The terse poetry of Alexis Kennedy’s Cultist Simulator card game

Most of Alexis Kennedy’s games gaze into the crystal ball of madness, and Cultist Simulator is no different. He’s best known as the founder of the indie studio Failbetter Games, where he created and wrote text-heavy titles like Fallen London and Sunless Sea. A little over a year ago, he left Failbetter to form Weather Factory, and Cultist Simulator is this studio’s first game. It’s raising funds on Kickstarter now and met its goal in a little over 12 hours. It should debut in May 2018, and it will be available on PC, Mac, and Linux.

“I like making games where the player makes the kind of choices that game characters usually don’t get to make,” said Kennedy in an email. “There are plenty of horror games, but there aren’t many games where you get to establish the backstory. You’re always picking up after the rash occultist who summoned the thing. I thought: what if you were actually that occultist?”