Does being the leader of a cult automatically make you a bad guy? Doomsday cult sim Join Us might make that a more nuanced question than it initially appears. We got some hands-on cult-building time at Gamescom this year and saw a glimpse of how varied an experience different players could cultivate. You probably are a villain, but the flavor of your sin is yours to choose, and is it really all that terrible if you’re merely herding your flock into salvation?
Yes, you can ride pigs in the game, though there are more efficient means of transport.
The premise is quick to establish itself: You’ve been chosen by the higher-ups to start your own cult at a run-down basecamp, the equivalent of going out to franchise a fast food restaurant in the middle of nowhere. How you run things is up to you, but the footnote to all of this is that the apocalypse is genuinely coming. Only your cult members will be able to survive, and even then, only if you prepare them sufficiently. It’s a lot of pressure for an entry-level position.
Corporate HQ keeps an eye on you, but remains largely hands-off; they’ll send you blueprints for useful items and get you acquainted with the basics, but once it comes to policy picking, you’re on your own. Right from the outset, when you’re being initiated into what the cult calls “business” (combat skills), you are presented with hidden choices. The speed of narration and military-style setting could fluster you into killing some chickens who were put there for that very reason, but you can also take a breath and see there are further-off non-sentient targets to hit. The narrator yells at you to throw a grenade at a pig called Jellybean, assuring you he’s “a real piece of shit,” but if you’re savvy, you can avoid this too. The choices are there, but you have to recognize the opportunities.
Sometimes it’s just nice to be listened to.
After selecting a fetching outfit of tartan robes and a skull mask (all of which is fully customizable and becomes your cult’s default wardrobe), and picking a cult name and logo (branding is very important), I’m ready to make this house a home–or make this compound a slightly homier compound, at least.
Before I can do much of anything, I find the base to be ransacked and overrun with thieves from the local area. Fortunately, this is a sandbox game, and one viable option when wading into conflict is to shoot first and ask questions later. These enemies are not much hassle to deal with but do signal a deeper-rooted distrust amongst the townspeople that I would be stupid to ignore. Am I a bad person yet? I’m not sure. Perhaps I will be redeemed when I tell my cultists we’re all going vegetarian.
Blueprints come through in the office showing me how to build a meeting table, which doesn’t have much use yet seeing as it’s just me, but the process teaches me the basics of crafting. Resources can be grown, harvested, or scavenged, and a nearby dump-site lets me gather what I need and get to building. Once I’ve set down some cozier items, like a small vegetable garden, sleeping rolls, and a fire pit, I’m able to start converting heathens.
You can design your compound however you like, just make sure you have enough food and water.
Next up is building a handy propaganda station, where leaflets can be printed and dispersed throughout the town. Bedford County is a classic American small town–run down, and with a population that either swears loyalty to the place they grew up in, or finds themselves endlessly trying to leave. This gives people different levels of susceptibility to your cult-y charms–in fact, some people will just outright attack on sight–but you’ll soon find some easy pickings. Cult members, once recruited, become playable characters, allowing you to eventually zip between all four corners of the map.
Although my preview access ended there, I asked Wolf Haus Games CEO Joe Dietsch about how cults progress and what decisions awaited their charismatic leaders. With all the resource gathering and cooking and defending your property from godless folks, it does start to sound like a straightforward survival game, but the logistics of surviving can eventually be outsourced to your cult members, freeing up your time for more important things.
“We wanted to have the element of human beings as a resource,” explains Dietsch, “You grow your human resource, so the classic survival tasks can be handled by your followers, and you as the player can go focus on this spiritual journey with teachings and branding, and that kind of bigger, high-level stuff.” As he then reminds me, the apocalypse is coming, after all. You’ve got bigger fish to fry.
The Wall Of Teachings is there to keep you consistent.
So can you be a good guy in Join Us? Are you one by default because you’re trying to save as many people as possible (by any means possible)?
“There’s some twists and turns in the story,” Dietsch says. “That was something we put a lot of thought into. Within a survival game there’s kind of a natural buy-in from the player, of like, ‘I’m in the woods. I have to make a fire. I have to get food. I have to get sleep. I have to survive.’ So, once you have that interest from the player, once you have that sort of natural immersion, can we also tell them a story? But then, can we also figure out how to tell that story in a game where you can make it any kind of cult you want?”
I wondered how differentiated these cults can get, to which Dietsch replied, “You can be a hyper-violent cult, you can be a druid cult, you can be an alien cult. No matter what the belief is, the core story of the campaign still [makes] sense. There’s the full nature path where you’re planting better gardens, you’re riding deer in the forest, you’re friends with all the animals, and [they] will help you in battle.” I’m already thinking that sounds nice.
“Or [you could be] some sort of a violent alien cult and aliens might show up and start zapping people for you.” Which, to some, might hold more appeal.
Join Us is coming to PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X in March 2027.
