Now that the sex update is real, Cult of the Lamb turns to Pokemon and The Sims for inspiration

Several anthropomorphic characters from Cult of the Lamb dance around a fire in the buff. — (Image credit: Massive Monster / Devolver Digital)

In what is either a very blatant marketing strategy or a case of Icarus soaring too close to the sun, the Cult of the Lamb developers at Massive Monster put out a tweet earlier this week saying "we will add sex to the game if we hit 300k followers by the end of the year."

As you can tell, it took less than a week to make the sex update a reality. At the time of writing, the Cult of the Lamb Twitter account has 455,000 followers. Sex quite literally sells. While Massive Monster is already on record as saying that the age rating wouldn't change in a Steam thread, the atmosphere's still about as feral as you'd expect. Here's an excerpt. It's going very well.

A series of comments from a thread with insights such as: "Sex update real" and "Sex update sex update sex update". — (Image credit: Steam Forums)

In a recent interview with Polygon, Massive Monster have clarified as to what games they're looked to to help them bring sex to the cute cult simulator: "We used games like Pokemon and The Sims when it comes to references, but put our own cult-ish spin on things. The age rating will not change."

One would assume this means that any cultish copulation would happen off-screen. Pokemon breeding is a thing, but you typically do it at a distance via menu. Meanwhile the Sims is famous for the very enthusiastic noises its people make while bumping uglies, such as "woohoo" and "plarkam". While some fans might be disappointed by this turn of events, I'm about to be a real party pooper. It's only for a paragraph, I swear.

I'm usually all for a bit of smut, but this is for the best even if it is the expected outcome. Cult of the Lamb is a game about starting and growing a cult, and while the game mostly dances around said subject matter with its cute art style, I should point out that cults do happen in real life and they're horrific. Adding sex to a game where you run one requires a Sims-level disconnect to avoid becoming an absolute nightmare. Alright, now that I've killed the vibe, let's go back to talking about the funny sex update.

One revelation from the interview is that the tweet may not have had much to do with the sex update itself: "We have been working on Sins of the Flesh since we finished the last update earlier this year," gasp. In fairness it's not as if Sins of the Flesh will just be adding sex—it'll be adding new features, stories, and gameplay stuff. It's entirely possible that the "follower fornication" as the team politely puts it is a new addition to the pipeline.

"It was something we workshopped a long time ago and didn’t go with, but now our programmers are working on the update as we speak. Our team is very talented and we have no doubt that it will be ready for release. We always finish on time." There it is: Cult of the Lamb sex real. You'll be able to play the update "very early next year (like, very early!)" according to the team's news update.

Harvey's history with games started when he first begged his parents for a World of Warcraft subscription aged 12, though he's since been cursed with Final Fantasy 14-brain and a huge crush on G'raha Tia. He made his start as a freelancer, writing for websites like Techradar, The Escapist, Dicebreaker, The Gamer, Into the Spine—and of course, PC Gamer. He'll sink his teeth into anything that looks interesting, though he has a soft spot for RPGs, soulslikes, roguelikes, deckbuilders, MMOs, and weird indie titles. He also plays a shelf load of TTRPGs in his offline time. Don't ask him what his favourite system is, he has too many.