Worshippers of Cthulhu

In this review, I’ll walk you through what this strange little gem is about, how it plays, why it freaked me out (in a good way), and what made me keep launching it even after several failed attempts and one accidental mass sacrifice.

See on Steam

“it’s creepy, it’s broken in places, but it hooked me like an ancient, squirming tentacle.”

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What Even Is This Game?

Worshippers of Cthulhu drops you into a dying world where cults rise, sanity is currency, and the stars are never quite right.

You’re the leader of a group of devoted (read: delusional) followers building a settlement dedicated to waking the Old Ones—starting with small rituals and eventually summoning unspeakable horrors that either grant you power or eat your most useful acolyte.

Mechanically, it's a mix of:

Colony building (you’ll gather resources, assign jobs, and manage your base)

Cult management (you unlock dark rituals, assign titles, deal with rival cults)

Sanity micromanagement (yes, individual follower sanity must be managed or things go... bad)

If you’re into games like RimWorld, Frostpunk, or Cultist Simulator, this one might live somewhere in that uncanny triangle.

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Gameplay: Complicated in All the Right Ways

The game’s not easy to explain because it doesn’t hold your hand—and that’s kind of the point. You start small: a handful of believers, a cave, a fire. From there, it’s up to you to survive the seasons, build structures, and slowly unlock the path toward Cthulhu’s favor.

Things I Loved:
Rituals have real impact. They’re not just flavor text. They can bless your fields… or summon a portal to the unknowable.

Sanity events are wild. One time, half my cult started speaking backward and refused to farm. Another time, someone exploded into bees. Legit bees.

Follower traits matter. Some people are naturally unstable, but they might also be your only good preacher.

Things That Frustrated Me:
UI is rough. Let’s call it “Lovecraftian” as a polite way to say “confusing.”

No proper tutorial. I had to restart three times before I stopped sacrificing the wrong guy.

RNG gods are cruel. Some events just nuke your progress for the fun of it.

Still, there’s a beauty in the chaos. You’re not supposed to have full control. You’re just another pawn in a bigger, weirder game—and the game reminds you of that often.

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Visuals & Vibe

The game has this heavy, grainy, almost sketchbook-like aesthetic. Think muted tones, dark purples and greens, candles, blood-stained altars, fog that never leaves. It’s not “pretty,” but it’s incredibly effective.

Every part of the world feels off in the right way. Shadows flicker weirdly. Buildings look like they were never meant to stand straight. Followers have strange eyes if you zoom in close. There’s a sense that the game world is rotting, slowly.

The sound design adds to it: whispered chanting, murmurs in the wind, unsettling silences. I played most of it with headphones on, and at one point had to take a break because it got too much (in a good way?).

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My Cult, My Rules (Sort of)

Managing a cult in this game is about balancing belief and brutality. People will follow you if you feed them, protect them, and occasionally show them something unexplainable.

You can:

Appoint high priests.

Build temples and shrines.

Decide who gets purified (or executed).

Convert outsiders—or feed them to the pit.

What’s fascinating is how dynamic the group becomes. Followers can fall in love, start mini-sects, betray you, or write their own weird doctrines if left unsupervised.

At one point, one of my most loyal cultists started attracting followers of their own—and I had to choose whether to make them my second-in-command… or sacrifice them to avoid a split.

I sacrificed them. My cult cheered. Then three people went insane. So yeah, choices matter.

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Sanity as a Resource

One of the game’s best mechanics is the sanity meter. Every follower has one. So do you. And keeping it from dropping too low becomes a constant part of your strategy.

Some rituals restore sanity. Others drain it in exchange for power. Occasionally, you need someone to go mad to complete a vision.

There’s this constant tension between what’s good for the group and what’s necessary for the Great Old Ones. Sometimes they align. Often, they really don’t.

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The Losses Hurt (Which Means It Works)

There’s permadeath, and it’s brutal. Losing a well-leveled cultist stings. Especially when it happens because of an RNG sanity event or because you forgot to build another shelter before the rains came.

But the pain makes it memorable. I still remember Ezra, my first preacher. He was kind, stable, and could summon shadows like no one else. I let him go mad for the sake of a rare relic. The relic broke. Ezra never came back.

Sorry, man.

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Should You Try It?

If you want a comfortable, streamlined strategy game with clear paths to success—this isn’t it. But if you’re okay with some confusion, some chaos, and a whole lot of whispering from the void, Worshippers of Cthulhu offers something rare: a truly unsettling, strategic experience that doesn’t play by the usual rules.

I didn’t always know what I was doing, and I failed more often than I succeeded. But somehow, that made the wins even sweeter—and the madness more fun.

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Final Thoughts

This game is not for everyone, and that’s okay. But it was definitely for me. I like weird, atmospheric strategy games that don’t pretend to be balanced. I like having to figure things out the hard way. And I love that even after I closed the game, I kept thinking about my cult, my lost followers, and what I’d do differently next time.

Worshippers of Cthulhu didn’t hold my hand—but it did drag me into the dark, and I kinda liked it there.

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— Eli