Cults and Daggers

 PC
  • Publisher: Chaphat
  • Release Date: Feb 12, 2015
User Score
7.4

Mixed or average reviews- based on 17 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 12 out of 17
  2. Mixed: 1 out of 17
  3. Negative: 4 out of 17

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  1. Kamamura
    Feb 20, 2015
    3
    Here we have a game that most of all resembles an autistic child quietly mumbling to himself in an asylum corner. Does the quiet whisper contain observation of a brilliant, yet troubled mind, or is it just simply rambling of a madman? It's hard to tell, and sadly, without weeks of study and patience we may never know.

    So here comes Cults and Daggers with an interface that would be    Here we have a game that most of all resembles an autistic child quietly mumbling to himself in an asylum corner. Does the quiet whisper contain observation of a brilliant, yet troubled mind, or is it just simply rambling of a madman? It's hard to tell, and sadly, without weeks of study and patience we may never know.

    So here comes Cults and Daggers with an interface that would be horrible even in the mid 80s last century. Throwing down the drain everything developers have learned about presenting information in a clear and readable manner, this game will present you with a huge, low-resolution, zoomed-in map, that you can sluggishly scroll around with something resembling a virtual finger on a touchscreen. After the initial confusion, you will find tiny icons and barely readable numbers informing you about cities, your status, your disciples, et cetera.

    And while other games try to present information in a way that the important things are immediately visible and understandable, this game presents you with a blur that's hard both on your eyes and on your mind. Is it a clever symbolic reference to a mind of a mad, raving cultist? Perhaps. What's clear is that this approach to visual presentation will make playing the game a painful chore.

    As to the game itself, it presents appealing enough concept - become a head of a cult, recruit disciples, persuade nobles, brainwash masses, assassinate opponents and prevent old gods from entering and destroying the world.

    But because the game fails to provide clear and understandable feedback about what's going on in the world, playing it actually feels like a chaotic mess. Sometimes, you travel somewhere, and your main disciple disappears. After painful minutes of searching through a convoluted mess of a message log, you find out why - a purge in enemy town killed him. Why? How? Could I prevent it? Perhaps, perhaps not. I really don't care anymore.

    If you take interest in the game, find someone who owns the game and try it first on his computer, as I did. If you find you don't like the game, you can invest your money in something playable - like I did by buying Hand of Fate, an excellent and well crafted indie game, who cost me half the price tag of this convoluted badly designed demo of a game, yet provided ten times the fun.

    If you make the mistake of rushing and buying it for the insane price of 28 Euro, you will feel like you have become a victim of an evil cult plot - and perhaps that's the only authentic experience the game is designed to provide.    … Expand
  2. Maalakeem
    Jun 9, 2015
    1
    Ok, lets start with what this is not. It's not a game about religion, philosophy, occultism, history, or metaphysics. Then what is this game about? Random numbers. That is what this game is about. A random event generator that does nothing to engage or pull you in, save by attempt to be mysterious when instead being oblique and lost.

    Lets start with the complete lack of documentation or    Ok, lets start with what this is not. It's not a game about religion, philosophy, occultism, history, or metaphysics. Then what is this game about? Random numbers. That is what this game is about. A random event generator that does nothing to engage or pull you in, save by attempt to be mysterious when instead being oblique and lost.

    Lets start with the complete lack of documentation or a tutorial. It just expects you to read and understand everything with no form guidance save tool tips that pop up when hovering over something. And as anyone knows, that information is very limited in both context and depth, and therefore accomplishes little. This probably leaves the casual gamer mystified and the more dedicated gamer interested for a few games, but then annoyed at the later mistakes that show the whole to be incompetently done and shoddily constructed. In other words it tries to use it's lack of assistance to the gamer as a screen that suggest mysticism and occultism but is actually just laziness.

    Next is the interface. As pointed out by another the interface itself is sluggish and poorly rendered. This was probably another bad attempt at suggesting age and to get it a historical feel. Instead, as before, it show a lack of vision and effort to bring together a wonderful concept to full fruition. It has very little to informed you about, yet that which is does inform you about is usually small text in unforgiving colors and fonts that leave much to be desired in crispness and readability. If you don't have a very large screen, or very good eyes, don't even bother.

    Next game format and play-ability. Here is where the game truly fails. If you don't have the patience and interest to actually play through a couple of games to find out what causes what, you will be lost and never engaged. Interest will wain and you will simply uninstall and never return. If you do actually have an interest in the subject matter and perhaps some curiosity as to what the designers seemed to be trying to do, you will do the same; merely later. This game has little to hold you down to it as it nearly wipes the board clean after a few turns and mixes the board up to give new starting positions, characters to work with, and relative strengths to start with. In other words, all you work for is thrown into the trash every so often so that the designer's inability to balance the game play is never noticed. Then it runs a whole bunch of random turns and lets you try to build something again. Just to see if you will chase the carrot again. So you truly get nothing out of this game. You don't build a cult, you don't change history, you don't do anything other then issue a couple of orders, maybe get a quick buff in the form of a "miracle" then hit the end turn button and see the counter click down another notch until all your work is recycled into a mess again. This is not helped by the fact that you are really not in control of anything important. Your "disciples" disappear with alarming frequency, if your opponents don't assassinate them, they "fall in love, and vanish to start a family". Therefore you can't build your agents up to anything decent, else they just vanish until you only have two again, then it stops; for no reason. You can't build your followings up in any cities, as anytime you gain something good, a random even comes along to take it away, or again, remove the disciple that is turning it into something decent.

    And finally there is pricing. Who wants to pay $30 for a game that they will sit down with, once, maybe twice and then uninstall, never to return? If that is you? Then this is your game. If not. Go play something else. Anything else. Even other bad games might still have a chance at being fun for a day or two. This one won't.    … Expand

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Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1 out of 1
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  1. DarkStation
    Mar 13, 2015
    80
    But other than those minor grievances, I found the overall experience to be a fun, unique experience that lends itself to a variety of play styles, giving it a good amount of replay value. With a little more polish, it could become a cult classic.
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