Worship Turns Pikmin Into A Roguelike Cult, and I Love It

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One of the last games I saw at Gamescom was also one of the most unique, both in terms of aesthetics and general gameplay. Worship is a multiplayer roguelike game in which you build your own cult by performing rituals, converting followers to your cause, fighting off enemies, and performing rituals. With the goal of bringing forth the apocalypse, Worship stands out from a lot of other games, and it is one of the few I am very much looking forward to.

A couple of aspects stuck out to me, but the biggest one that always pops into my mind is the obvious Pikmin inspiration. How you interact and use your followers throughout all gameplay is very Pikmin-esque, and I love it. When fighting people or completing different puzzles, you will use your followers similarly to how you would use your Pikmin. Combat will be especially interesting since they can distract the enemy while you draw rituals on the ground to kill them or even throw your followers directly at them.

I also really like the ritual mechanic. As you play, you can create blood rituals to appease your god, and the more you play, the more types of rituals you will unlock. These do need blood, and you can either use yours (which will drain your health) or murder your followers to use their blood. If you use your blood, you can regain your health by absorbing blood from the environment.

There are two main parts I love about rituals: the variety of rituals and how you make them. Multiple rituals can be unlocked and used for different reasons. You can convert followers, create rituals to harm individuals, and even make different rituals to sacrifice the bodies of your killed enemies to your god. Sacrificing enough bodies gets you these crystals that you can use back at your home base to upgrade your followers, cultists, and get new rituals. The other part I like is that you must draw the ritual out by running in a specific pattern. It feels more enjoyable to draw it yourself, and I find it enjoyable.

You will also find idols while you are out adventuring, which can be given to you by your god. Give enough of them, and you will get to test your faith and prove yourself even more to your god. These are big events where you will try to summon your deity to wreak havoc on the real world, and it will require a lot of followers to throw at them and try to survive.

And all of this can be done in full co-op! So going around and controlling your followers together to summon your god is just so awesome. I can see myself and some of our writers here just having a dandy ol' time working together to try summoning a horrifying beast and building up our cult power with our Pikmin-like followers. I would say this is one of the biggest features of Worship that I think makes it really stand apart as most roguelikes like this are not co-op (or at least I haven't seen it).

It also looks like the perfect game for the Steam Deck. The minimal 2D art style should be very friendly for the limited power the device has, while still looking very stylized thanks to the limited color palette. It will have controller support, which is also noted on their store page, and all of this together makes me very excited for playing this one on the go. I think my wife is going to love both of us sitting in bed and forming our cult on our Steam Decks, and I do appreciate that the game will have split-screen/local co-op as well!

Seeing Worship was a treat I didn't expect, and now I just can't wait for the release. There is a demo coming out in 3 days (November 4th), which I will 100% be taking advantage of to show my wife the game. I could definitely see this being one of my favorite roguelikes, and I am looking forward to playing more soon.

Worship can be wishlisted right now on Steam.

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