Honey, I Joined a Cult is a simulation game by Sole Survivor Games, and you spend your time managing a cult and trying to make as much money as possible. So, there may be some level of social commentary there about the nature of cults. Still, you see a character wearing an octopus on their head and you realize that whatever social commentary happens to be in this game is generally set aside for the purposes of comedy.

Honey, I Joined a Cult puts you into the shoes of a cult leader who needs to manage a cult for the very simple reason that cults are able to make a lot of money. Plus, it’s great being the leader of a bunch of gullible people who will do whatever you tell them to do. For this reason, this game is probably a better and more accurate “cultist simulator” than Cultist Simulator.

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The basic gameplay is the management, construction, and simulation of running a business that never closes. You have a big plot of land and a few initial followers, and so you lay the foundations for whatever building you want to build, you put in walls, doors, assign room types, and add furniture. In this sense, it’s pretty much like The Sims.

Honey, I Joined a Cult is even more like The Sims when it comes to your cultists, because their moods and needs must be managed to keep them happy in your cult. Happy cultists are more likely to improve themselves as people, and they’re also more likely to make more money for the cult. They do this by being assigned to special facilities that allow them to con regular people out of their money, and sometimes those regular people can also be converted into cult members.

Now, at first, this may seem like a rather standard simulation game, and one of the things that inevitably comes with practically any simulation game is complexity. Honey, I Joined a Cult is a complex mess of interlocking systems that need to be tightly managed. And this is why you need to know that this game is all about micromanagement. So, if you don’t like micromanagement, do not touch this game.

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The micromanagement comes in the form of assigning cultists to duties that you cannot directly order them to do and must instead individually assign them schedules throughout each day, and every cultist should be given separate schedules because you can’t exactly have every cultist going to lunch at the same time. If everyone is relaxing at the same time, then no money is being made off regular people who need to get ripped off!

Honey, I Joined a Cult does not explain much of this. It isn’t the kind of game that explains all of its systems all that well. There is an extensive tutorial, but that tutorial is not extensive enough. This is why there are constant popups throughout the game whenever something happens that needs to be explained. For instance, the tutorial never explains the concept of hospitalization, and so you will probably only learn about it in the early game, when you’re still learning to play, and then you lose a cultist for a while because they were overworked, undernourished, or struggling with sleep deprivation.

You will need to constantly check on every single cultist to ensure that they are happy with the work they’re doing, that they haven’t gotten bored with something since you last checked in on them, and that they’re handling the bad food and sanitation the early game forces you to use. This means that in Honey, I Joined a Cult you will always be checking the stats of multiple NPCs at once, a number that constantly increases as more are recruited into the cult and trying to optimize them as best as possible.

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This is further complicated by the management of the cult itself. Honey, I Joined a Cult has micromanagement on the individual cultist level, but the organization itself must undergo constant micromanagement too. You need to research to unlock new rooms, foods, and perks, and the rooms and facilities must be constantly upgraded and improved to make more and more money or to optimize the cultists as best as possible so that they can, in turn, wring more money out of regular people.

This doesn’t even include the resource management aspect. Many simulation games force you to handle a few resources, primarily money, but not Honey, I Joined a Cult. You need to manage your money; which is used to expand and grow, faith; which is used to keep your cultists happy, influence; which is how capable your cult is at attracting new recruits, PR; which is how much your cult is perceived by the outside world, and heat; which is the level of police scrutiny you have received. If any of these many resources deplete, you’re in big trouble.

All of this is to say that Honey, I Joined a Cult is a game for heavy micromanagement lovers. Some recent simulation games, like The Tenants, can be overwhelming in the early game, but this game can be overwhelming for a lot longer as the myriad of interlocking systems is not explained particularly well.

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However, as your cult grows and as you become more accustomed to it, much of it becomes an automated system that only requires tweaks every now and then. This is where the fun often comes in games like this, and the ability to do things like assigning schedules allows for a strong level of control over many aspects of the game at once. However, you may end up needing to restart after learning the systems because it takes a while to really understand what makes the game tick and how to optimize your particular cult.

This is also indicative of the fact that this game is theoretically infinitely replayable. Every time you play Honey, I Joined a Cult, you get to customize your specific cult to change things up, and you can always apply your late-game skills to heavily min-max the early game and create highly efficient systems. It just may take a while to get to the point where you are able to effectively do that.

So, in the end, Honey, I Joined a Cult is an interesting take on the simulation genre that does a lot of new things for those who are into these kinds of games, but if you are not all that familiar with these games, then you may struggle with this one. It isn’t the most accessible game to those new to the genre. However, it does have some pretty funky music and a good sense of humor, and those things should help tide you over as you get used to the many interlocking systems the game throws at you.

Justin van Huyssteen (@LC_Lupus)
Senior Editor, NoobFeed

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