Cult of the Lamb's latest free update has gone through a bit of a journey. After the community decided its title, Sins of the Flesh, meant it was going to be the "sex update", developer Massive Monster had to put the rumour to rest. But then the studio said they'd make their players' deviant dreams come true after all if they got to 300,000 followers on Twitter, and lo and behold, it happened.
Thing is, how erotic can a game about cute little animals forming a death cult actually get? As PC Gamer's resident prude, I was sent in to find out—and as it turns out, Sins of the Flesh isn't remotely steamy, but it does include one very sexy new weapon.
If you've not been following Cult of the Lamb's journey since its launch in 2022, you might be surprised at just how much content has been added in that time. From new buildings to follower types to an endgame campaign that stacks hours and hours more adventuring onto the experience, jumping back in after a while away feels a bit like going back to an MMO and discovering they've added ten new currencies.
Sins of the Flesh is no slouch compared to previous patches, throwing in tons of fun extras alongside its main draw: Sin. This new resource is gathered by leading your followers into depravity, and spent to upgrade the visuals of your temple and, yes, to get your followers to woohoo with each other.
The weird thing is, none of it actually is particularly sinful. Said depravity consists of activities like dancing to bongo drums and having a drink at a bar, which in a game where I regularly perform blood sacrifices and recycle dead followers into fertiliser feels fairly wholesome by comparison. The much anticipated mating amounts to nothing more than telling two of your followers to go into a special tent, and watching them immediately walk out again holding an egg, that with time and care can hatch into a new follower.
I'm not sure what I or Cult of the Lamb's perverse fanbase were really expecting here, but it does feel a little… sterile. It's a very mechanical process—followers only mate when you tell them to, you have to pay a rare resource to make it happen, and you're even given a percentage chance of their coupling being successful. As far as I can tell, followers don't even have genders, allowing you to make any pairing you like and still get an egg, which only makes it feel more like this system was added under duress rather than out of a desire to expand the inner lives of your population.
But honestly, Cult of the Lamb has always been more than the sum of its parts, and all the new layers serve to add yet more things to do and build and save up for in an experience that's only enhanced by the extra variety. Using the accumulation of Sin and other new resources as my excuse, I'm immediately sucked back into Cult of the Lamb's brilliantly compelling loop—getting everything in order in my base, so I can go and do a dungeon run, so I can get the stuff I need to do more messing about in my base, so I'll be even better equipped for the next dungeon run. Such a charming formula, and it's so easy to jump back into to enjoy all the newly added features.
Having largely dipped out the first time after getting the base game ending, I'm currently in the cleverly designed post-game, where I have to run old dungeons again but with new twists and rewards, and importantly a cranked up difficulty. Taking a few runs at the new and improved bosses of the Darkwood gives me a chance to try what turns out to be Sins of the Flesh's one truly sexy addition: the blunderbuss.
This satisfying new weapon feels designed to reaffirm my belief that every game is made better with a good shotgun. Its booming, short-range blasts are a perfect fit for Cult of the Lamb's loose but likable combat, giving you a ranged alternative to the normal suite of melee weapons, but still rewarding you for getting up close and risky with its hideous enemies. If the spray of the blunderbusses' demonically-infused bullets is the only climactic release to be found in Sins of the Flesh, it's satisfying enough that I think even the most deviant of players won't be disappointed.
The Sins of the Flesh update is out now, alongside a DLC pack of fun cosmetics if you want to throw the devs a bone (ahem) for capitulating to your wanton demands. There's also a generous 40% off sale on the base game and its other cosmetics packs running right now—making it the perfect time to jump in if all this talk of intercourse and buckshot has got you hot under the collar.
