Whilst it feels more like an Anno game with a Lovecraft skin, Worshippers of Cthulhu is still a fun horror-themed city builder.
Large scale city builders are popular, and present in a variety of flavours these days. You have your Anno series set across a number of time periods, the likes of Banished with a more traditional survival theme, and those like Frostpunk which throw unique thematic curveballs. Worshippers of Cthulhu certainly fits into that latter category, and though it may not commit to the theme in quite the same way as Frostpunk, it certainly has an enjoyable game at its core once it opens up.
In Worshippers of Cthulhu, you play as a high priest charged with creating a settlement packed with followers of the great green eldritch god himself. Your ultimate goal is, perhaps unsurprisingly, to summon Cthulhu for whatever reasons mad cultists like reviving eldritch deities. To do this, you’ll need to amass resources, attract more cultists, and complete tasks to bring about the armageddon you so desire.
At its core, this is a standard city builder game with a bit of a cultish skin thrown over it. Your settlements will start with nought but a monument, and you’ll begin by constructing a builder’s shack, and some buildings for gathering basic resources like wood and food. The meagre number of followers you begin with will need to be housed before you can put them to work in these buildings, but before long you’ll have more and more followers arriving. Generate resources, build new and more advanced structures to generate more advanced resources, and so on until you’ve completed your assigned tasks.
To keep things on theme, the resources you generate are sometimes a bit more unusual. Instead of money, you have faith to spend on constructions, and whilst wood is a standard building material, the only clothing you can offer is robes and your military is powered by blood rather than oil. These are nice palette swaps, but in reality they are just that and don’t do anything different to what you might find elsewhere.
There are plenty of mechanics at play here, so if you’re into crunchy city builders you’ll find lots to like. Followers generate resources faster if they have the specific specialisation, so careful placement and specialisation manipulation are key. Buildings work better when certain types are near each other, such as resource hubs being close to resource generators. Certain buildings can only be placed in specific spots, so considering your city layout ahead of time is key too. It’s fairly normal stuff, but it’s as satisfying as in any other game in the genre.
The Lovecraftian spin makes itself known in a few ways though. Firstly, there’s the plot if you go down the chapter rather than the sandbox route in the game. You follow an entity called The Harbinger who asks you to complete tasks such as activating ancient obelisks or collecting pages from the Necronomicon. Then there are choices popping up sporadically that are often about followers discovering some mysterious artefact, or you needing to sacrifice an inhabitant. Specialisations can be changed by carving runes into your citizen’s backs, whilst carving idols to offer to your god will give you favour used to unlock new buildings. There’s even a mission timer you need to keep under control in the form of Cthulhu’s patience.
There’s certainly the theme here, but in reality, it’s just a coat of paint over a standard set of mechanics. That isn’t a huge knock on the game, as I’d rather the mechanics worked at the expense of the theme than the other way around, but it would be nice to have both. The impressive artwork in some parts of the game certainly help sell things though. The pictures presented when making a choice are suitably grotesque, whilst the pages in the books you use to summon horrors to fight for you have a fabulous ancient tome look to them.
You’ll summon those horrors to fight for you, as expansion and protection are crucial. This is an area in which the theme works really quite nicely. To summon an eldritch abomination, you’ll have to spend resources but also sacrifice civilians. It’s pretty neat and quite grotesque as they explode into bloody mist and their body falls into the sea only to be replaced with some tentacle monster. Those monsters can only survive for so long in our realm too, so if you’re planning an offensive, you really need to commit to it. No turtling for hours before sweeping across the map for you. Your foes are based on other elder gods, but sadly the theme is once again lost as they mostly send boats and the occasional monster against you. Admittedly, the actual gameplay of the military side is somewhat bare bones, as you just send your monsters to attack and watch their timer decline. It isn’t a major focus of this genre, but its worth mentioning that it feels like an afterthought.
Whilst the theme may be somewhat perfunctory, Worshippers of Cthulhu does function very well as a city builder, and the different style it presents may be attractive to some. Don’t expect anything that reinvents the wheel though. Do be prepared that some of the choices are a bit unpleasant though. You will be sacrificing people and having your followers commit horrifying acts, so if you are weak of stomach, perhaps you give this a miss. For those who would enjoy or are at least able to overlook that element, then maybe this is something that’s just different enough for you to enjoy.
Worshippers of Cthulhu is available now on PC.
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