Sunday, August 21, 2022

Sacrificial Elements

What do you get when you combine Binding of Isaac with a light management sim?  Apparently, you get Cult of the Lamb.  Despite the potential for horror, this indie title opts to instead to go for an absurdist comedy angle.  It works surprisingly well, in no small part due to the whimsical art and presentation.  That said, it's not perfectly executed.

One of the stylistic choices the game makes is to use flat two-dimensional sprites in three-dimensional spaces.  This isn't necessarily a problem except that it doesn't look so great from an isometric perspective.  Other games that make use of this sort of thing, such as the original Darkest Dungeon,  keep the PoV near ground level so that the 2D sprites blend well enough with the 3D environments.  The same is true for games that are top-down like Gratuitous Space Battles.  Again, I want to stress that an isometric view can work with 2D sprites; just look at Bastion for an example of how it was done right.  In the case of Cult of the Lamb though, it feels off to me.  Normally, I wouldn't care all that much, but in combat situations it can be a bit tricky to parse out what is happening on-screen.  Paper Mario avoided this confusion by making combat largely turn-based rather than the fast, reflex-driven gameplay that the player's lamb avatar and cult leader is expected to pull off.  Paper Mario also had an in-game conceit as to why all characters were flat as paper...as far as I can tell though, Cult of the Lamb doesn't have a reason for it.

In an interesting twist, there are some features of the game integrated into Twitch.  For example, viewers on Twitch can enter a raffle to have there user-name appear on a cult member, and they can even customize the appearance of said cultist.  Twitch channel points can be donated to increase an energy bar above the cult compound totem.  Once it fills completely the personal playing game is provided with a random award.  Lastly, viewers can participate in events by voting on the outcome.  Since I'm not a Twitch streamer, I doubt ill ever get to use any of these features.  Still...it's neat to see game developers trying new things. 

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