Honey, I Joined a Cult: Great & Groovy Cult Management

Honey, I Joined a Cult is a new early access indie game released in September 2021. Its developer, Sole Survivor Games, promises a lot of new features to be added.

But the game is a lot of fun even in its current state! Great for those who enjoy management games, Honey, I Joined a Cult is a humorous take on the genre. 

Sole Survivor Games

Sole Survivor Games is a two-people indie game developer founded in 2017. To release Honey, I Joined a Cult, Sole Survivor Games partnered up with Team 17, a label for independent developers. You can explore their site here for more indie titles.

Plot

Honey, I Joined a Cult has a cutscene which explains what you are doing. And what you are doing is running a cult! After a failed attempt at world domination, the main character moves on. With the help of a plastic surgeon, the cult leader plans a new attack!

Gameplay

The gameplay of Honey, I Joined a Cult is for those who love management games. Your goal is to keep the cult afloat, which means earning money. You can only earn money if you have followers. And you can have followers if you offer them something!

That something is different therapies, for example, yoga and maggot baths. Brain-washed followers will be giving you money for that sort of thing. In the meantime, your cultists will be helping you run the base.

You will need to manage the mood of both cultists and followers to prevent them from leaving. They like, among other things, well-decorated rooms, which you get to arrange.

The characters will also have traits, which can make them more or less suitable for the roles you have prepared for them. Don’t worry: you get to get rid of those you don’t like in increasingly creative ways.

The common feature of management games is a technology tree. In Honey, I Joined a Cult, it is present as well. You can choose the path that works best for you, but it is possible to open all the research options in a single run.

Every run is likely to take a few hours, and its completion depends on you researching Divine Inspirations. It is a separate technology tree, but you do not get to see it in its entirety. Rather, you get two-to-four random Divine Inspiration cards based on your chosen path. Currently, only the Darkness path is available.

Naturally, aside from the “human” resources you also manage regular resources. Money is used for purchasing new objects. Influence has many uses; it is necessary for research and for convincing followers or cultists do as you please. Faith is there to support your cult.

PR helps you get higher-quality followers, who can then be recruited as cultists. And heat is a negative stat. You need to keep it low or your cult will receive negative attention. And then, people with pitchforks will come after you. I am not kidding.

Unless you lose, you decide when to end the game. Theoretically, you could just keep playing in a single run, improving your cult until it is perfect. That is, until you employ only high-quality cultists, until everybody sleeps on a king-sized bed… and everybody has a golden toilet.

Overall, Honey, I Joined a Cult is quite humorous. There are a lot of references to cults, religions, real people, and so on. You can customize your cult to be absolutely ridiculous or quite serious.

The pre-made cults are mostly funny. The same goes for missions you can send your cultists to carry out: they are a combination of real-life (or fiction) references and humour. Honey, I Joined a Cult can be a lot of fun.

The game design, including sound design, is similarly fun. The graphics are almost cute, and the music is lighthearted. The characters in the game have funny thoughts you can read.

Although Honey, I Joined a Cult can turn somewhat morbid (for example, when you decide to sacrifice your followers), the characters are always there to remind you that it is just a simulation.

Early Access and Issues

Early Access means that Honey, I Joined a Cult is not finished yet. It is best to only buy it if you are satisfied with what the game has to offer right now. But personally, I can say that there is a lot of fun to be had with Honey, I Joined a Cult even in its current state.

It does not mean that the game is perfect. It crashed on me once, and it does need a little more polish. But it is cute and fun, and aside from that one crash, nothing game-breaking happened that would have made me reconsider my purchase if I had spent money on it.

There are also the issues that frequently plague simulators and management games. For one, I am not sure why we need to research that golden toilet. Toilets exist in the world. It might be more logical to talk about acquiring a contract to get the toilet. But it is a part of the research tree, and it is a minor issue. To me, it does not break the immersion.

The cultists, who can start starving but won’t eat unless there is a table available to eat at, can be frustrating. They might not register a canteen that is too far away, which forces them to wait until a table is available. That can be solved by having a couple of canteens next to a dorm, though. Or by having several bedrooms all over the base.

Honey, I Joined a Cult involves a fair share of grind. Also, it is very difficult to lose right now, even though the beginning of the game is quite challenging, which might be a balance issue. More difficulty options would be nice to have. 

Overall, the game does not have fatal problems right now. And with new features coming, Honey, I joined a Cult is sure to be even more fun in the future.

Conclusion

There is more. Unique characters, tons of decorations, and a lot of features to distract you from that grind. Honey, I Joined a Cult is a true treat for the lovers of management games, and it has a lot of humorous elements, as well as a unique soundtrack.

If it sounds like something you might enjoy, check the game on Steam and help the developers finish Honey, I Joined a Cult!