clickbliss

Cultist Simulator parses interactive fiction through a maddening game of cards

by Amr (@siegarettes)

• Cultist Simulator
  
• Developer- Weather Factory
  
• Publisher- Humble Bundle
  
• PC
  

I started Cultist Simulator with nothing but a dead end job. With few other options I did my daily duty, working diligently to avoid ending up in a hospital bed. Then came my first encounter with the madness. A set of documents left behind, full of scrawlings both incomprehensible and terrifying, which I couldn’t help but find intriguing. Suddenly I was wrapped up in research, slowly toiling to work up meager coin to fund trips to arcane bookshops, and talking with others in public forums about subjects I had only the tiniest sliver of understanding of. Then came the investigators, the mystery and the long, dreadful dreams. 

Of course, the truth of these dark mysteries was never mine to find, and so I came to my end, coughing blood in bed, unable to rouse others to my cause. Somewhere, a Bright Young Thing would begin to awaken to their temptations, and a Doctor finds my notes, each with a chance to be gripped by the same madness.

This is the story of Cultist Simulator, told in small, poetic snippets, unraveling through the steady march of ticking timers. It’s a game whose prose clearly invokes cosmic horror, but always leaves it to the imagination exactly what the nature of that horror is. And it’s delivered through one of the most overwhelming games of cards ever conceived.

In practice, Cultist Simulator is essentially interactive fiction via solitaire. There’s a familiar contemplative process, but instead of dealing you a regular deck, it provides components of fiction. Characters, locations, moods, resources, and ideas are provided on each card, with accompanying snippets of descriptive text. As I progressed, new piles appeared, providing me with verbs that I could use to put these cards into effect. These verb piles essentially took over for the menus of traditional interactive fiction: place a card on them and a timer begins, counting down until my actions bore fruit.  

It’s intentionally overwhelming and incomprehensible. By the time my session of Cultist Simulator got going there was a disarray of dozens of cards on the board, with plenty of verb piles constantly counting down, and occasionally requiring attention as complications occurred. As I began to understand how these timers and verbs mapped onto the more traditional aspects of interactive fiction I started to understand the game better.

In the end the board, the cards, and the timers all served to both simplify and obfuscate the traditional menu system. The card system allowed more flexibility, since cards served more conceptually than concretely. A Reason card could be used as a resource to perform deductive tasks, but it could also be Studied or Dreamed upon to perform other effects. It provided a more expansive framework for me to think about subjects, and got around the awkwardness of having a large palette of verbs that I’d attempt to perform on everything. Cards highlight verbs and spaces they can be applied to, and vice versa, so even if I wasn’t sure of the effect it was clear where I could apply the cards.

This approach obfuscated the operating parts of the game as well. Ultimately, Cultist Simulator is a game of resources and timers. I applied my resources to a verb, and it performed an outcome that might have resulted in other cards being revealed. Discovering exactly how the logic of these verbs and resources worked is a large part of the the central challenge, and the interactions and atmosphere would be much more hollow with a more straightforward approach. There’s a creative satisfaction in learning a new way to apply an old card, and the constant build up of things to track goes a lot way to invoke the feeling of an overwhelming truth you can never grasp.

It’s aggravating and deeply frustrating. In a mostly good way. The jumble of systems and seemingly arcane rituals I needed to perform played well into the themes of cosmic horror, delivering the experience of a protagonist who is slowly consumed by an inability to understand the truth of a situation. There were so many distractions it was almost impossible to keep track of what needed my attention, and plans always ended up with a new complication. 

No matter how I started the game by the midpoint I always felt as if I never had enough resources to reach my next goal, and desperation would set in as I tried to take advantage of any chance that appeared. Several cards also have their own timers, counting down until they disappear, some unreasonably short, which created a feeling of perpetually escaping understanding. This systemic approach kept the momentum going, avoided exposition dumps, and created a personalized story I could recall later.

When that momentum stopped, however, Cultist Simulator’s obfuscation became off putting. I became trapped in a holding pattern, I toiled away at jobs to feed the upkeep of the ticking clocks that drained my resources and threatened me with sickness. I tried every action available, without a sense for why I would want to try them. When new opportunities did become available, sometimes I couldn’t go through with them, either because some card hadn’t shown up at the right time, or because there was some arbitrary requirement I hadn’t met that prevented me. 

Why could I talk to this person about a certain concept, but not using this skill? What’s the difference between this cult of thought and this other one? There’s a complexity of interaction that felt very welcome when there were multiple options open, but when I had fewer choices the lack of clarity to the rules began to make me feel like I had wasted my time.

For a few dark nights, Cultist Simulator had me under its spell. I couldn’t help but be absorbed into its world of mystery. My desire to see more, my hunger for knowledge kept me on the path of ambition, determined to master the clockwork mechanism and unravel the next tidbit of fiction. But by attempting to communicate the idea of a secret not meant to be understood, Cultist Simulator sometimes ended up pushing too far and made me feel as if it wanted me to walk away. Sometimes that makes the mystery only sweeter, but at some point I came to the realization that whatever was at the end of the road might not be for me to know. Maybe my successor will have better fortune.