I’m a huge fan of Cult of the Lamb, and even still, Woolhaven managed to exceed my expectations. Providing two new dungeons, a massive cult expansion, and a gripping story. There’s a lot on offer here, more than most players expected to have. But it’s something that Massive Monster has planned to do for quite some time now.
“When the game came out, originally, there was a load of things we wanted to do, but we were constrained by budget and timelines and stuff,” Massive Monster’s art director, James Pearmain, tells me. “It wasn’t until quite close to launch that the game actually sort of worked, and all the systems clicked together, so we’re scrambling to sort of get that done.
“We spent the last two years after launch adding more depth to the dungeon side, in Relics of the Old Faith, and then in Sins of the Flesh, we added a bunch of depth to the cult. And then with Unholy Alliance, we kind of added the local co-op and stuff to go alongside that. Now we’re really happy with how it is; we packed it full of secrets and content. There’s loads of stuff to do, but we did feel like there was more that we could offer.”
When Cult of the Lamb released back in 2022, Massive Monster had just a small core team working on the roguelike. “It was the first sort of big game we made in Unity,” Pearmain says. “We were a really small team when we started out, and now we’ve kind of grown into a much bigger team. So we wanted to put all those lessons into practice and just make something really chunky.
“The community was still screaming out for more, more, more. They wanted more dungeons, more biomes to fight for and stuff. But what we didn’t want to do was just go, ‘Okay, here’s one new biome and a few new buildings and stuff.’ We wanted to make it a real chunky experience, something a bit like The Witcher 3: Blood and Wine, Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty, and Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree, which you can really sink your teeth into. And it feels like you’re getting a whole new kind of game.”
Going into Woolhaven, I thought the new snowy biome and rot biome would have just a couple of levels to them. I didn’t think each would have several levels, each with new boss fights and therefore cultists to indoctrinate.
Now I’ve got Festor, Nestor, and Mestor sleeping peacefully in my camp alongside new rot cultists like Poyel, Eleleth, and Ophans. Now all I have to do is give all of them skull necklaces to ensure they stick around for as long as possible.
But that’s not all. Woolhaven also introduces an extended cult area, which you can fill with new buildings like your animal ranch, and a new winter mechanic. There’s just so much to keep you busy. “It was just fun to be able to do a bit of a reset and not start from scratch, but rethink a few things, and give the community something they can really get into,” Pearmain says.
“We’ve been working on it for a long time. From the beginning, it was probably about two years of work. We’ve done a number of free updates, but this is definitely the biggest thing we’ve done since launch. So yeah, we were very excited and just interested to see how the community was going to react. And that was really positive. So it was a relief.”
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