrooms, then allowing the fungus to slowly consume the helpless victim. You can see the results of this throughout the area, and the unfortunate victims, now completely covered by the mushroom, seem to still be alive.
• And the Adventure Continues: After defeating Narinder in the Refuse ending, the player is free to continue crusading, growing in power, and developing their cult with no time limit or restrictions. The Relics of the Old World update adds in a post-game storyline in which you refight the Bishops in order to establish your godhood as well as claim them as followers.
• And Your Reward Is Interior Decorating: Blueprints for decoration items can be received from reward chests and each of the Bishops drops a unique trophy decoration blueprint.
• Anti-Frustration Features: It's subtle, but the game does have the followers do a few things that make it slightly easier for the player to manage the game.
  • Followers do not always have to be ordered to bed rest, as they will at times find a healing station themselves to rest or return to their assigned "house". This also happens when the player is on a crusade, meaning that they won't have to come back to check in on the follower.
  • If a cleaning station has been built and placed down, a follower will automatically attend to the messes made by other followers, cleaning up poop and vomit. Once again, this is also done while the player is on a crusade, so if an elderly follower dies while they're away, they won't have come back to a base covered in vomit.
  • If a follower is interrupted during a task and leaves, another follower will run over to pick up where they left off without being ordered to do so.
  • When the Shrine's devotion bar is full, followers will stop worshipping and will seek out any other available jobs.
  • Followers in the vicinity will automatically stop what they're doing to help the player construct new buildings — if they don't get distracted on the way over.
  • Claws as a weapon have low damage in return for a super power combo finisher, so just in case the knockback pushes the enemies too far away the final hit of the combo will gain an absurd amount of extra range as long as any of the preceding hits landed, so the finisher doesn't whiff.
  • When you die, you lose a certain percentage of items as punishment. However, if you are searching for certain items for a quest, you won't lose them.
  • The Relics of the Old Faith update added new quality of life additions to the game such as adding names over your followers, sectioning crops for the farm, and creating buildings that take less space but hold more things for those with big cults.
  • If you have to make a Follower eat disgusting and/or dangerous food (such as Bowl of Poop or Minced Follower Meat) for a quest, only the targeted Follower will go for it when you make it, unlike outside of quests where an unintended Follower might get to it first.
  • Followers on a cleaning station won't clean up the special poops added in Sins of the Flesh so you don't miss out on them and the special effects they have, the exception being if you're away from base on a crusade, where special poops either won't spawn at all or get cleaned up as normal so your base's hygiene meter isn't emptied out.
• Anti-Gravity Clothing: For a loose definition of clothing, anyway. The trailer for the Sins of the Flesh update shows the cultists doing a Nude Nature Dance with leaves covering their genital areas, but nothing is holding them in place.
• Anyone Can Die: Your followers will die, one way or another. Old age, illness, starvation, sacrifice... The list goes on. That said, you can revive them with the right Ritual or, as of the Relics of the Old Faith update, even gift them a Golden Skull Necklace which makes them immortal.
• Artistic License – Religion: The titular cult seems to combine several different uses of the term. The original Roman use to mean an organization dedicated to cultivating worship of a specific god, the micromanaged secluded compound of a modern personality cult, and the excessive Human Sacrifice of Hollywood Satanism and Lovecraft.
• Art-Style Dissonance: The game is filled with adorable little chibi-fied animals that wouldn't look out of place in Animal Crossing... worshipping a demonic entity, spreading its gospel by the sword, and trying to take over the world.
• Ascended Extra: An interactive online example. If you connect the game to your Twitch account, Twitch followers on stream can raffle to be actual followers of the player's cult, complete with the winner having to customize their own cult member, effectively becoming this.
• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: Available as a possible Doctrine for your Cult. In gameplay terms, this renders a follower Killed Off for Real in the same way sacrificing them would, but rather than lowering loyalty for your entire flock, it sharply raises it instead. The drawbacks are that an Ascended follower doesn't drop resources like they would if they were sacrificed (though it does drop follower meat if you don't have the "Belief in the Afterlife" doctrine), and the ritual has a fairly lengthy cooldown, so it can't be used to dispose of multiple followers in quick succession, but it still provides a useful way to get rid of a troublesome or useless follower without discouraging the cult.
  • This is also implied to be what happens when a funeral is hosted, as the ghost of the deceased follower is shown leaving their body and ascending to someplace else.
• Ascended to Carnivorism: All of the creatures are omnivores regardless of species, including the Lamb if you gain the Heart Upgrade that allows them to eat a meal to gain an extra heart^note Eating the grass meal will actually make the Lamb sick and cause them to lose half a heart. You can go one step further by having your cult embrace cannibalism. Helob and the Fox also eat people, but never try to attack the Lamb because they see the Lamb as a fellow predator.
• Audience Participation: The game has built in Twitch integration, so that anyone streaming the game can have their viewers join the game as followers, named after and customized by them.
• Badass Adorable: The Lamb could practically be a poster-child for this trope. The game starts with the Lamb (upon being blessed with the powers of The One Who Waits) taking down their captors that were preparing to sacrifice them by chopping off their head. In-game, the Lamb also manages to rack up a truly impressive bodycount despite being the only active combatant in their cult.
• Bamboo Technology: The game's setting is medieval in terms of technological advancement. That won't stop you from building propaganda speakers and dissenting followers from using megaphones, both made out of sticks. Truth in Television, as speakers were mentioned as far back as ancient Greece, and first depiction of one shows an Indigenous man using a megaphone made out of bark.
• Being Good Sucks: You can choose exactly how evilly you play your Lamb, but the game on the whole encourages Pragmatic Villainy, giving enough care to your followers for them to remain devoted, but overall treating them as disposable resources. Several features and quests call for you to sacrifice followers or commit other morally questionable actions for your own gain, and while you can simply skip them, there is no incentive to do so, other than a Self-Imposed Challenge, there is no special ending or other reward for being nice to your cult.
• Betting Mini-Game:
  • Knucklebones is a dice game played against Ratau and his friends for a varying amount of money. Beating each opponent is also required in order to unlock their Tarot cards.
  • The Statue of the Beast found rarely in the dungeons is essentially a slot machine which takes money from you and then spits out a random amount which can be higher or lower than what you paid. However, stealing the nearby gold will anger the Statue so it takes your money but doesn't give any back.
• Blatant Lies: A follower may task the Lamb with finding them 10 Menticide Mushrooms from Anura... Just to look at, they promise!
• Bloodless Carnage: Ironically, despite the incredibly gruesome, violent, and dark nature of the world, any enemies simply turn into bloodless skeletons upon death without leaving so much as a blood stain anywhere.
• Book Ends: The player can choose to end the game as they began, by kneeling to be sacrificed.
• Boring, but Practical: Adopting the "Grass Eater Trait" Doctrine at Tier 2 of the Sustenance path. It essentially means that you'll never have to worry about feeding your Followers again, as they will be able to consume Grassy Gruel without any ill effects, making it essentially superior to most of the basic low-tier food options.
• But Thou Must!: In the opening moments of the game, the Lamb is only given two options when The One Who Waits orders them to start a cult: "Yes" and "Absolutely." After there was some backlash in that the "player's choice" ultimately does not matter, developer commentary says this was a deliberate choice in that the player has no agency about what this ancient god does to them or asks of them, there is only doing and obeying. Plus, you get to live again. Subverted when it comes to the You Have Outlived Your Usefulness moment at the game's end; you COULD obey, surrender your crown and cult, and allow the One Who Waits to kill you so you're no longer a threat... or you could refuse.
• Carnivore Confusion: Regardless of what species they are customized to be, any one of your cultists (and with the right upgrade, the Lamb) are happy to eat any combination of berries, veggies, fish, or meat. By default, most are slightly less happy to eat grass, poop, or each other. This includes followers themed after the more plant-like minibosses, to extend the confusion.
• Character Customization: In the game, after rescuing another animal and taking them back to your commune, you "indoctrinate" them into your cult before issuing them orders; this allows the player to change the new recruit's name, species, and color.
• Cool Crown: In the game, from the dark god, the Lamb receives a little black crown adorned with a glowing red eye that can transform into a fire-blasting sword and have all manner of other occult powers in the form of Curses. The other Bishops also wear their own crowns with different colored eyes.
• Cheeky Mouth: The followers of the Lamb's cult are designed like this. The additional follower skins added through updates and DLC start to really exaggerate this trope for comedy's sake, especially bird followers who still have their beak on the side of the face - complete with the lines that denote where the beak should open, but their mouth will still be a simple black line drawn across the side of their face.
• Children Are Innocent: Children raised from the Mating Tent are exempt from being victims of all of your various deeds of cruelty and harm, the only thing you can do with them is let them walk around and pet them daily for a massive loyalty gain before they grow into adults.
• Come to Gawk: Followers will laugh at any dissenter placed in a Stock Punishment.
• Cooking Mechanics: The first building is a cooking fire which is used to feed the Followers. Different meals can be made depending on available ingredients, with higher quality meals being easier to ruin during the mini-game. Aside from filling their hunger meter, food also has a chance of triggering bonus effects for the Follower. The Lamb can also eat a meal once per day which grants additional hearts based on the dish.
• Crapsaccharine World: The game is set in a World of Funny Animals done in a simplistic, cartoonish style, but don't let that fool you. It's a cruel world ran by Cults that worship Eldritch Abominations that demand the pain and suffering of mortals as a method of attaining godhood. Even our protagonist isn't so much a savior as they are another Dark Messiah trying to out-do the Big Bad Duumvirate for a nightmarish god of their very own, using human-err "animal" sacrifices of both their enemies and their followers to gain power. And bishop help you if you're one of the sheep people.
  • The world itself seems to be slowly winding down, as highlighted by Haro:
    Haro: Eons agone, these lands were rife with gods and their adherents. What befell this pantheon? Alas. 'Tis the nature of beasts to forget, and of Gods to be forgotten. Mayhap they left. Mayhap they slept. Mayhap they devoured and were devoured in turn. Those few who remained spread roots, spun webs, molded this world to meet them and theirs. 'Twere a land of many Gods once. Hundreds. Now...
    • ...and later, Shamura:
    Shamura: Five becomes four becomes three becomes two becomes one becomes nothing.
    • Notable, in that you're killing off the remaining gods, and by the end, you're the only deity left alive, unless you spared Narinder/The One Who Waits.
• Crossover: The one-year anniversary update on August 21, 2023 brought one with Don't Starve, featuring Webber as an unlockable follower, themed decorations, and a new survival-based Penitence Mode. In return, Don't Starve added some sheep and weapon skins based on Cult of the Lamb.
  • Monster Roadtrip also received a crossover with Cult of the Lamb on October 26, 2023 adding The Lamb as a hitchhiker with their own events and ending.
  • Party Animals brought the Lamb into their game as a unlockable character on January 14, 2024.
  • Starting January 24, 2024, anyone who owns both Cult of the Lamb and Wizard with a Gun will unlock the Scytheman's Outfit costume and Red Crown weapon for the latter game.
• Cruelty Is the Only Option: In the post-game storyline, unlocking the doors to the new versions of the worlds requires you to sacrifice a follower of sufficiently-high level.
• Cult: The main goal of the game is to establish and grow a cult for a mysterious entity while wiping out opposing cults.
• Deal with the Devil: The game starts with the protagonist being saved by a deity known as "The One Who Waits" in exchange for starting a cult in its name.
• Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: The Lamb cannot die permanently due to The One Who Waits keeping them alive. At most, each death results in a slight loss of materials collected during a crusade and a loss of Faith. Even those downsides can be alleviated, with a rare event preventing the materials loss and the brainwashing ritual preventing any Faith loss.
• Death Is Cheap: Sort of. With the right Ritual, you are capable of bringing a follower back to life, regardless of how they die. However, you need enough materials and time to make it happen, so you cannot revive as many followers in such a short amount of time.
• Death of the Old Gods: It's mentioned that there used to be more gods than just the Bishops, but they've all disappeared, and the Lamb continues this by killing them as well. By the end of the game the only deity left standing is the Lamb themself.
• Defeat Equals Friendship: Whenever you defeat a miniboss they transform into a follower that can be inducted into your cult. Not only can you also do this with The One Who Waits, but the 'Relics Of The Old Faith' update allows you to recruit the Bishops and The One Who Waits' followers into your cult as well.
• Deletion as Punishment: Should you lose all your followers, you're given a two-day time limit to recruit more. Fail to accomplish this, and not only does it count as a permanent death, but the game will also delete your save file. After all, what is a shepherd without a flock?
• Demonic Possession: The Summoning Circle allows you to summon a demon into the body of one of your followers. At max rank, this allows you to convert up to three cultists into combat and/or utility familiars for the duration of one run, at the cost of leaving them exhausted and needing a nap once the run ends.
• Developer's Foresight:
  • It is entirely possible to fight the Bishops out-of-order, depending on how long you choose to accumulate your follower count, and each Bishop's dialogue and interactions with the Lamb will change in small ways to reflect the order they're fought in.
  • In the Sins of the Flesh expansion, if you're using the Mating Tent and try to set up any two siblings together (such as any of Bishops with each other or with Narinder), the chances of success will drop to zero, and the attempt will be a guaranteed failure. The same goes for trying to pair off a follower with either of their parents, which results in a 0% success chance regardless.
  • After acquiring Sozo as a follower, if he were to ever be assigned as Undertaker, he will proceed to carry corpses to the Morgue using the backpack on his back.
• Devoured by the Horde: When performing the Gluttony of Cannibals ritual from the Sins of the Flesh expansion, one of your followers will be ganged up on by the rest and eaten on the spot.
• Did You Just Romance Cthulhu?:
  • In the game, the Lamb can romance and marry their followers, which would fall into this trope given the Lamb's eldritch nature.
  • If Narinder, The One Who Waits is spared, they become one of your followers and can also be married, fulfilling this trope. Although it might be more of a straight romance at that point, since both the Lamb and Narinder/The One Who Waits are of an eldritch nature.
  • This trope can also be taken another step further in the 'Relics of the Old Faith' update. Since you can now recruit the bishops as followers and marry all of them, it's possible for the lamb to have an entire harem of former gods and goddesses.
• Did You Just Scam Cthulhu?: Occasionally encountered in the dungeons, the Statue of the Beast allows you to make an offering in coins in return for a random bounty. There are many sacks of gold lying around the Statue's chamber, but looting them enrages the statue and ensures that your next offering will leave you out-of-pocket. So how is this trope in effect? Because there is nothing keeping you from maxing out the offerings you can make to the Statue and then looting all the gold, leaving the Statue trembling with impotent rage but incurring no penalties for the Lamb.
• Diegetic Interface: Rescuing a Follower from sacrifice requires beating several waves of enemies. There are small stones in front of the sacrificial altar which represent the number of waves; each time a wave is defeated, one stone lights up.
• Divine Intervention: In the intro, the Lamb is saved from becoming a sacrifice by a dark god, who grants them the power to defeat their captors.
• Due to the Dead: One of your Doctrines will allow you to host funerals for followers that have died of natural causes. This restores a large amount of faith in your other followers, and also causes their graves to generate some extra Devotion over time.
• Early Game Hell: While not as bad as other examples, there is a decent amount of struggle to be had in the early game. When you start off, your followers are essentially a pack of wild animals living in a hobo camp who are dependent on you for their every need: feeding them, sheltering them, cleaning up their poop, maintaining their faith, etc. While that might not sound so bad, those demands can take valuable time away from dungeon crawls, which are the only way of obtaining the much needed resources required to make your cult flourish. There are resources in your cult's property when you start the game, but they are finite and quickly run out just establishing basic buildings (trees do grow on the property but very slowly). If you ignore your followers for the sake of crusades, they will turn on you very quickly, and odds are you won't have any way of dealing with them apart from blatant murder in the early game. Until you can get some actual infrastructure going, you'll be spending more time coddling your cultists than smiting heretics.
• Earn Your Bad Ending: It's possible to get a game over before the actual ending by allowing your cult to completely collapse. This is actually fairly hard to earn at any point past the very early game as acquiring new Followers is relatively easy and you're even given a timed quest to avoid this ending.
• Elite Mooks: Two types of these. Firstly, there are more powerful red-robed variants of the Swordsman, Archer and Guardian enemy cultists, and secondly there are oversized versions of any enemy which can randomly spawn, which possess an additional ability alongside their standard attacks (drops a bomb on death, spreads poison around, periodically shoots out fireballs).
• Even Evil Has Standards: For all the horrific and nightmarish things the Bishops and the One Who Waits do in the name of their godhood and power, as of Sins of the Flesh they will outright refuse to breed with any of the other Bishops, and attempting to try will make them vomit at the mere thought before yelling at you. While it's been confirmed by Word of God that they aren't actually blood-relatives, they still have a strong enough familial bond think of it as incest and want no part of that.
• Evil Power Vacuum: Once a Bishop is killed, their followers and creatures in their specified domain will become stronger, fighting to become their replacement.
• Evil vs. Evil: The Bishops mercilessly pursue anybody who refuses to be part of the Old Faith and have their followers sacrifice countless innocent animals in their name. Yet as the game shows, The One Who Waits and his followers don't really have the moral high-ground here, as their cult is just as ruthless when dealing with "heretics" and "false prophets". Sacrificing members of your own cult to gain more power is even a game mechanic, with various Doctrines that make the Lamb little better than the Old Faith by ordering cannibalism, the ritual sacrifice of the elderly, the celebration of ritual fights to the death or ritualistically slaughtering dissenters to ensure peace for the rest of the loyal flock. Reaches its apex during the Refuse ending, where the One Who Waits proves to be just as vicious and ruthless as the Bishops, and the Lamb challenges it for the position of the land's sole remaining god. This can end up being A Lighter Shade of Black if the Lamb leads a mostly-benevolent cult, avoiding sacrifice, murder, and cannibalism, treating Followers with respect and dignity, and generally being a Benevolent Boss.
• Exact Words: Played with multiple times in regards to the Twist Ending.
  • You are tasked with founding a cult in service to the One Who Waits, but the name of the game (and the default cult name) is the Cult of the Lamb. Sure enough, in the Refuse ending, you usurp the One Who Waits as the sole remaining god, leaving only the Lamb.
  • The prophecy that drives the game states that the Lamb will "liberate" the One Who Waits. It says nothing about obedience... nor does it say what is supposed to happen after the Lamb successfully frees their patron.
  • The opening dialogue ominously notes that "a crown cannot sit upon two brows." While this is obviously foreshadowing the One Who Waits' betrayal of the Lamb at games' end, it also implies that blind acceptance isn't the only option - after all, while the crown can't be shared, there's nothing saying you HAVE to give it back...
• Express Delivery: In the trailer for the Sins of the Flesh expansion, two cultists hold hands, run into a mating tent, and fool around in it for two seconds before emerging with an egg.
• Eye Motifs: The sinister-looking eye on the Lamb's crown is seen in several places during the game, and also the other Bishops have at least one red eye prominently on their bodies.
• Fantasy Gun Control: The Sins of the Flesh expansion officially abolished it by introducing a blunderbuss with regenerating ammo for the Lamb to wield.
• Fishing Minigame: Once you encounter The Fisherman in Darkwood, the player unlocks the ability to fish at Pilgrim's Progress. You can catch a variety of fish to feed to your followers, and if you get anything rarer from it (like crab or squid), you can give it to The Fisherman in exchange for Holy Talisman pieces.
• Flunky Boss: Every single boss in the game, including The One Who Waits summons smaller enemies to get in your way as you fight them. Most prominent with the Witnesses, who combine this with "Get Back Here!" Boss — after taking damage they will disappear, summoning a wave of minions you need to take out before having another crack at them.
• Foreshadowing: There are a few hints at what happens later in the game.
  • The very first thing the player sees when starting a new game is a narration warning that "a crown cannot be worn by two brows". This is the first real clue that the One Who Waits has no intention of sharing his victory with the Lamb or their followers.
  • A repeated quote throughout the game is "Five becomes four becomes three becomes two becomes one becomes nothing". This both hints at The One Who Waits' status as the fifth Bishop of the Old Faith, and his potential fate in the golden ending.
• Force-Choke: If the Lamb submits to The One Who Waits at the end, they are force-choked so hard they're practically crushed to death, left in a bloody heap at his feet. If the Lamb beats The One Who Waits and doesn't spare him, then they force-choke Narinder to execute him.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: The player character, "The Lamb", is an ordinary little sheep chosen to become the vessel of the One Who Waits, a mysterious dark god. Through its influence, the Lamb slowly eradicates the Four Bishops of the Old Faith, completely dismantling the land's established order while building its own little demesne within it. Then taken to the extreme if the Lamb refuses to surrender to the One Who Waits in the ending, with them pulling a Klingon Promotion and literally becoming the sole remaining dark god.
• Fountain of Youth: Sins of the Flesh allows the Lamb to cook up an omelet using a follower egg produced from the Mating Tent, if an elder eats this omelet, they'll regress back to the youngest stage of adulthood they can. While this does come at the cost of losing an egg that could hatch into a newborn follower, it can be worth it to use to keep a follower you're fond of around a bit longer without resurrecting them or using a rare post-game golden skull necklace.
• Game-Breaking Bug: The Switch release has encountered an issue that soft-locks the game during crusades, forcing the player to either close and restart the game from the main menu, or, at worst, erasing their entire progress and forcing them to start the entire game over.
• Glass Cannon: There are three equipable fleeces that turn the Lamb into a high damage/low durability fighter:
  • Fleece of Glass Cannon is the ranged variant that doubles the damage of curses and halves their fervor cost, but also halves the Lamb's melee damage and their health pool
  • The Golden Fleece provides a +5% damage boost each time the Lamb kills an enemy that continues to stack until they take a hit, but doubles all damage recieved
  • and the Fleece of the Berserker is by far the most extreme example of this trope in game. When equipped, the Lamb's weapon damage is multiplied by 10 (that's a 1000 percent damage boost.) but the Lamb also dies after a single hit and can't resurrect during a run. At that point all combat encounters turn into a matter of who can land a hit first.
• Green Thumb: Small farming plots are one of the first possible unlocks so you can grow food or flowers. Collected feces becomes fertilizer. You can also compost grass, berries, flowers, vegetables, and dead bodies with the right unlocked facilities. Initially, the Lamb does all the farming, though followers can plant and tend crops with Farming Station I, and begin harvesting crops themself with Farming Station II.
• Gruesome Goat: While the protagonist is technically a sheep rather than a goat, them being a caprine serving a dark god (particularly with the tiny nubs on their head) still gives them some connotations to this trope.
• Guide Dang It!: While the game is fairly generous and direct with what it asks you to do, there's a few of the follower forms that aren't obvious where they come from and may require a bit of help.
  • The "Monster" follower skin is acquired by antagonizing Rakshasa until he attacks you, then beating him into submission, whereupon he gives you the blueprint for a decoration you have to build, and then pray to at night. Besides the roguelike genre's storied history with shopkeepers, nothing suggests this can happen unless you accidentally attack his wife while smashing scenery in his shop rooms and have him yell at you for it.
  • The "Poop" follower skin is unlocked by making six bowls of poop at the cooking station. While it's not hard to do, it's something you're not likely to do by intent because just one follower eating poop when they don't ask for it can cause some really bad problems. If your followers are awake and have room for food, they'll eat all of it and cause a monstrously dangerous faith loss, as well as getting sick, causing you to have to undergo immediate and severe damage control. Which is to say, why would you make that many at once for any reason if not for this reward?
  • The "Snail" follower skin is unlocked by killing five snails in Anura, which spawn randomly and are easy to miss. They drop shells which must then be taken to shrines in the five map locations, which are easy to miss in the background.
  • There's also the hidden rooms that you can find the Ancient Tablets in, from the Sins of the Flesh DLC. The way to access them is to have a stone pillar topped with the shape of a Crown spawn randomly in a dungeon room. You must then attack said pillar until it beams a light to open the path to the hidden room. Easier then the above-mentioned follower forms, but since the pillars are unbreakable and you need to attack them a few times to get them to open the way; it's likely a few players attacked the pillar once or twice then gave up and left when it didn't show any signs of breakage (even the sound of hitting them is not the same as anything breakable in the environment).
• Heartbeat Soundtrack: The music for the Darkwood is accompanied by a single heartbeat heard throughout the level. Heartbeats can be heard in much of the game's soundtrack, particularly there and in the church.
• Hello, [Insert Name Here]: The cult is initially called "The Cult of the Lamb" but can be renamed early in the game.
• Holiday Mode: The Blood Moon Festival during the weeks before and after Halloween makes the Blood Moon ritual available. While the ritual is active, the camp is cast in a constant red glow from the blood moon and ghosts of dead Followers terrorize the living ones. The Lamb can capture the ghosts in their book to unlock new decorations and Follower skins.
• Holler Button: You can press a button to have the Lamb let out a cute little bleat.
• Homing Projectile: Ghosts created by Necromantic weapons and Touch of the Revenant will target an enemy and quickly fly at them. Hounds of Fate fly slower than the ghosts but have better tracking.
• How the Mighty Have Fallen: Illustrated in the short Leshy's Kitchen Nightmare where Leshy gets chewed out by a cultist for getting distracted and burning a steak.
• Humanlike Hand Anatomy: In the game, all the animal characters have stubby Four-Fingered Hands instead of paws or hooves.
• Human Resources: The Lamb frequently makes use of body parts for upgrades and materials for rituals. These include the bones of their enemies (or their dead cultists), Heretic's Hearts which are used for permanent upgrades, and even "Follower Meat" which is gained from sacrificing or outright murdering cultists then butchering their remains.
• Human Sacrifice: Well, Funny Animal Sacrifice, but one of the key mechanics is the sacrifice of your cultists and heretical spies of the Bishops to earn items, bonuses, and gifts from The One Who Waits.
• I Ate WHAT?!: Prominent; early on, the best thing you can make to eat are wild berry dishes, which only have a mild chance of causing diarrhea. You get better dishes, but you also get much, much worse ones, like grass (which is sickening), poop (which is sickening and causes diarrhea), cannibal stew (which cause sickness and more unless you have the right doctrines for it), and even one described as a lethal meal, with a fair chance of killing off the follower that eats it (with a boosted chance for rare drops from their corpse, of course.) Since food is always a necessity and invoking famine is one of the Bishops' favorite curses, sometimes you'll be stuck with a choice between starvation or an awful meal.
  • There are quests will one follower will ask the Lamb to trick another follower they don't like into eating a bowl of shit as a prank. Denying the quest will make them lose Faith, and the follower that eats it will fall deathly ill for a few days.
• I'm a Humanitarian:
  • The Lamb is perfectly capable of using doctrines that turn the cult into cannibals, feasting on the flesh of other animals and gaining benefits from it. At the cost of increased chances of sickness, they will actually increase their faith and devotion to the Lamb.
  • The Gluttony of Cannibals ritual added in Sins of the Flesh skips the whole postmortem butchering and cooking part and just selects one unfortunate follower to be set upon and Eaten Alive by the rest of the cult like they're wild beasts.
• In the Hood: Generic cult followers of the Bishops all wear hoods, making the exact species for them unknown. However, the member who prepares to cut off the lamb's head appears to be a large wolf judging by its ears and the shape of its muzzle. In developer commentary, they mention that this was an intentional choice to make cultists your generic recurring enemy, independent of the specific creatures in each biome.
  • When performing Rituals in the Temple, the player's Followers will don hoods as well, making them look almost identical to the Bishops' cultists. They take them off again when the ritual is done.
• I Owe You My Life: Other animals being set up to be sacrificed can be saved by the Lamb, immediately bow down to them and become members of their cult.
• Irony:
  • In terms of Animal Motifs, sheep are often used to represent mindless followers. This sheep is a cult leader gathering followers of their own for a sinister purpose. You can choose to play into the Lamb's animal stereotype or avert it further, depending on your ultimate response to The One Who Waits at the end of the game.
  • At several points, the Lamb will run into unfortunate victims about to be sacrificed by the Bishops' goons. The Lamb can save these poor souls and induct them into the cult... only to later sacrifice them in the exact same way. Becomes doubly ironic when the same thing ends up happening to the Lamb at the end of the game, as The One Who Waits, who had previously saved the Lamb from being sacrificed, now expects his cult leader to willingly lay down life so that he may return to his full power. How the Lamb reacts to this is up to you.
  • Similar to the above, Helob eats people and will share his finds with the Lamb, allowing them to potentially save that Follower from being eaten. The Lamb can then, with the right Doctrines, kill them to eat their meat, carve up their body after a natural death or tie them to a roasting spit and have the other followers devour them alive or give them to the Fox who will also eat them alive.
• It's Up to You: The Followers by and large are pretty pathetic, being unable to feed or clean up after themselves, and seeming to be pretty incapable of fighting or defending themselves, either (best shown by the large number of them who are held as prisoners or sacrifices, as well as by the Fight Pit ritual, which is nothing more than a Wimp Fight.) As a result, the Lamb is responsible for pretty much anything of consequence beyond basic resource gathering. As the cult is upgraded, Followers will become able to do more on their own, such as going on missions to gather resources (This can kill them), tending to the crops and gathering food, as well as cleaning up the base, but the Lamb will always be the only one who can fish or fight.
  • The Demonic Summoning Circle allows the Lamb to temporarily convert a Follower into a demon that assists in battle, but it's explicitly described as a Demonic Possession, so presumably, the demon is the one doing the work in those cases.
• Jerkass Gods: All of the gods in the setting are cruel and malicious entities, calling for the death of all nonbelievers as well as ritual sacrifices in their names.
• Lag Cancel: Dodge-rolling interrupts everything you might be doing at the time other than casting a Curse, including the wind-down of your attacks. This is notably useful for the hammer, which otherwise roots you in place for nearly a whole second after swinging.
• Last of His Kind: The main protagonist is the last surviving sheep in the land, as the rest of their kin were hunted down by the leaders of the Old Faith, who were desperate to keep the One Who Waits sealed.
• Lethal Chef: The earliest recipes you can make can have negative effects on your cultists, making the Lamb this. Standard quality "Basic Berry Bowls" have a 15% chance of instantly inducing diarrhea in the unfortunate cultist who eats them. "Dangerous Meal" ups the ante as the dish is specifically meant for culling cultists to harvest their meat and bones—possibly to cook and serve to the rest of the cult.
• Magikarp Power: Child followers hatched from eggs require a lot of literal babysitting compared to normal followers - you have to pet their egg at least twice during incubation, and then once they've hatched they're borderline useless, wandering around the base doing nothing but pooping a lot (which can be a double-edged sword, poop is useful but if your followers aren't cleaning it up, it can make hygiene a concern even in the late game), and if neglected they can cause a fairly hefty faith loss. However as long as you pet them daily as they grow up over the course of a week, you can have a follower that's both extremely young and starts their adulthood at loyalty level 7 or 8 and will max out in no time. Combine that with the right inherited perks you can have a follower that is theoretically flawless that will be around for a long time even without skull necklaces.
• Mature Animal Story: The game is set in a universe entirely inhabited by cute Funny Animals... participating in a religious cult.
• Mentor Archetype: After escaping the cult at the very start, the player is introduced to "Ratau", an elderly rat that had also escaped from the cult some time ago but without the Lamb powers. He then hosts the game's tutorial, instructing the player on how to save other sacrifices, before bequeathing the Lamb a spot in the forest to set up their own commune.
• Mindless Sheep:
  • Inverted. The titular Lamb is the leader of the cult, while their followers of all other animal species are the mindlessly obedient ones.
  • The Naturally Obedient trait is represented by an icon of a sheep. Recruiting a Worshiper with this trait gets you 10 Faith.
• Money for Nothing: With the right set of upgrades, it's possible to end up with more money than you know what to do with, save for spending it on things like Devotion in Midas's Cave or fish from the Fisherman. Once you have all the upgrades, it becomes pretty much inevitable.
• Money Sink: Midas's Cave is the final unlockable area on the map and serves as a way to toss away money. You can purchase Devotion for an increasing amount of cash as well as buying Tarots and Decorations with Gold Bars.
• Morph Weapon: The Red Crown will transform to become whatever weapon you're attacking with or tool you're using, and returns to the Lamb's head while not being swung.
• Mugging the Monster: Averted. In the postgame campaign, Midas appears during a random encounter in combat rooms, where he proceeds to punch the Lamb in the face and steal 2/3rds of their gold with no effort whatsoever. Keep in mind that this is a being who slew literal GODS and Midas robbed them without so much as breaking a sweat.
• Multiple Endings: The game has two endings, decided by a major choice. As it turns out, killing the Four Bishops isn't enough to release the One Who Waits. To be fully freed, they need the Red Crown back and the sacrifice of their most devout worshiper: You.
  • Accept: A teary-eyed Lamb returns the Red Crown to its original owner, who promptly chokes the life out of them with his restored power, killing them in front of their flock. The game ends.
  • Refuse: The Lamb, saddened and outraged over what the One Who Waits is trying to force them to do (after they were saved from dying in such a way when the game began), roars in fury and rebels against their god, fighting him and his bodyguards. After defeating the guards and facing the One Who Waits at his full power, the Lamb defeats him and is left with the choice over what to do with his weakened form (They can either kill him or spare and indoctrinate him). Regardless of their choice, the Lamb and their flock return to their world and the game continues.
• Mundane Utility: The Lamb's Red Crown is capable of transforming into mundane tools like pickaxes, hammers, and woodcutting axes to let the Lamb do mundane, necessary labor when the Lamb is not out crusading and slaying heretics using the same Red Crown as a sword, battle axe, or dagger.
• Murder Is the Best Solution: In the "Law and Order" tree of Doctrines, the Lamb can unlock the "Murder Follower" action which is Exactly What It Says on the Tin. Especially useful for dissenters who are stirring up trouble and can't be easily re-educated into the cult. It's not perfect in the sense that witnesses can be horrified... but you can always be careful to do it when there aren't any.
• Mushroom Samba: The "Brainwashing Ritual" involves the Lamb igniting psychedelic mushrooms inside the temple, letting the cultists inhale the fumes and leave more faithful and loyal to the Lamb.
• Mutually Exclusive Power-Ups: The Lamb can only choose one Doctrine of two possible options, which then becomes a permanent change to the function of the cult and the traits of your cultists. They are usually a question of trading great short-term gains at the cost of needing to micromanage your cult more and face severe consequences for failure, or smaller long-term benefits that reduce overall management complexity or ones that vastly reduce the negative outcomes of the inevitable, such as cultists losing less faith every time one of their own dies. In the "Relics of the Old Faith" post-game update however, you can unlock the decrees that you didn't choose in the main game.
  • One example is whether you want to gain a boost to the efficiency and faith of your young cultists at the cost of losing a huge chunk of it whenever an elderly cultist dies of natural causes, or for the cult to gain a small boost of faith with the more elderly cultists there are.
  • Another is whether you want your cultists to become cannibals who no longer get sick from eating Follower Meat or to become "Grass Eaters" and no longer complain about eating grass bowls. The former requires regular sacrifices and butchering of your cultists while the latter makes great use of a resource that you'll probably have stockpiling to absurd degrees, so long as you make a regular habit of destroying everything in a dungeon.
• Nerf:
  • The Golden Fleece originally allowed the Lamb to gain a cumulative damage buff of 10% per kill at the trade-off of reciving double damage and resetting the buff upon taking said damage. This didn't really matter when every enemy you faced was a One-Hit Kill, and so Patch 1.0.12 capped the damage buff at 200%. Patch 1.0.13 would get rid of the cap, but still limit the power level of the fleece, making each kill +5% damage instead.
  • The Fleece of the Diseased Heart, which grants the Lamb a Diseased Heart whenever they obtain a Tarot Card, originally came with the downside of causing the Lamb to drop all items on death. However, this could be easily evaded by using Omnipresence to escape the dungeon when the Lamb became low on health. The Relics of the Old Faith update would rebalance the Fleece so that taking damage while wearing it poisons the Lamb instead (essentially taking double damage).
• Newbie Immunity: During the first combat when the Lamb is escaping from their captors, the Lamb doesn't have the three hearts that represent their health throughout the rest of the game and won't take any damage no matter how many times they get hit. Additionally, the cult's hygiene and faith are locked at max until after the first crusade has been successfully completed.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Herod: The Bishops of the Old Faith had the lambs all put to the sword because a lamb was prophesied to free The One Who Waits. The final lamb, of course, takes up that role, and it's heavily implied The One Who Waits was banking on this to make them a more devout follower through the offer of revenge. For extra irony points, killing the Lamb practically guaranteed they'd make contact with the banished god.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Kind of. You're not in it to save the world. You're forming a cult in your master's name and doing what you can to free them, and the Bishops aren't happy as they sealed them. Piss the Bishops off enough (killing one is a good start), and they will begin making your cult followers suffer, while making your journey much more difficult.
• Non-Standard Game Over: If the player loses enough followers and goes for an extended period of time without recruiting new ones, a timed quest appears advising the player to recruit more followers or death will become permanent, and the game will abruptly end.
  • Another Non-Standard Game Over occurs if the Lamb chooses to return the Red Crown to The One Who Waits.
• Off with His Head!: In the opening scene of the game, the Lamb is about to be beheaded as a sacrifice by an unknown cult and is only saved by the intervention of The One Who Waits.
• Optional Boss: After defeating each of the Bishops, a powerful monster called a Witness will appear as the Final Boss of their dungeon the next time you run it — defeating it gets you a Follower and unique Follower Form, and Plimbo's questline involves killing all four of them and delivering their eyes to him. Technically you don't have to fight them, but given that you are likely to replay the dungeons at least once for resources, Followers or quests, you probably will.
• Pendulum of Death: One of the environmental hazards introduced in the Relics of the Old Faith update is a giant pendulum axe that swings back and forth while enemies are present. Despite its imposing appearance, it is fairly easy to avoid and can even come in handy if the player kites the enemies towards it.
• Permadeath: After all your previous followers have died, failing to recruit at least one new follower within two days will result in a Game Over (as opposed to the usual "Martyred"), alongside deleting your save file.
  • The Relics of the Old Faith Update introduced a Permadeath mode, available upon making a new save file and cannot be toggled off after. If the Lamb dies at any point while this mode is active, you'll have to restart the game.
  • The August 2023 crossover with Don't Starve adds a Penitence Mode, where the Lamb is given a Hunger and Sleep meter. The Permadeath comes into play once the Lamb goes too long without food or sleep.
• Permanently Missable Content: Agreeing to the Red Fox's final request to sacrifice Ratau can permanently prevent completing two achievements if the player hasn't earned his Tarot card yet.
• Player Headquarters: The player has a cult compound that they must build up by gathering resources, recruiting followers and turning it into a bustling community.
• Player Nudge:
  • The lighthouse cultists explain their leader disappeared when she went out onto the nearby dock at night. Doing the same thing allows the player to meet the Red Fox and start their quest, as well as revealing the moon mark where they can be summoned.
  • In inspected in the inventory, the snail shell description notes it appears to have been part of a shrine.
• Playing with Fire: After being granted the favor of The One Who Waits, the Lamb gets the power to shoot fireballs out of their hands with certain Curse types.
• Plot Lock:
  • Subverted with the doors to the four main areas of the game and therefore the bosses of each area - you don't have to kill the bishop of one area before proceeding to another, you only need enough total followers to open the door. While the developer-intended order seems to be Leshy, Heket, Kallamar, and then Shamura, there's nothing stopping you from killing them in any order you please, and their dialogue will change slightly depending on the kill order.
  • It's played straight, however, with the final door leading to The One Who Waits - unlocking that door does indeed require all four bishops to die first, no ifs and no buts.
• Polyamory: Upon unlocking the Ritual of Marriage, you can marry as many Followers as you want since you're the boss. However, this will upset your spouses and lower their faith the more you do this. After marrying 6 followers, the player will lose Faith for every married partner after them instead of gaining it.
• Possession Burnout: Downplayed but present. Followers who are subject to Demonic Possession will be fine once it wears off at the end of a crusade, but they will suffer from an exhaustion debuff that requires them to recover.
• Poverty Food: Grassy Gruel is one of the worst foods in the game, as it does little to satisfy hunger and has a 25% chance of causing illness. However grass is relatively easy to collect in the first dungeon, making it a food of last resort in the early game should the supply of berries run low.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Regardless of whether you're playing your Lamb as a Well-Intentioned Extremist Anti-Villain or a bloodthirsty deathmonger, it is in your best interests to abide by the Evil Overlord List well. Your followers can take some abuse, but they are not blindly loyal, and since they're part of the source behind your power and wealth, it is in your best interests to keep them well fed and generally content so that they may continue doing your bidding well.
• Production Throwback: When obtaining a new follower (either via Helob or during a Crusade), if that follower is a giraffe, there's a chance that they'll end up being named "Sparkles". This happens to be the name of the giraffe from Massive Monster's previous game, The Adventure Pals.
• Prophecy Twist: The prophecy explicitly states that the Lamb will become the Chosen One of the One Who Waits, build a mighty cult, slaughter the Four Bishops, and liberate the imprisoned god. The prophecy explicitly does NOT mention what happens next - though the god's expectation is that the Lamb will willingly surrender their powers, cult, and even their very life when they have served their purpose, the Lamb can instead choose to defy their god, keep his power, and use it to usurp the One Who Waits, eradicating all trace of the Old Faith to cement themself as the sole, unrivalled deity.
• Puppeteer Parasite: It's implied that the Menticide Mushrooms may be a Cordyceps type brain-controlling fungus. Sozo has a mushroom literally growing out of his head, for one, and appears to have a Split Personality, alternating between friendly (if still totally insane) and raving in All Caps — he also notably makes his home inside the skull of a gigantic creature with a mushroom growing out of its head, and eventually dies from consuming too many mushrooms, suggesting that the Menticide Mushrooms addle the brains of their hosts and compel them to gorge on the fungus until they die, allowing it to spread.
• Rape, Pillage, and Burn: Small villages can be found in the lands of the Old Faith, most of which have been pillaged. Sometimes you'll find and recruit a lone survivor; other times, all you'll find are piles of body bags.
• Refining Resources: The Refinery is a building unlocked mid-game which is used for converting basic resources into rare resources used for mid- and late-game buildings. Lumber, Stone, and Coins are converted into Wooden Planks, Stone Blocks, and Gold Bars respectively. The Refinery also allows Gold Nuggest to be converted into Coins.
• Relationship Values: The "Faith" system that comes into play when the player indoctrinates new followers into their cult. The cult's faith can be lowered via a variety of things, such as the members starving, the Lamb being killed during their escapades, or the cultists witnessing the lamb murdering one of their own; as well, some of the ways it can be raised are by hosting sermons, crafting buildings and generally keeping the cultists happy by completing missions for them. The followers will leave when their faith is depleted, taking valuable resources with them.
  • It isn't visible and has minimal impact on gameplay, but Followers also have hidden relationship values with one another, as can be seen in their interactions and when reading their minds. They can even become friends or lovers.
• Religion is Magic: The Lamb is granted various dark powers such as fireballs, tentacles, shockwaves, and mystical blades which they refils by collecting "Fervour" gained from dead enemies. The cultists of the Four Bishops are also shown to grant their cultists powers through their worship of the Old Faith.
• Rescue Romance: Followers sometimes ask the Lamb to rescue their sibling or friend from one of the dungeons. The original quest giver may later reveal the rescued Follower has fallen in love with the Lamb and wants to get married.
• Resurrected Romance: If you use the Ritual of Resurrection on your departed spouse, they are still considered married to you.
• Reward for Removal: Sacrificing followers for assorted items and buffs is a big part of the game. You can even sacrifice your mentor Ratau to the Red Fox for extra ruthlessness.
• Rhythm Game: Sins of the Flesh adds a "drum circle" minigame that lets you generate Sin by leading your Followers in a dance.
• Ridiculously Fast Construction: Especially with the Lamb's helping build it, no building takes more than a few in-game hours to complete. These can be understandable ones like sleeping bags which basically amount to a blanket of leaves and a pillow but gets more ridiculous when you start constructing lumber mines or stone quarries or increasingly elaborate upgrades to your previous buildings.
• Road Apples: Until you build an Outhouse cultists will simply poop on the ground, forcing you to clean it up yourself or research then build Janitor Stations for cultists to clean it up, lest it contaminates the compound and makes everyone sick. You can then use the gathered shit as fertilizer. You can also turn said shit into food for your cult, which your cultists might specifically request you to do because they've always wanted to eat it. Gameplay-wise, that quest teaches you one of the truly desperate measures you can take to feed your Cult if you're low on everything else but that.
• Rolling Attack: Three Tarot cards add an attacking element to rolls. One drops a pool of damaging ichor; one drops a bomb; and one causes the roll to deal a small amount of damage on touching an enemy.
• Saintly Church: Zig-Zagged. While it is possible to turn the Cult into a benevolent, peaceful sect who respect their elders and refuse to sacrifice anyone, you'll still be "re-educating" dissenters and summoning demons. Being nice to your flock is also against the expressed advice of The One Who Waits, for that matter.
• Schmuck Bait: In-Universe, anyone who thinks screwing around with something called a Menticide Mushroom was a good idea probably has it coming. Sozo gets bonus points for making his home inside the skeleton of a giant creature with a mushroom growing out of its head, mirroring his eventual fate.
• Screw This, I'm Out of Here!:
  • Dissenters that are left to stew and not guided back into loyal worship will eventually choose to leave the cult, taking valuable resources with them.
  • The Omnipresence Crown Ability allows the Lamb to bug out of a dungeon if they're low on health and unlikely to progress much further without getting killed, which allows you to hang onto all gathered resources and not lose any Faith for dying.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: The One Who Waits is sealed off by the Four Bishops, and the chains that bind him to the realm beyond are sustained by each of them. They really want to keep him sealed off, driving them to commit genocide on the sheep as according to a prophecy, a Lamb would become the One Who Waits' Chosen One and release him.
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: It is the Four Bishops' efforts to prevent a prophecy about the rise of The One Who Waits Below that allows the player character to become its vessel.
• Shout-Out:
  • The symbol that appears above a cultist's head when they are sacrificed is a convex arc with 5 lines pointing inward, almost identical to the stress symbol from Darkest Dungeon.
  • The Merciless Sword has a rather uncanny resemblance to the Energy Sword from the Halo franchise.
  • The Zealous Sword is nigh-identical to Soul Edge from the Soul Series, being a large single-edged sword and a portion of the blade extending under the hilt, and a large eye in the middle of the blade.
  • One of the unlockable spells is "Touch of Ithaqua", a reference to one of the Great Old Ones from the Cthulhu Mythos.
  • The minibosses are all named after demons from the Ars Goetia, as are friendly NPCs like Forneus, Clauneck, and Berith.
• Shown Their Work: While the other animals have vertical pupils, the Lamb has horizontal pupils, which real sheep also have.
• Sigil Spam: The Lamb's black crown appears to be the Arc Symbol of the game, appearing on a stained-glass church window and in the game's logo.
• Sinister Minister: The Lamb quickly becomes the founder of a new cult for the One Who Waits, guides the cult as it grows, and heads all of its ceremonies or is at the center of them. Performing daily Sermons is an important part of the game, since it boosts the loyalty of your followers, as is punishing dissenters.
• Short-Range Shotgun: By default the blunderbuss attacks with a fairly wide spread. It's Charged Attack however tightens the spread and increases the range, turning it into a railgun instead.
• Solid Gold Poop: The "Sins of the Flesh" update adds in various different types of poops with mostly positive effect, including Golden Poops that drop money when cleaned as well as instantly fertilizing plants when used.
• Soup of Poverty: Some of the one-star dishes are soups that are cheap to make, but have a small chance of making your followers sick after eating them.
  • Grassy Gruel has the description "Better than nothing." It has a 25% chance of causing illness.
  • Stringy Meat Gruel is "made from scraps" and has a 10% chance to cause exhaustion.
  • Pungent Fish Stew "tastes better than it looks" and has a 10% chance to cause illness.
  • Paltry Pumpkin Soup has a 5% chance to cause illness and diarrhea.
• Speaking Simlish: The characters are all voiced in complete gibberish.
• Stock Punishment: One of the facilities you can build are stocks with which to put dissenting followers as punishment for their spreading doubt and confusion among the rest of your flock. They don't automatically repent their misdeeds (that's where you come in), but they won't cause further trouble. If placed on a walkable path, other followers walk over and laugh at them.
• Sweet Sheep: The game's main protagonist is an adorable lamb who gets possessed and becomes a cult leader after being saved by a mysterious entity. Never has the Sinister Minister trope looked this cute.
• Sword Drag: During the Release Date Trailer, the Lamb does this after slicing apart a monster about to eat a prospective cultist.
• Tampering with Food and Drink: The Deadly Dish has a 75% chance of killing whoever eats it.
• Tears of Blood: When participating in rituals and sacrifices, both of the Lamb's eyes start bleeding. In the main menu of the game, the Lamb is also floating in mid-air with both eyes bleeding.
• Tentacled Terror:
  • Sacrificing a follower involves a ritual in which you summon a massive tentacle to drag the victim into the abyss.
  • There are a couple curses that allow you to summon tentacles from the ground.
• Theme Naming: The various minibosses are named after demons from the Ars Goetia.
• Through His Stomach: The Magnificent Mixed Meal, while moderately difficult to collect ingredients for, will immediately stop a follower from dissenting when eaten.
• Timed Mission: Most Follower missions have a generous time limit (2 to 3 days) in which they have to be completed. Failing one will run the risk of losing another Follower if they are missing and the one who requested the mission to lose faith and dissent. The mission will also fail if you decide to accept another Follower Mission while you've got one active.
• Toilet Humor:
  • Your followers will do their business on the ground poop on the floor, especially when they eat, and you will have to clean it up before it starts to fester. Some followers will instead gain faith when they see poop though, literally pointing and laughing at it.
  • It's entirely possible to feed poop to your followers, although it restores a meager amount of hunger while making them sick and causing them to lose faith, so it's probably not a great idea.
  • Coprophilia is one of the possible traits for a Follower to have. It's actually a positive, since it means their Loyalty increases when getting sick.
  • One of the new types of poops added to the game with "Sins of the Flesh" is a cartoonishly massive pile of turd that your followers can actually get stuck in.
• Unintentionally Unwinnable: Because items during crusades are determined by RNG, it is entirely possible—though rare—to come out of the first crusade without enough coins (30) to build the shrine. And you cannot go on more crusades until you build the shrine.
• Video Game Caring Potential:
  • If you have a believer who's wavering in their faith and is starting to spread dissent among your ranks, the Lamb has the option of gently guiding them back to loyal worship of the One Who Waits, though re-education takes time (during which said heretic will continue spreading dissent). You can also instate Doctrines like ordering funerals for cultists that have died of natural causes, ordering your cultists to respect elderly cultists, and ordering everyone to learn to become vegetarian so at the very least, no one will starve or complain about the grass bowls you're feeding them.
  • Sparing Narinder/The One Who Waits after their defeat grants you a new immortal follower, who will not age (they can still die through other means), and unique dialogue, compared to your other followers.
  • The player can make their followers fight to the death in the "Fight to the Death" Ritual, but they are given the option to choose to spare the losing follower's life rather than allowing the winner to kill them.
  • Perhaps the biggest case of this was added in the Relics of the Old Faith update. Initially, it seemed that Forneus' two kits Baal and Aym were Killed Off for Real during the Final Boss fight, but it is now possible to revive them and return them to their mother. Doing so prevents you from having them as followers ever again, but Forneus rewards you with two powerful relics in return, as well as the knowledge that you have finally reunited a family that was torn apart so long ago.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential:
  • ...Alternatively, you can just as easily sacrifice dissenters to the One Who Waits or put them into Stock Punishment to make an example of how troublemakers will be treated. You can choose to make your entire cult cannibals, regularly sacrificing cultists for their meat to ensure loyalty among the survivors, and to regularly cull the elderly so that the younger cultists are more productive. Being cruel to NPCs other than your followers can also grant you exclusive rewards.
  • The One Who Waits outright encourages you to treat your followers as expendable and their Faith as a resource in the same way Gold is.
  • You can destroy the surrounding areas of the merchants for no reason whatsoever, including killing some of their followers for meat or mushrooms. There are no consequences for doing this and the merchants don't acknowledge it, except for Rakshasa who will grow increasingly agitated the more you attack his partner. After the third warning, he'll attack you, serving as a mini-boss that can be defeated in exchange for the "Massive Monster Shrine" blueprint. This item is needed to unlock the secret Mad Monster Follower skin. Rakshasa will continue to sell you seeds, but will now quiver in terror.
  • Murdering Narinder/The One Who Waits will unlock the One Who Waits Statue, an exclusive decorative item.
  • You can sacrifice your followers to Midas, instead of through a ritual, turning them into golden statues, giving you a piece of a holy talisman for each sacrifice.
  • One NPC mission will allow you to sacrifice Ratau, your former mentor, another NPC. You can no longer play knucklebones with him afterwards. This gives you a piece of a holy talisman, and a new follower form.
  • The "Senior Citizen Fight Club" strategy effectively runs on this trope: If you've selected the doctrine that favours younger followers but causes faith loss whenever an elderly follower dies of old age, then you are obligated to kill your elderly as efficiently as possible. Thus, in the event of there being multiple elderly followers in your cult, there is nothing keeping you from forcing two elderly to fight to the death, and then sacrificing the "winner". Doing so also avoids the faith loss you might incur from outright murdering your elderly.
  • Sins of the Flesh added Cowardly to the list of follower traits. Cowardly followers can be re-assured for small loyalty gains and eventually making them lose the trait... or you could bully them, making them increasingly terrified of you for a loyalty gain equivalent to giving a follower a gift. However if you do this too much they will eventually become so scared of you that they'll run away when your back is turned.
• Villain of Another Story: The Witnesses that spawn after you defeat the Bishops are just normal bosses to the Lamb. Plimbo gives more context to them; the Witnesses are creatures that endanger his waterways and may even be older than the Bishops themselves, but they were suppressed by the Bishops until the Lamb killed them.
• Villains Want Mercy: Anytime you defeat a mini-boss, it transforms into a terrified potential follower that will beg you for the mercy of serving you. Inverted for Narinder; he, with some small pride, pulls a "Not So Different" Remark if you choose to execute him, but if you opt to spare and indoctrinate him, he flips out and calls you a coward before breaking down in panic.
• Virtual Paper Doll: You can customize your cultist's appearance upon initiating them into your cult. Sins of the Flesh adds the option to build a Tailor and find new outfits for you and your followers to wear.
• Vomit Chain Reaction: When a Follower sees something disgusting such as a pool of vomit, there's a chance they'll vomit in response. If this happens in a busy area, it can trigger multiple Followers to begin vomiting.
• Vomit Indiscretion Shot: If a cultist pukes or suffers Potty Failure from sickness or poor quality food, the Lamb or some other cultist will have to deal with seeing it happen in all its inglory and then clean it up, if you don't want disease to spread.
• We Are as Mayflies: Cultists have a life expectancy of around 60 days before they keel over of old age. You can gift your favorite cultists a Skull Necklace to double their lifespan, and the Resurrection ritual can bring a follower back for another go-round.
• We Have Reserves: The Lamb is perfectly capable of creating a cult that regularly, constantly sacrifices cultists for the Lamb's benefit. These include trading a follower's life for the Lamb's if they die during a crusade, sacrificing a cultist to gain a large amount of bones and their flesh (possibly to be cooked and served to other, still living cultists), or, with the right Doctrines, sacrificing the elderly cultists before they die of natural deaths to improve the morale of everyone else.
• Whale Egg: With the "Sins of the Flesh" update, the followers can procreate which results in an egg regardless of their species.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: The Executioner that prepares to sacrifice the Lamb and wielding an axe is never seen after the Lamb gets revived by the One Who Waits. The Executioner is also never fought among the other cult members, although the reveal trailer shows him react in shock and tries fighting back before getting killed.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Looting a necklace off a deceased follower will cause a drop in faith, even if all your other followers are asleep.
• Wimp Fight: The "Fight to the Death" Ritual has the participants flailing their arms pathetically at each other, until the victor goes for a sucker punch that knocks the loser down.
• The Worf Effect: The Lamb is subjected to this in the post-game campaign. During one of the random encounters during Crusades, the Lamb can run into Midas, who proceeds to knock the Lamb down and steal most of their gold (2/3rds to be exact) with little difficulty. The Lamb is able to strike down literal gods singlehandedly, yet a fat starfish proves to be too much for them...
• Wormsign: Enemies who travel underground, particularly the worms in Darkwoods (including Leshy himself), leave this.
• You Have Researched Breathing:
  • An extensive amount of technologies and buildings you can research using Divine Inspiration are... not so complicated. These gifts of unholy knowledge include teaching your cultists how to mop up after themselves, outhouses so they stop relieving themselves all over the place and causing sickness, and how to build a pit to bury dead cultists in.
  • Similarly, the Doctrine allowing the Lamb to Murder followers, even though it's clear that the Lamb is more than capable of this to begin with.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Killing Followers either through the Murder action or through sacrificing/ascending them is a good way to get rid of either troublemaking dissidents or the elderly who are incapable of working.
  • The One Who Waits pulls this on the Lamb once freed, demanding the return of the crown, the surrender of the cult, and the sacrifice of the Lamb themself. Accepting nets a Downer Ending and ends the game, whereas refusing unlocks the True Final Boss and allows the game to continue indefinitely.
• You Require More Vespene Gas: Constructing your base requires several different materials:
  • Gold: Coins serve as currency but are also used in construction of many different buildings. Devotion serves as the tech equivalent, as it's spent like a currency to unlock buildings and is later converted to Coins. Bones serve as the currency for rituals.
  • Lumber: Lumber and Stone are the two default resources of this type. Starting mid-game, they're usually replaced by Wooden Planks, Stone Blocks, and Gold Bars.
  • Population: Followers are required to populate jobs and produce Devotion, as well as being used in various rituals.
  • Uselessium: There are a number of resources which have niche uses, usually being acquired only in small amounts from one particular zone.

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