Princess of Previews: Honey I Joined A Cult
I originally had a different game planned for today. I was going to cover the Kitaria Fables’ Demo. I’d gotten an hour in the demo, and was enjoying it! But I’ve been busy with work, so I put it aside to return and write about it today. Much to my disappointment, in a week’s time, an update had come out that borked my controller and my ability to make progress. I screamed. I cried. I tried turning my computer off and on again, checked my drivers, but alas nothing worked. Desperate times call for desperate measures, thus I decided to start a cult. A cult in a video game I mean. Not real life. For the time being anyway. Hehe.
Honey, I Joined A Cult is the effort of two-man team Sole Survivor Games and published by Team17. I have to be honest, between it being the work of just two people, their first game, and in early access, it’s a surprisingly polished game that sets out what it aims to do--be a fun silly management game.
After watching the opening cutscene (which I shall not spoil here) the game transitions to the customization screen. All the fiddling you can do--and there’s quite a bit of fiddling--does not affect gameplay in any way, but it did allow me to bring my flavor to the game. And there’s a surprising amount of variety in the customization, even if I can’t have pink hair yet.
Welcome to I Love Crochet. All hail the Big Ball of Yarn. Join our faith. Yes, you sleep on a filthy mattress, eat vending machine food, and pee in a bucket, but we got some great jams to crochet to in the rec room.
Ahem.
The UI is very smooth, and the tutorial is shockingly competent. The game tells you the basics and gives you the bare minimum to get started, but it also leaves a lot of room to toy around and experiments with things. My only issue is a strange one. The amount of things to do in the beginning and the scope of the base is a little overwhelming. There are many rooms. The rooms have stats. The people have stats. There’s research to be done. Missions to go on. Multiple different dwindling resources.
There are several spinning plates, and I’m going to drop them a few times to figure what I’m doing. To be fair though, that’s part of the appeal of a good management game (As long as dropping the plates is a fun learning experience).
Things had gone wrong on my first attempt as skill points unlocked before I knew what to do with them. I haphazardly put them in various stat blocks only to later discover that I did it all wrong and I couldn’t run my base properly. Oh well. Back to square one.
Still, I immensely enjoyed my time, and am looking forward to getting back on the cult leader horse. The game is $19.99 on steam though it’s on sale for 20% off right now. While I think it’s worth the asking price as is, I know if the team sticks with it, it will be well worth the money. The team as of right now has a road map that suggests a lot of new content, characters, and customization options down the pipeline. I look forward to the future.
(Dear Sole Survivor Games, if you read this, please let me put balls of yarn on my crochetlings heads and overall more yarn content. :3)
