In Honey, I Joined a Cult, you play a Prison Architect-esque management-tycoon game where you're in charge of running a cult, managing its gradual expansion while trying to keep under the radar of both the general public and law enforcement. It largely plays the same as Prison Architect, but focuses more mood management; in that sense it plays more akin to Rimworld.

I do not want to dissuade people or the devs too much as I enjoyed the game for what it is, but as it stands at the moment, there is a solid base for gameplay however there are some glaring concerns that affect my otherwise glowing review of the game.

The first is that it seems a bit too sandboxy, in the sense that after you play for a bit, it ends up feeling samey. It's open-endedness with being able to "create your own cult" does not lend to its uniqueness from playthrough to playthrough. Perhaps having a campaign of some sort with unique scenarios will help in improving this aspect, as playing the standard sandbox mode ends up feeling repetitive with, to be fair, some changes depending on which "path" you take for divine inspirations (which could be thought of as overarching themes for your cult). Additionally, having more events or more dynamic pawns akin to Rimworld would make it more unique per playthrough, but perhaps that may be asking too much at the moment given the current state. Hopefully this will be improved in the future.

The second is that the AI seems... absentminded? For example, the AI will wander around while working doing nothing as there is work to be done, then decide "Oh, this needs to be fixed" then walk over to it, and repeat. It was beginning to get annoying to see two of my maintenance Watchers idle around while there were 6-8 broken items that needed to be fixed, sometimes requiring manual intervention on my end to get them to fix something. I hope that this will be improved in future patches.

My final complaint is how hygiene works. My understanding is that washing a pawn's hands after using the toilet only grants a chance at cleaning the pawn. Which severely increases the likelihood of a Watcher getting injured from poor hygiene, especially in early game. It's really frustrating to see injuries created from eating without washing hands, akin to Rimworld's "ate without table" debuff. This should certainly be switched to a bar like Mood or Health, with the differing tiers of sinks offering faster filling of the hygiene, a higher maximum of the hygiene bar, or something similar. At least in this way, it puts some control back into the player's hands about how they should handle hygiene, rather than making it pure RNG about whether or not someone will get an illness from poor hygiene.

Now, the final verdict. Is it worth ~20 USD/23 CAD off-sale? At this point, I would say yes. There's enough content to last a dedicated player about 12-15 hours per playthrough. Despite my grievances about the game, I did enjoy it for what it was and I am excited to see what they'll be able to do in the future, with my main hope being the implementation of a campaign mode. Unfortunately, I have not played Rimworld Ideology yet so I do not have a frame of reference to compare the two.

In Honey, I Joined a Cult, you play a Prison Architect-esque management-tycoon game where you're in charge of running a cult, managing its gradual expansion while trying to keep under the radar of both the general public and law enforcement. It largely plays the same as Prison Architect, but focuses more mood management; in that sense it plays more akin to Rimworld. I do not want to dissuade people or the devs too much as I enjoyed the game for what it is, but as it stands at the moment, there is a solid base for gameplay however there are some glaring concerns that affect my otherwise glowing review of the game. The first is that it seems a bit [i]too[/i] sandboxy, in the sense that after you play for a bit, it ends up feeling samey. It's open-endedness with being able to "create your own cult" does not lend to its uniqueness from playthrough to playthrough. Perhaps having a campaign of some sort with unique scenarios will help in improving this aspect, as playing the standard sandbox mode ends up feeling repetitive with, to be fair, some changes depending on which "path" you take for divine inspirations (which could be thought of as overarching themes for your cult). Additionally, having more events or more dynamic pawns akin to Rimworld would make it more unique per playthrough, but perhaps that may be asking too much at the moment given the current state. Hopefully this will be improved in the future. The second is that the AI seems... absentminded? For example, the AI will wander around while working doing nothing as there is work to be done, then decide "Oh, this needs to be fixed" then walk over to it, and repeat. It was beginning to get annoying to see two of my maintenance Watchers idle around while there were 6-8 broken items that needed to be fixed, sometimes requiring manual intervention on my end to get them to fix something. I hope that this will be improved in future patches. My final complaint is how hygiene works. My understanding is that washing a pawn's hands after using the toilet only grants a [b]chance[/b] at cleaning the pawn. Which severely increases the likelihood of a Watcher getting injured from poor hygiene, especially in early game. It's really frustrating to see injuries created from eating without washing hands, akin to Rimworld's "ate without table" debuff. This should certainly be switched to a bar like Mood or Health, with the differing tiers of sinks offering faster filling of the hygiene, a higher maximum of the hygiene bar, or something similar. At least in this way, it puts some control back into the player's hands about how they should handle hygiene, rather than making it pure RNG about whether or not someone will get an illness from poor hygiene. Now, the final verdict. Is it worth ~20 USD/23 CAD off-sale? At this point, I would say yes. There's enough content to last a dedicated player about 12-15 hours per playthrough. Despite my grievances about the game, I did enjoy it for what it was and I am excited to see what they'll be able to do in the future, with my main hope being the implementation of a campaign mode. Unfortunately, I have not played Rimworld Ideology yet so I do not have a frame of reference to compare the two.