Cultist Simulator may seem daunting at first, with many different cards and actions, but once you understand where cards go and what results to expect, you will be able to progress pretty far into the lore and develop a unique cult of your own. Here is a beginner’s guide on the most important aspects to know during a new game.
Your First Cards
The game runs in real-time, and you may have to make complicated choices simultaneously or right away, so make sure to utilize the pause and fast-forward options frequently and for any reason. At the bottom of the screen are your main resources: Health, Passion, Reason and Funds.
At the very beginning, you only have one action and one card, Work and Menial Employment respectively. It’s helpful to know when opening the menu for a specific action and clicking on the empty slot, a window will appear that instructs the player what kind of card attributes are related to that slot, and any useable cards on the table will glow. As you take more actions, more options will appear and more cards become available. This is where the game becomes complicated for new players as little to nothing is explained further.
Managing Time
Three of your main resources; Health, Passion and Reason allow you to take various jobs with the Work action, and each will result in temporary cards related to each of those resources. These new cards, Vitality, Glimmering, and Erudition can be used on the Study action to gain a new skill, and studying the skills will increase it. What’s more important from working is obtaining Funds, which you will need to make sure to consistently acquire, as the Time Passes action will eat it up for as long as you remain unpaused.
Another main factor to remember with the Time Passes action is that it will spit out new scenarios every minute which may eventually lead to you a game over if unsolved. You can see which scenario will arise by clicking on the Time Passes action and looking for the symbol in the middle-right corner. The seven scenarios are:
Season of Silence
Nothing happens.
A Season of Ardours
A Solitude action appears, If you do not have a paramour, you gain a Contentment card.
A Season of Visions
A Trembling in the Air action will appear and steal any Fascination cards. If it takes three of those cards, the game ends. You gain fascination cards in a wide variety of ways and they disappear after 180 seconds.
A Season of Despair
The Clouds Part action will appear and steal any Dread cards. If it takes three of those cards, the game ends. You gain Dread cards in a wide variety of ways and they disappear after 180 seconds.
A Season of Sickness
A Sickness action will appear and steals one of your Health resource cards and turn it into an Affliction card, which if untreated with sleep, will turn into a Decrepitude card.
A Season of Ambitions
The Watchman’s Footsteps action will appear and give you a Restlessness card, which turns to dread in 60 seconds.
A Season of Suspicion
If you have any Notoriety or Mystique cards, a Weary Detective card appears and a Considering the Evidence… action appears which turns Notoriety into Tentative Evidence then to Damning Evidence, and then game over.
As long as you focus on maintaining the outcomes of these scenarios, then you can use the remaining cards and actions to build up your cult, investigate locations, study books, learn skills and gain knowledge. The game will overwhelm you with options, but it is healthy to explore. Make sure to click the empty slots on actions to determine which cards you can use, and allow yourself to reorganize the table space however you see fit.
Have any Questions or Concerns? Tell us on Twitter.
Matthew has been a lifelong lover of video games since he could first hold a controller, and among his favorites are narrative-heavy, singleplayer games like; Divinity: Original Sin 2, Elden Ring, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice and Hollow Knight. Matthew also plays tabletop games like Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder and Call of Cthulu. He graduated from the University of North Texas with a bachelor’s in Sociology and minored in English.
