Cultist Simulator is a narrative crafting digital card game, for release on PC, Mac and Linux. Choose an action, like Explore or Dream. Choose an object, like a Murmuring Amulet or a Captured Investigator or a Moment of Contentment. Combine it with other objects to find new secrets and build up your resources.

You'll start with very little: your Passion, your Reason, some Funds, and a mysterious package from a benefactor. But you'll learn to combine them to unlock snippets of story, and grow your powers. Craft the Rite of the Crucible Soul. Recruit Believers and promote them to Disciples to serve as burglars, researchers, cat's-paws. Locate and pillage the Star-Shattered Fane or the Tomb of the Long. Penetrate the realm of the Hours, and win a place in their service.

The dangers are many. The Authorities have departments dedicated to suppressing supernatural menaces, like you. Investigators will track down the rumours of their loved ones' disappearance. Rivals will challenge you for occult pre-eminence. The Dead and the Names of the Mansus prey on unwary souls. And your own altered Appetites may force you to act abominably.

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Pluck at the surface of the world of Cultist Simulator, and you'll find succulent horrors wriggling beneath. The history we know arises from the struggles of the secret gods called the Hours: the Sun-in-Rags, the Red Grail, the Mother of Ants, the Witch-and-Sister, the Lionsmith...

In dreams, you can speak with the servants and aspects of the Hours. You may acquire inhuman appetites. You may find the doors of the Mansus, the place where the gods live and the dead go. They may join the ranks of the Long, the enigmatic immortals. They may rise much higher than that.

Some Hours are malevolent. Some just embody passions too strong for human life. All are very dangerous. The Sun-in-Rags seeks to conclude endings beautifully. The Door-in-the-Eye illuminates the way, but is not compassionate. The Red Grail wants to devour and be devoured. The Lionsmith makes monsters, that he may grow strong and stronger. Get mixed up with any of these, and the authorities may find you locked in your own attic, daubing paintings of impossible beauty on the walls. Or you might be the one to open the sky, and bring the cutting rain.

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benicillin said:

Fallen London / Sunless Sea? Hard not to be into it, the writing in those games is pretty perfect for a Lovecraftian cultist simulator.

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I'm a stretch goal sceptic. I'm not absolutely against - Zubmariner was a stretch goal for Sunless Sea - but it's easy for a creator to get seduced into chasing that funding total. The project is funded. More money is a welcome cushion against risk, but my priority now is to make the game, not chase more funding.

Estimating game budgets is hard. Every stretch goal added is another chance for the budget to go wrong. And on this project, because I'm the only full-time resource, my time is very limited, and I'm already fully committed on existing Cultist Simulator work.

Managing the project gets more complex with every wrinkle. I want to keep this a small, clearly scoped project that I have fun making and you folks have fun following.

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I am aiming for *roughly* 30-90 mins. The model is FTL: several sessions in an evening, or one long very successful one. Because there's a legacy system, each character has a limited connection with the next, and you'll need multiple playthroughs (......................30 hrs??? no commitment here) to see everything.

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Q: I don't really know anything about game creation, so this makes me rather curious about the various ways that increased funding "will help make the game better." I mean, besides having a nice cushion should the project go over budget or meet with some unexpected expense. Usually extra funding goes into stretch goals, but the only stretch goal that will cost anything is the nice, self contained tarot deck. So all extra funds will go into the game proper. So, again, I'm curious! What will you be able to do in Cultist Simulator with sixty thousand pounds, or a hundred thousand plus pounds, that you wouldn't be able to do with thirty thousand?"

A: I thought all of you might be interested in the answer.

So first of all, I don't exactly know! I'm not going to sit down and refigure my budget until the wheel stops. If I committed to anything too specific, that would be ipso facto a stretch goal. But of course I have many thoughts.

So secondly - I'll cover my living expenses for the period of development. There wasn't going to be enough left for all of six to eight months of living expenses after I pay my freelancers - even leaving aside the costs I've already accrued building the prototype and putting the pitch together. I was prepared for that - I could cover it out of savings, and hopefully make it up out of sales - but this makes my life more pleasant. Because I'm the only full-time resource on the project, this means I can take longer to finish it if risks crop up, which takes us to:

Thirdly, risk control. 'A nice cushion' is a misleadingly pleasant term. Extra budget in game dev is more like extra coolant in a machine. Money is time. If something goes wrong - if a key resource gets ill, if I get ill, if a technology doesn't work as it should, if the design doesn't work as intended and needs iterating on until it works right - then FSSS, some of the coolant gets used up, and if there's not enough left, the machine seizes up. I've already built some contingency into my estimates, but more resource, less risk.

"Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law." — Douglas Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid

Fourthly, and now we're in the specifics, more polish and juice. More varied animations, snappier VFX, more illustrations, more little grace notes, more bits of flavour content and fun asides. Better audio. Liam, the third head of the core Sunless Sea team hydra, always used to chide me for squeezing audio in the budgets. Not more features: just leaving the game in the oven for a little longer.

Fifthly, potentially, a head start on localisations or porting to alternate platforms. No promises here! But this is naturally where I'd go next, and extra funds help with that.

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HyperZone<3 said:

man, I love that list of 'stretch' goals. That's so wonderfully pragmatic and clear eyed about game development

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Saucycarpdog said:

The art is amazing. Heck I'll throw $20 their way.

Spoiler

secretly hoping this gets a mobile port like fallen London

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Saucycarpdog said:

Spoiler

secretly hoping this gets a mobile port like fallen London

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More_Badass said:

Dev said he's love to port to mobile and other platforms, and considering the current state of the campaign, that's probably a safe bet

The PC UI for the prototype/demo feels pretty touch-friendly already

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Inquisitive_Ghost said:

Seconding that I would love a mobile port of a bizarre card game like this. In fact, every time I'm reminded that the project exists, I'm slightly disappointed I'll theoretically be limited to my computer. It looks really perfect for mobile.

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One Foul Note said:

Oh nice, I didn't know this game has a thread. I backed it like 3 days ago. I'm glad the dev is being fairly realistic about the use of stretch goals. There are too many KS games out their that have gone real south in the quest to secure extra funding and promised mad stretch goals, it can be a real bane of the entire system.

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Geido said:

Ooooh seems like the Arkham/Eldritch Horror videogame experience I've been looking for.

Also going to check out Fallen London and Sunless sea.

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Geido said:

Ooooh seems like the Arkham/Eldritch Horror videogame experience I've been looking for.

Also going to check out Fallen London and Sunless sea.

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Geido said:

Ooooh seems like the Arkham/Eldritch Horror videogame experience I've been looking for.

Also going to check out Fallen London and Sunless sea.

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More_Badass said:

Dev said he's love to port to mobile and other platforms, and considering the current state of the campaign, that's probably a safe bet

The PC UI for the prototype/demo feels pretty touch-friendly already

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Not Spaceghost said:

I'm hoping the final product has a bit more visual flair than the cards slotting in thing that's going on.

I'd love to see like a city from a top down view with the visible effects my cult is having, kind of like a twisted Anno 1404.

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More_Badass said:

Have you played Fallen London? It looks like he's going for a more visual version of that kind of game.

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Not Spaceghost said:

I'm hoping the final product has a bit more visual flair than the cards slotting in thing that's going on.

I'd love to see like a city from a top down view with the visible effects my cult is having, kind of like a twisted Anno 1404.

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"Will there be direct combat (or at least as direct one can be against eldritch antediluvian evil)? If not weapons against enemy cultists and authorities, perhaps rituals and rites to battle and defend against horrors?"

Not combat combat, not hit rolls and damage points, but there is opposition, yes. In the prototype, it's really simple - you can suffer a Malady which will chew up your health, or you can be under investigation by the Suppression Bureau, which will end the game unless you can divert it with bribes or scapegoats. In the finished version, these will be slightly livelier antagonists, like Investigators and Detectives and Hauntings, or your own problems, like Appetites and Nightmares. The key thing is that this runs at war-of-occultists speed, not action-movie speed. You'll need to lay your plans - or conduct your protective rites - and wait for them to take effect.

"How expansive will the world of Cultist Sim be in terms of locations and exploration? More of a "stay around town, discover its dark secrets" or will we be going off to explore distant ancient ruins and hamlets to summon entities and gather knowledge? I guess, will it be more Fallen London or more 80 Days?"

It's more Fallen London than 80 Days; you are conducting operations from your study. But there will be distant locations. Whether you go there in person or not is still something I'm considering.

At the moment, the plan is that you dispatch followers to find locations (the Tomb of the Amethyst Imago, or the Wreck of the Christabel, e.g.) and break into them, and they bring you back stuff. In the prototype, you do this with Strathcoyne's Library, and it's very simple, but ultimately I want multi-stage situations with varying outcomes. You'll need maps or clues to find the things; you might try multiple approaches to solve obstacles; you might have to deal with the ramifications, like curses or vengeful rivals.

But one of the ideas I was turning over - which has just become much more likely now that we're better-funded - is that your office moves. It's always exciting in something like Elder Sign: Omens to see the board change. So if you travelled to Rome or Cairo, the scenery might change, along with the local rules. I've also considered making your starting city one of the variant start conditions that come with different legacy options. All this is speculative at the moment! After September, I'll sit down and plan the final scope. But it is one of the ideas I like more.

"How in depth will the legacy system be? Basically like Sunless Seas, or more complex? Sins of the father tend to be a common theme in gothic and lovecraftian horror..."

More complex. It's the first major feature on my list once the KS is complete, because I want to start playtesting it with that in place - it will change the rhythm of the game quite considerably (for the better, I think). I expect there to be la ow-double-digits total number of legacy choices, of which the player usually sees three at any given time. The structure of CS lends itself more naturally to a more elaborate and extensible legacy system than Sunless Sea. A legacy just provides some flavour and gives you some different starting cards (including ones which may make your life difficult) - there isn't a chart to hide or stats to tweak. But one of the things I'd like to keep from SS, if I can, is to allow players to inherit a single specific thing, like a book or a tool, so you can pass your journal down through the notional generations.

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