Review of Evil Cult

Evil Cult is an open source, turn-based strategy game mainly programmed by Max Kowarski (infidel-). It can be played in the browser, for example at www.in-fi-del.net/static/cult/index.html. The programming language is Haxe and the sources are available on Github, the game is licensed under the GPL-3.0 license. The game is in a mature state and playable, but also still actively developed. One special feature is that this game (or a more enhanced version) is also commercially available on Steam for PC.

Playing Evil Cult in the browser

 I like it a lot and think it is a quite enjoyable strategy gem. The screen output is text-based, with the network of cultists taking up the main part of the screen. Resource and other important information is on the left and menus for managing sects and getting information about cults are on top. The interface is very clean and easy to understand and use, the layout is agreeable. A nice little detail are the hilarious sect names as well as cultist names.

The game mechanics is all about growing the network of follows of your own cult (there are computer controlled opponent cults) with special emphasis on resource generating individuals, defending them by having at least 3 links to each of the resource generators, staying undetected (low awareness of the cult), defending against investigators and finally with the help of advanced cultists and the resource "virgins" performing the Final Ritual before anyone else does. This means that the game poses quite a strategic challenge while also offering an interesting fresh setting.

A single game lasts about 30 minutes (~30 turns) and may depend somewhat on luck, i.e. the availability of resource generators close to the starting position as well as the absence or presence of an investigator in the early turns, however, if one keeps a low public profile (awareness ~5%), expands quickly to gather a lot of "virgin" resources (which can be converted to the other resources at a favorable rate) and focuses to get rid of investigators early on as well as sacrifices sects on level 2 for resources, it can be won on all difficulty levels.

The only thing I miss would be a multiplayer mode. I imagine that playing against other human opponents could increase the appeal of the game even more.

I can strongly recommend it and hope it will be improved even more in the future.