Honey, I Joined a Cult

It's kind of a huge miss. Instead of doing anything wacky or unique, you'll spend the first 3-4 hours building an extremely generic looking base to take care of your "cultists" that could've come out of any game in this genre... just normal base management stuff like sleeping quarters, food, recreation, etc. Then you're just running a weirdly themed roadside attraction for a bunch of people. Sit there, collect money, watch your little people scurry to and fro, slowly work your way through a tech tree that lets you... collect more money, take care of your people better, extremely normal stuff. It's repetitive and generic and a huge grind with no decision making involved. Set your people to do the jobs they're best suited to, replace them with better people as you get access to those, upgrade your facilities now and then. Like I said it's not until hours in until you actually get to the "cult" stuff of your cult sim... and the options are kind of pitifully slim... and that still just opens up a new tech tree that requires more waiting and doing generic missions. It's just so uncreative, and so uninteractive. You're not really making decisions to shape the cult or whatever you're just waiting for the next room or upgrade you can build, plonk one down, and repeat. Also the UI kinda sucks. Notification spam is an issue. Extending the base regularly tears down walls it shouldn't. Floors are in the "Objects" menu, but walls are in the "Build" menu. Stuff like that. Not a dealbreaker, but annoying enough that it drags the experience down from "dull" to "dull and kind of tries my patience."

repetitive and generic base builder, great concept but dev laziness ruined any chance this game had, sadly it's more of a cashgrab than anything else

Not really what I was expecting, the game is alright I guess, at the beggining atleast, minus the very unfriendly tutorial that leaves alot of unexplained stuff that you learn later on. It does get stale pretty fast, it just becomes boring pretty quick, I like simulator games, but I really thought there would be more, the trailers made me believe so, but thats probably on me. Overall nothing much to say, besides it's kinda of a 'relaxing' game once you get the hang of what you need to do, but again it gets boring pretty fast. Really not worth the price even with the current sale. 4.5/10

There isn't a sandbox mode and the game lacks customizability. Three skin colors, but fourty different hats? I can't choose my followers gender and I'm forced to follow some sort of 70s ideal of a cult. I thought mayve after the tutorial I could edit my cultists "anything" like hairstyle for example. Would be nice to have some variety.

A lot of interesting mechanics but it's shallow/half-baked that quickly turn it into a boring slog. There are a couple of annoyances that especially come to mind: - Maintenance Room doesn't actually maintain anything, you have to wait for things to breakdown before they can be repaired - For Divine Inspiration missions, why am I locked out of performing both missions or even the divine inspiration options when something is in progress - For the endings, honestly it's pretty shallow, all that happens is a fade to the relevant picked ending + a few text and that's it - I know it's RNG challenge, but some of the leader statues are just terrible, specifically the -8 mood for using a bathroom with more than one toilet - Dealing with protests is also very dull, (maybe I didn't understand the pawn moving mechanics if there were) but having to wait for a protester to come, then having to manually find and assign an appropriately skilled cultist repeatedly, and then they go back to work or in the compound until another relevant skill check is present - I feel like there should have been a research room unlock to allow automatically assigned protest dealers - Cooking ingredients, while its ingredient management is also a small mechanic, its just dull and tedious having to go back and check the ingredients stock - should have probably had a delivery service to buy X amount for higher cost or something. - For Followers filtering, I wish there was a sort by Quality, it would have made the early experience a lot nicer then having to scroll back and forth every time - Also with the followers, a quicker dismiss button would have been nice - Music got old fast, so I turned that to 0% volume within a few hours I'm about 28 of 31 achievements to go as of this review, it's decent in places and has a good concept, but again things feel underbaked, could have been more deeper and interesting mechanics, and more fine tuning. It's not a bad game, but I wouldn't recommend it to my friends.

Takes ages to get the whole "cult thing" going. For a bit you're having fun just taking care of your cultists until everyone starts wanting top tier stuff while tanking your resources. Also very important, you can rotate items with "R", they didnt put that in the tutorial & i couldnt find it in the keybinds.

This game DEFINITELY needs work. While the gameplay concept and sense of humor are quite hilarious and the game DOES make a point where being in a cult is FAR from ideal, I feel that the game is too glitchy at the moment. For example; some cultists in-game won't even TRY to go to the kitchen to cook, when I assign the kitchen as a high priority...which is a HUGE concern. (I even added a door.) Don't get me wrong; this game? An excellent concept! It just needs work! My rating: 5/10

Very fun game, I could've easily spent couple more hours invested if I unfortunately didn't mess up my entire base. The game offers alot of variety when it comes to your cult such as satanic and futuristic which you can get inspired by real life cults and recreate them just like scientology.

This game missed a lot of opportunities to explore game mechanics that would be perfectly suitable for its setting in a way that you really couldn't do for a colony sim outside of mods, or a DLC tailored specifically for it. For example, you could introduce a pressure on the player that threatens the success of the cult in the form of the family members of the cult members, and concerned members of the community. They could make efforts to undermine your cult, which could present opportunities for recruiting members, and risks of creating a controversy that shines a light on your cult. You could have people trying to expose the cult by going undercover, which you need to uncover. You could have packing everything up and moving as a mechanic, rather than a defeat condition. More dynamic interactions within your actual cult compound are desperately needed, as compartmentalizing the conflict of the game to one screen really makes HIJAC feel like an idle game rather than a colony sim, which I think is its greatest weakness. I can't recommend the game at this time, for this reason. 4/10, it's a no for me dawg.