Cult of the Lamb: Woolhaven review: Fiendishly fantastic

Cult of the Lamb manages to be both dark and joyful all at once, offering up a tasty blend of base-building, dungeon-crawling, and cult management. Massive Monster’s latest addition to the cult classic is the Woolhaven DLC, and it’s teeming with Rot and snow. 

If you’ve been wondering whether to get the Woolhaven DLC for Cult of the Lamb, you’ll find The Escapist’s full, spoiler-free review below, looking at everything from the mesmerizing aesthetics to the expansive new content. 

The Escapist recaps

• In Cult of the Lamb: Woolhaven, Yngya, the forgotten lamb deity, tasks you with exploring a once-sacred mountain and bringing lost lamb souls home, battling against a slew of enemies and ever-encroaching Rot. 
• The mountain in Woolhaven is treacherous, overflowing with enemies who want to fight against your doctrine. Without spoiling it, there are some stellar boss fights that’ll go down nicely with existing fans of the game. 
• The story is dark and mysterious, and it feels like a natural expansion to the existing Cult of the Lamb lore, offering up more details about lambkind. 
• Woolhaven adds an extra layer of complexity and challenge to the base-building element of Cult of the Lamb, forcing you to battle against the biting cold to keep your flock safe. Famine and frostbite are the two main killers here. 
• There are heaps of new items and buildings, along with the ranching system, meaning there’s plenty of room for experimentation and new base designs. 

Clearly crafted with care

Woolhaven is a post-game DLC addition to the world of Cult of the Lamb, centering around Yngya, the once-forgotten deity of lambkind. This new addition to the game is cold and snow-drenched, and it has a particularly magical energy.

You’ll need to work your way through a fiendish mountain at Yngya’s behest, tackling enemies while trying to bring lost lamb souls back to their spiritual home. There are plenty of new souls to save in the mountain, along with plenty of treacherous foes who think of you as nothing more than a false prophet.

There’s a significant story to work through in Woolhaven. Restoring Yngya’s flock requires tracking down multiple crucial characters and helping to rebuild the ravaged town base, all while tangling with bosses across the mountain. 

The combat encounters dotted throughout Woolhaven’s two dungeons were exciting and visually intriguing. While some enemies did feel a little familiar as a seasoned Cult of the Lamb geek, the battles were largely impactful, particularly with the boss battles. 

It’s not just story content and bosses in Woolhaven, either. It was a pleasant surprise to see the amount of extra content on offer in the base-building segment of Cult of the Lamb, with the addition of winter and the detailed ranching system.

To keep your own flock safe, you’ll need to protect them against the bitterly cold winter, keeping the furnace lit to make sure no one freezes, and using the new buildings to your advantage. It’s a new challenge to keep an eye on, and it helps to make the DLC feel even more dangerous.

Woolhaven has a dedicated tab in the building library, with plenty of new buildings and tools to improve your cult and keep things running smoothly while you’re out battling the non-believers. There are also plenty of new decorations and trinkets to add to the cult grounds as well, tying into Woolhaven’s aesthetic vision nicely. 

Rot and snow

One of the best things about Woolhaven is how vast it feels to play through. If you’re a fan of roguelike games, chances are that you’re used to DLC tacking on an extra hour or two to a game, potentially with a new storyline or boss fight.

This is not the case for Woolhaven; it feels comprehensive and detailed, and it’s clearly been made with love. 

There’s nothing wrong with shorter DLC, necessarily, but it’s always a joy to see intricate additions to games that feel like a new chapter in the wider story. Existing fans of Cult of the Lamb who want something new will find plenty of genuine challenges buried under the snow.

Woolhaven is a visual treat, too. There’s a consistently dark yet dreamy aesthetic that runs through the DLC, with a wonderful contrast between the stark blues of the mountain and the nauseating oranges of the Rot. 

In terms of performance, Woolhaven ran well and didn’t throw up any graphical issues or quirks. This review was completed on a PC, and it performed nicely overall, although we’d definitely recommend using a controller as a PC player. It feels smoother and more intuitive than using a keyboard for the game. 

Cult of the Lamb: Woolhaven is a brilliant expansion on an already solid game. The amount of new content it adds is impressive, providing plenty for both players who enjoy combat and those who prefer the base-building elements of the game. If you enjoyed the original game, it’s well worth your time. Join us on the mountain. 

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