Cultist Simulator

Review by eFreeware

Cultist Simulator is for players who like being dropped into a system and left to work it out. The developer warns up front that there is no tutorial, and that figuring out how to play is part of the challenge. If that sounds like an invitation rather than a warning, this is likely the game for you: a narrative card roguelike set in a 1920s world of hidden gods and secret histories, priced at $6.99 with no ads.

What it offers is a story you assemble yourself. You play a seeker after unholy mysteries, combining cards to craft tools, summon spirits, indoctrinate innocents and translate grimoires. The developer describes a hefty novel's worth of choice-based storytelling, with many paths and many ways for a tale to end.

It arrived on mobile in April 2019 after first releasing on PC, and it has held a 4.6 average across more than 16,000 ratings, with over 100,000 installs. Those numbers suggest a game that found its audience and kept it, which is notable for something this uncompromising.

How the card loop actually works

The core of the game is combination. You take the cards in front of you and pair them to see what happens, whether that means crafting an object, contacting something beyond the veil or drawing a follower further in. You tell your own story rather than follow a scripted one, and the outcomes branch accordingly.

That structure is what makes the missing tutorial feel less like an oversight and more like the point. There is no hand-holding, so early runs are experiments. You will make choices that end badly, and the game treats those endings as information rather than failure.

The setting carries a lot of the weight. Dreams can be searched for rituals, grimoires can be translated for their lore, and the realm of the Hours sits somewhere beyond ordinary reach. It is a Lovecraftian frame moved into a different era, which gives the horror a different texture than the usual New England version.

Because cards are the interface for everything, the pace is deliberate. This is a game of reading, deciding and living with the result, not one of reflexes or quick sessions.

Death, legacy and the long game

Cultist Simulator is a roguelike built around a blunt rhythm: experiment, expire, transcend death. The legacy system is what carries you forward. What you learn in one life shapes the next, so a run that ends in ruin still moves you toward understanding the systems underneath.

The developer says that with time you will gain the skill to master the game. That is the arc the design is built around: initial confusion, gradual comprehension, then a kind of mastery that comes from having failed in many specific ways.

There are multiple endings, and the paths to them differ enough that the story is not a single track you replay identically. The narrative is the progression system as much as any stat or unlock.

The game was updated in February 2026 with bug fixes, including a correction to the Physician legacy, where feeding Reason now yields the intended Passion or Talk verb, and some font fixes for Russian. For a game released in 2019, that kind of maintenance is a good sign for anyone worried about buying something abandoned.

Price, ads and the DLC question

The game costs $6.99 up front. There are no ads, and in-app purchases are present. Four DLCs expand the experience: The Dancer, The Priest, The Ghoul and The Exile, each adding new legacies, ascensions and mechanics.

The Dancer is framed around joining the Bacchanal, The Priest around a knock that opens something, The Ghoul around a taste of the graveyard's fruit, and The Exile around those who will not yield. These are optional expansions to the base game.

Because there are no ads, the experience is uninterrupted, which matters for a game that asks you to hold a lot of information in your head at once.

Who will get the most from it

This is a game for readers. The storytelling offers a novel's worth of choices, and the appeal is in parsing text, weighing options and living with consequences. If you enjoy that kind of density, the card system gives it a tactile shape rather than presenting it as a wall of prose.

It is also for players who like occult fiction with a specific flavor. The 1920s setting, the hidden gods, the secret histories and the realm of the Hours give it a distinct identity. The developer calls it award-winning and notes its PC origins, and the mobile version carries that same material.

The difficulty is real and intentional. The lack of a tutorial means the first hours are about building a mental model, and some players will bounce off that. Others will find the process of decoding the game to be the most satisfying part of it.

The Teen rating and the subject matter line up: this is dark, but it is dark in a literary way rather than a graphic one. It deals in appetite, ambition and abomination as themes rather than as spectacle.

An occult puzzle worth the patience

Cultist Simulator is a confident, unusual game that trusts you to meet it halfway. The combination-based card system, the legacy structure and the sheer volume of branching narrative give it a depth that few mobile card games attempt, and the 4.6 average from a large body of ratings suggests that approach lands with the right audience.

The $6.99 price is a fair ask for something this substantial. The DLCs offer more legacies and mechanics for players who finish the base game and want to keep going.

This suits players who enjoy piecing a world together for themselves. If you want a game that rewards careful reading, repeated failure and gradual mastery of a strange system, it is one of the more interesting things you can put on a phone.

What's new in version 3.9

Bug fixes: - Feeding “Reason” in the Physician legacy now gives “Passion” or “Talk” verb, as intended - Fixing some font issues in Russian