Preview | Honey, I Joined A Cult - Early Access... To a Higher Plane

Honey, I Joined A Cult is out on early access on the 14th of September 2021. This is the second game in the niche cult creation and management genre, with Cultist Simulator having released on the 1st of June 2018. It's a newly ventured subject that feels ripe for further exploration and Honey, I Joined A Cult does just that.

TBF I would be pretty into any religion that delivered its sermons in emoji form.

Honey, I Joined A Cult is the brainchild of developer Sole Survivor Games and is being published by Team 17 of  Overcooked and The Escapists fame. Team 17 is a well-known publishing company that assist small developers with making their game’s go from prototype to reality.

In Honey, I Joined A Cult, you'll be creating a cult from absolute scratch - no backing from wealthy benefactors or bestselling sci-fi books to give you a head start.  You're going to be mainly focusing on maintaining and managing your new cult in such a way that you don't get a game over. Gather and brainwa--- I mean convince people to join your following with tales of your newfound God/Goddess and that will let them ascend to a higher plane of life where this divine being is waiting for them.

Though it is in early access, the game does have an introduction that begins with an already popular cult being busted up and the cult leader being confronted by police officers. However, due to lack of evidence, he's not arrested. He gets away from the area while everything is confiscated and examined by the officers. The cult leader leaves and decides to just move on, start life fresh, do good, stop taking advantage of vulnerable people and....pffft not really. After quickly dismissing the idea of making a clean start, he instead goes back to what he's good at and makes another cult. Though, he'll need to get a new identity before starting anew. 

Weirdly enough, this isn’t Honey, I Joined a Cult. It is just a screenshot of the website that allows you to declare your group a religion in the USA.

Once you're done with the intro, you'll get taken into the Cult Customisation. You get to not only customise your Leader’s new look, but you'll also choose the name of your divine being, how the cultists refer to themselves, your fellow cultist outfits, design your holy room and the religion’s key relic itself. There are over 100+ choices you can pick to modify your cult. But, if you don't want to work on all that and just want to get into the gameplay, they have your back. There are 10 pre-made cults for you to choose from and each one is pretty funny.

This place is great!
Free slippers!

My cult is known as the Cthulhu Bar. With the “Lead Investor”, Bob Hulu at the top followed by his underlings, “The Gumshoes”. I recommend doing the tutorial for your first play session to get a good idea of what to expect. The tutorial is straightforward, having the player move around the map using the WASD keys or using the middle mouse wheel. You will also have to work on your compound. The building mechanic is fairly simple with just a click and drag option for almost everything you'd need to make; from laying a foundation to erecting walls and even to paving a path for everyone to use. It'll teach you how to mark a specific room as either a bedroom, bathroom, canteen or “The Worship Room”. It took a moment to realise that I could fast forward the day to triple speed - which massively cut down on much of the game’s downtime. The speed can be controlled by using the 1, 2 and 3 keys. The game will continue unless you manually pause, so I had to start remembering to press the spacebar to freeze time whenever I wanted to tab out or look at my phone. The game does autosave your game every handful of in-game hours to help anyone from forgetting to save or if something abrupt happens.  You'll also get little tips from time to time once you're done with the tutorial.  They make finding objects for a specific room very easy and what type of items you'll need to place in each room you create is also very intuitive. 

Urgh, this restaurant sucks. Two stars.

The soundtrack is a nice reminder of the music from the '60s. Honey, I Joined a Cult has a funky groove to transition between each day/night cycle. When the leader and their followers go to the Holy Room to pray, the music does turn into a hypnotic trance-like tone symbolising the fact that the leader is brainwashing his masses to continue making them money... I mean spreading the word of your divine being.

The graphics are very easy on the eye and even pretty comparable to other games from Team 17 like The Escapists. The simplicity of the character design and the environment makes it easy to focus on different parts of the map. The game design is something you could teach students about cults, but do you really want to give them the knowledge on how to build one? 

I want to leave some tips for everyone reading this in case you want to do something in the game and wonder why that thing just isn’t happening. After all, this game just hit Early Access and not everything is made clear.

• There are times that the trees got in my way when I was trying to build something and the tree wasn't selectable on the path to remove it. I've found that using “T” to make the trees seems to cut them which slightly helps. But, if you're like me and want to completely get rid of them, just go to “Objects”, and select “Delete Object”. I went and cleared the whole compound clean of trees, rocks and flowers that I didn't place down.

• I would advise that you look at the amount of money you have at all times. I've gone through all the money I started in a flash and there is nothing sadder than a bankrupt cult.

• Remember, if you need someone to do something right now, just select your loyalist and right-click the object that represents the task you wish for them to do. Priorities set to anyone will sometimes work, as long as you remember to mark the ones they need to ignore as well. 

This is going to be the most well kept and tidy compoun—I MEAN RITUAL GARDEN this side of teh Mississippi….

I played Honey, I Joined A Cult to the point that I had to stop. It was time for maintenance and it just didn’t work and I didn’t have money to replace a bucket and sink since the person in charge of fixing it wasn't fixing it no matter how much I kept sending them to fix it. However, for a game that is in Early Access, these sorts of bugs can be expected and everything worked fine until then. I do love the concept of a game that focuses on making a cult and experiencing the things that go into one and am excited to see how this game grows.

However, most importantly, Honey, I Joined A Cult did a great job at reminding me to avoid a cult if you ever come across one.