Do you always have a good time with your fellow players? Don’t you think it’s about time for a creepy test of friendship, where everyone has to show their true nature? In Spooktober, it’s time for murder in a university, with fishmen, tentacles, blood, death and destruction. Find out which of your friends is secretly a worshipper of Cthulhu in Among Cultists – a horror mix of Werewolves and Among Us. Clean out your altar and sharpen the knives!
Background
In 2018, the video game Among Us was released and a few years later became immensely popular. Particularly in 2020 – for reasons that cannot be specified – cough! – everyone was playing Among Us. Literally everyone. In this video game with crazy dolls, players must work together to achieve a number of goals. This is easier than it seems, as 1 or more players are traitors. Very sus!
The traitor tries to kill the other players and sabotage their goals. Players also win if they manage to kill traitor(s). Among Us is somewhat reminiscent of the films The Thing and Alien, some unsuspecting sci-fi stereotypes are faced with evil hiding. In the case of The Thing, the evil even takes the form of the cast.
Avid board game players may already be quite familiar with the concept of hidden roles in an otherwise (semi-)cooperative game. Consider, for example, Saboteur in which gnomes seek nuggets of gold in a mine while certain players try to thwart them. Think also of Werewolves (of Wakkerdam) where a number of players secretly assume the role of bloodthirsty werewolves and target unwitting civilians. The movie The Thing also appeared in board game form, where players reenacted the movie and could not trust their opponents. Paranoia strikes in these types of games, and Among Us managed to do the same in a simple, simply designed and extremely short video game.
Among Cultists is largely inspired by the creators’ love of the game Among Us, and you can see that in the title, among other things. Like Among Us, there are traitors (Cultists) in the midst of the “good” players (Investigators). The theme of Among Cultists, however, takes inspiration from Lovecraftian horror. There is a fishman monster beast, players take on the role of investigators into the occult, the bad guys are part of a cult, and the scene includes an educational institution where the teaching materials are full of Cthulhu deeming symbols.
Setup & gameplay
Setting up Among Cultists is quite a daunting task that varies quite a bit depending on how many people are seated at the table. Different roles have to be defined and different piles of cards have to be prepared for the two camps. The board must also be laid out correctly and all the tokens must be given a place. Among Cultists, by the way, has two larger expansions that both have a unique game board and additional steps for game setup.
The correct scrolls are placed with the correct decks of cards and each deck is also given a road map to determine where players can perform actions in which round on the game board. The decks and roles are placed in envelopes, shuffled and randomly distributed to players. It is important that players know the rules well and do not ask questions about their roles to prevent the secret roles from being so secret already at the beginning of the game. Players are allowed to look at their roles and, as in the game Werewolves, players close their eyes and some roles are revealed to certain players. There are multiple roles with their own rules. In any case, cultists know who their friends are and most other players remain in the dark.
Investigators win if they gain enough victory points or if they defeat and/or unmask cultists. Cultists win if they kill enough investigators or if they manage to point out the seer after unmasking if the seer plays along. Investigators can gain victory points in the basic game by collecting books in the various rooms.
Players take turns during the game to move around the game board (generally they can take 3 steps and thus move to rooms and halls), then a random event takes place (for this a token is placed from the draw bag) and then each player takes turns to take an action.
When players encounter each other, there is an encounter and these players must give each other pulse cards. These cards indicate whether a player is dead or alive. In this way, players can “kill” each other, but whether someone is dead must first be confirmed.
There are several actions. With one action, players can determine whether another player is alive or dead by looking at their cards. If a player is dead, they continue playing as a ghost and have a different set of abilities as a result. The fill room action also allows players to add cards to the various rooms. These cards note “success, failure or sabotage. With the check room action, players can earn points if they successfully view the room, for this purpose one of the cards (placed during the fill room action) in a room is drawn and viewed. Is it a success, a failure or was it even sabotaged? In addition to this, there are other actions that can help or hinder players….
The actions allow players to potentially eliminate each other or view information about each other’s roles or vitality. In this way, players try to collect points or sabotage nicely in the hope of winning their team.
Verdict
Among Cultists was largely inspired by Among Us and also resembles – because of this mechanism of hidden roles and missions that players must complete – similar games, such as those I mentioned in the Background, but also games like Shadows of Camelot and Avalon of The Resistance, among others.
Among Cultists, however, is a very comprehensive hidden role-playing and social deduction game. Contrary to its inspiration, it is not a short video game for in between, but a full-length program full of paranoia. Because of the different roles, events, decks of cards and random cards in the rooms, there is some degree of unpredictability, but that does ensure that your deduction may not always be flawless, which can make for unexpected twists and turns. Despite being bulky and the explanations for the first game may take longer, it is not an overly complex game and will certainly make for an evening of memories.
