Cult of the Lamb wins Best Indie Game at this year’s Golden Joystick Awards

Cult of the Lamb has won Best Indie Game at this year's Golden Joystick Awards

The single-player construction and management simulation game, with roguelike and action-adventure elements, lets you fill the hooves of a possessed lamb tasked with forming a cult at the whim of an ethereal deity who saved your life once upon a time. In order to do all of that, you'll explore a randomly-generated world conquering, and ultimately, corralling new recruits. 

The work of indie developer Massive Monster and publisher Devolver Digital, Cult of the Lamb is as off-the-wall as it sounds, and got the better of a category brimming with top indie hits from the last 12 months – including Tunic, Rollerdrome, Dorfromantik, Neon White, and Teardown. 

The full list of nominees looked like this:

  • Cult of the Lamb (winner)
  • Tunic
  • Rollerdrome
  • Dorfromantik
  • Neon White
  • Teardown

In her write-up earlier this year, Sam Loveridge described the nuts and bolts of Cult of the Lamb as "Animal Crossing meets Hades", while hailing its visuals and pitch-perfect presentation. She said: "It's somehow simultaneously cute and horrific, with monsters barfing acid and pulsating with warps and other grossness, compared to your cult folk that are tiny giraffes, unicorns, hedgehogs, cats, and other adorable critters. It's bright and colorful, but also dark and mysterious in equal measure. It's quite the feat to be honest, and utter screenshot fodder." 

"There's a reason Cult of the Lamb is getting a lot of attention. The way it blends its two unique gameplay styles with those graphics makes it one you won't want to miss. After all, do you really want to anger a god and answer to a cult?"

Discover the best games of 2022 at the best prices by checking out the Golden Joystick Awards Steam sale page

Joe Donnelly
Contributor

Joe Donnelly is a sports editor from Glasgow and former features editor at 12DOVE. A mental health advocate, Joe has written about video games and mental health for The Guardian, New Statesman, VICE, PC Gamer and many more, and believes the interactive nature of video games makes them uniquely placed to educate and inform. His book Checkpoint considers the complex intersections of video games and mental health, and was shortlisted for Scotland's National Book of the Year for non-fiction in 2021. As familiar with the streets of Los Santos as he is the west of Scotland, Joe can often be found living his best and worst lives in GTA Online and its PC role-playing scene.