What is Cult of the Lamb?
What is Cult of the Lamb?
Cult of the Lamb is an adorably dark game that blends dungeon crawling and cult-themed base-building, where you play as a lamb on a mission to become the one true cult leader.
Cult of the Lamb is an adorably dark game that blends dungeon crawling and cult-themed base-building, where you play as a lamb on a mission to become the one true cult leader.
Project Deliverables
Project Deliverables
-Update Cult Base UX to better guide players with completing follower objectives and base management tasks (ex. cleaning and resource collection).
-Redesign the tarot card powerup system to help players define card selection, identify new cards, and showcase card art in a way to show its rarity.
-Update Cult Base UX to better guide players with completing follower objectives and base management tasks (ex. cleaning and resource collection).
-Redesign the tarot card powerup system to help players define card selection, identify new cards, and showcase card art in a way to show its rarity.
Uh...which one did I choose again? I’m not sure.
So many chores! There’s poop at the top, dead bodies on the left, berries on the right, and bed are broken...
Uh...which one did I choose again? I’m not sure.
So many chores! There’s poop at the top, dead bodies on the left, berries on the right, and bed are broken...
This UI element is helpful, but I hardly saw it being used in my playthrough.
This UI element is helpful, but I hardly saw it being used in my playthrough.
Cult of the Lamb has a short Day and Night cycle and if you’re not careful, base management can become overwhelming. While playing, I noticed that the tutorial had a helpful floating checklist for a recipe that would inform the player of what items they needed for building structures. While some of these tasks may be automated in late game progression, I have made my design decisions based on three hours of gameplay.
Update 7/11/26: There are indeed means of base maintenance automation such as giving followers tasks or late game structures. After discovering this information, I asked myself the questions: “What did the game designer intend for the player to experience?” and “How hard is too hard?” I had myself stop playing the game after 3 hours of gameplay, but I could have been on the cusp of unlocking something that would have made base maintenance more manageable.
As a solution to early game base management, I decided to reuse the idea of the floating checklist found in one of the tutorial sequences as a way to alert the player to address certain areas around their base. If there was an issue that needed the player's attention, a floating notification would orient and scale itself along the screen's border. This would allow users to be notified of these maintenance points while also seeing the direction that they’re in–no text or opening up another menu–just a scaling image that moves along the screen's border.
Update 7/11/26: While the image notification UI seems like anice addition, what happens when the player finds themselves with a lot of maintenance points? This would run the risk of overloading the players and making the problem worse because now they have a visual representation of having a lot of things on their plate.
Cult of the Lamb has a short Day and Night cycle and if you’re not careful, base management can become overwhelming. While playing, I noticed that the tutorial had a helpful floating checklist for a recipe that would inform the player of what items they needed for building structures. While some of these tasks may be automated in late game progression, I have made my design decisions based on three hours of gameplay.
Update 7/11/26: There are indeed means of base maintenance automation such as giving followers tasks or late game structures. After discovering this information, I asked myself the questions: “What did the game designer intend for the player to experience?” and “How hard is too hard?” I had myself stop playing the game after 3 hours of gameplay, but I could have been on the cusp of unlocking something that would have made base maintenance more manageable.
As a solution to early game base management, I decided to reuse the idea of the floating checklist found in one of the tutorial sequences as a way to alert the player to address certain areas around their base. If there was an issue that needed the player's attention, a floating notification would orient and scale itself along the screen's border. This would allow users to be notified of these maintenance points while also seeing the direction that they’re in–no text or opening up another menu–just a scaling image that moves along the screen's border.
Update 7/11/26: While the image notification UI seems like anice addition, what happens when the player finds themselves with a lot of maintenance points? This would run the risk of overloading the players and making the problem worse because now they have a visual representation of having a lot of things on their plate.
Research Findings: Cult of the Lamb is a roguelite base-builder that takes occult theming and horror imagery and presents it in a cute and cuddly wrapper. The UI Density is kept pretty low which reflects the simple art style. During my early game play through I found it frustrating when I would have one or several areas to maintain, but I would miss an item to interact that would result in a follower getting sick or a loss of resources.
One other issue that I would run into was picking the wrong power up from one an NPC. I found myself wanting a better solution for highlighting the selected powerup, tracking new powerups, and showcasing the game art that differentiates the rarity of a powerup.
Research Findings: Cult of the Lamb is a roguelite base-builder that takes occult theming and horror imagery and presents it in a cute and cuddly wrapper. The UI Density is kept pretty low which reflects the simple art style. During my early game play through I found it frustrating when I would have one or several areas to maintain, but I would miss an item to interact that would result in a follower getting sick or a loss of resources.
One other issue that I would run into was picking the wrong power up from one an NPC. I found myself wanting a better solution for highlighting the selected powerup, tracking new powerups, and showcasing the game art that differentiates the rarity of a powerup.
Research Findings
Research Findings
Cult of the Lamb’s UI Density is kept pretty low reflecting the simple art style and adds to a more streamlined core game loop. During my play through I found it frustrating when I had several areas to maintain. This split my attention to two things–the desire to explore and the desire to sustain my cult. As I tended to my cult, oftentimes I would miss a resource or cleaning task to interact with that would result in followers getting sick or a loss of resources. I was frustrated and felt like this game loop was kind of grindy.
My iteration to this UI element is to make the multiple maintenance points combined so there’s just one notification. while retaining the behavior of the initial design.
Did this solve the problem: Kind of. This method is okay for early game cult management, but it falls apart in late game. Looking at the research that I did, I think the problem is a little more complex than just adding a notification to the game’s HUD. Sure there are points of maintenance, but each of these points affect the player’s cult in different ways. Let’s look at a common scenario: Do I clean the poop; fix the bed; pick the crops; or tell my dying follower to take a break? Which one is most important? There are different repercussions to choosing to do certain tasks over others. This became the big “AHA!” moment for me and instead of getting frustrated at not solving the problem, this discovery might have brought the real problem to light and in turn the opportunity for a better solution!
Prototype
Prototype
Prototype
One main system in the roguelike game loop is acquiring upgrades from a randomized list creating unique experiences for players. Cult of the Lamb has 85 tarot cards to utilize and while I was playing I wanted to use as many as I could during my gameplay, but a few problems kept me from doing this effectively. These issues were: I didn’t always know when a new card was available. Card selection wasn’t always clear and this became more of a problem when I found animated rare cards. The final issue was I didn’t always know what the illustration looked like due to the animation overlays on the cards. Looking back on the list of problems, each issue had to deal with focus and how to engage with the player’s focus on one screen which I thought was pretty cool.
Prototype
Prototype available on Desktop and Tablet.
Prototype
Prototype available on Desktop and Tablet.
My iteration to this UI element is to make the multiple maintenance points combined so there’s just one notification. while retaining the behavior of the initial design.
Did this solve the problem: Kind of. This method is okay for early game cult management, but it falls apart in late game. Looking at the research that I did, I think the problem is a little more complex than just adding a notification to the game’s HUD. Sure there are points of maintenance, but each of these points affect the player’s cult in different ways. Let’s look at a common scenario: Do I clean the poop; fix the bed; pick the crops; or tell my dying follower to take a break? Which one is most important? There are different repercussions to choosing to do certain tasks over others. This became the big “AHA!” moment for me and instead of getting frustrated at not solving the problem, this discovery might have brought the real problem to light and in turn the opportunity for a better solution!
I categorized each problem and brainstormed a list of quick solutions to see if they would work. Starting with representing new cards. The easiest solution for this problem was to add an icon to indicate that it was a new card. The game already implemented that within the Inventory Menu, so saving a player a few button taps with the same exclamation icon would make sense since the player would already be it and how it’s used. The next problem to address was clarifying card selection. Instead of just relying solely on a red border to indicate the selected card– the color red being a very heavily used color in the game– I wanted to give more visual cues for the player to go off of so that their selections were clear and deliberate. I used a blur over the unselected card so the player couldn’t even read the card’s text. I added a multiply layer to darken the card as well leaving the selected card very vibrant alongside the unselected card. I applied a slight bouncing animation to the selected card that leaves it in a raised position while lowering the unselected card. The final problem of this project was finding a solution that would showcase the card’s illustration while indicating the rarity of the card. The rare tarot cards in Cult of the Lamb have very unique animations and effects that are visually impactful, but these effects pull the attention away from the illustration. During the making of this project, I was playing a lot of Pokemon TCG with my friends and took a lot of design inspiration from that game and how they represented rare cards. The design in Pokemon TCG leans heavily on swapping out borders on cards and selective masks over the card to keep focal integrity on the card’s illustration. I essentially just applied this design process to the Cult of the Lamb tarot cards because of how similar selecting random cards in Cult of the Lamb felt to pulling cards in Pokemon TCG. The remaining factor for me was translating those rare card effects in the art style of Cult of the Lamb. I used art samples I found on the game’s wiki and replicated the gold effect I saw on the design for the boss Kallamar. I repeated that same process for a silver variant and applied those colors to the card borders while I used the green and purple color found in the card text. Other parts that I added to the design were the sparkle vectors and underglows for the cards to make them even more unique from the base cards in the game.
Prototype available on Desktop and Tablet.
One main system in the roguelike game loop is acquiring upgrades from a randomized list creating unique experiences for players. Cult of the Lamb has 85 tarot cards to utilize and while I was playing I wanted to use as many as I could during my gameplay, but a few problems kept me from doing this effectively. These issues were: I didn’t always know when a new card was available. Card selection wasn’t always clear and this became more of a problem when I found animated rare cards. The final issue was I didn’t always know what the illustration looked like due to the animation overlays on the cards. Looking back on the list of problems, each issue had to deal with focus and how to engage with the player’s focus on one screen which I thought was pretty cool.
I categorized each problem and brainstormed a list of quick solutions to see if they would work. Starting with representing new cards. The easiest solution for this problem was to add an icon to indicate that it was a new card. The game already implemented that within the Inventory Menu, so saving a player a few button taps with the same exclamation icon would make sense since the player would already be it and how it’s used. The next problem to address was clarifying card selection. Instead of just relying solely on a red border to indicate the selected card– the color red being a very heavily used color in the game– I wanted to give more visual cues for the player to go off of so that their selections were clear and deliberate. I used a blur over the unselected card so the player couldn’t even read the card’s text. I added a multiply layer to darken the card as well leaving the selected card very vibrant alongside the unselected card. I applied a slight bouncing animation to the selected card that leaves it in a raised position while lowering the unselected card. The final problem of this project was finding a solution that would showcase the card’s illustration while indicating the rarity of the card. The rare tarot cards in Cult of the Lamb have very unique animations and effects that are visually impactful, but these effects pull the attention away from the illustration. During the making of this project, I was playing a lot of Pokemon TCG with my friends and took a lot of design inspiration from that game and how they represented rare cards. The design in Pokemon TCG leans heavily on swapping out borders on cards and selective masks over the card to keep focal integrity on the card’s illustration. I essentially just applied this design process to the Cult of the Lamb tarot cards because of how similar selecting random cards in Cult of the Lamb felt to pulling cards in Pokemon TCG. The remaining factor for me was translating those rare card effects in the art style of Cult of the Lamb. I used art samples I found on the game’s wiki and replicated the gold effect I saw on the design for the boss Kallamar. I repeated that same process for a silver variant and applied those colors to the card borders while I used the green and purple color found in the card text. Other parts that I added to the design were the sparkle vectors and underglows for the cards to make them even more unique from the base cards in the game.
Takeaways: There are a few takeaways that I got from this case study. The first being that making sure a design and its function within a system communicates the desired outcome is key. In the case of the tarot card redesign, having several parts such as motion, focus, and appearance can all work towards a goal. I would much rather the player say “Okay, I get it!” versus “I think I get it?” or “I don’t know?”--give the player what they are choosing. The other part I was glad to learn is that a lot of games already have solutions for the problems I will encounter, they just need to be translated for the game I am working on such as using design elements found in Pokemon TCG for Cult of the Lamb. The final takeaway and probably the biggest one is creating solutions can actually help identify a deeper issue. I thought that I needed to add something to the game’s UI in the form of an aesthetic notification to help the player when they needed something else (That of which I have yet to discover).
Prototype
Prototype