Worship Early Access Preview - They Love Me! They Really Love Me!

I decided to pick up Worship after Six One Indie’s very own Mike told me that it reminded him a lot of Pikmin. And I absolutely LOVE Pikmin. I’ve played the first Pikmin on my GameCube probably thirty times. The point is, when someone mentions Pikmin, I’m there. And Worship, from Chasing Rats Games is a really great comparison. 

In Worship, you play as a cultist determined to take over the world, with the help of a powerful god, of course. Draw with your blood to perform blood rites and recruit new cult members, then use them to defeat enemies, collect items, and solve puzzles. These mindless pawns are willing to do whatever you command, be it sacrificing them or throwing them into danger. 

I started the game by playing through the tutorial which is a thorough introduction to the main mechanics and how things work. The more I played the more the game reminded me of a mix between Pikmin and Cult of the Lamb. You’ll start out with just a few followers and venture into the world to gather offerings for your god. Along the way you’ll find more followers you can recruit and you’ll use your followers to defeat any enemies you encounter. Once you’ve collected four offerings, after solving a variety of simplistic puzzles, you’ll move on to the main game. 

Just like in the tutorial, in the first level of the main game you’ll use your followers to explore the game map and find offerings to give to your god. Most actions you take you’ll need to draw symbols using your own blood on the ground. To recruit followers for example, you have to draw a circle around them. To offer the bodies of your enemies up for rewards, you must draw an upside down triangle inside of a circle. Honestly, the biggest challenge of the game for me so far is drawing circles and not having the game mistake them for squares. (I guess drawing shapes isn’t my strong suit!) And you must be careful how much blood you use because your blood is also your health and as you run low you’ll have to replenish at various places around the map.

As you explore the map, you’ll come across a variety of enemies including bosses who are much more difficult to defeat. They’ll have a longer health bar and will require a bit more strategy. You’ll also uncover puzzles that will involve a bit of cleverness to solve. Most puzzles are pretty simplistic, but there were a few that took me a little while to figure out. 

Overall, Worship is a really entertaining game so far and, while I played it in single player, multiplayer is also available in Early Access if you want to bring a friend along to help build your cult. As stated on the game’s Steam Page, Early Access will last about six months or more, features two exploration phases, two bosses and many different encounters. There is 1 additional god to unlock and 40+ unlockable upgrades. So you’ll have plenty of content to enjoy if you jump in before the launch of the full version.

Worship launches into Early Access today. Be sure to follow the game on Steam and head over to the official Discord to join the community and help contribute to the final version of the game.

Note: I played Worship on my Steam Deck and it worked beautifully. The only note I have about it is that once I was in the main game the control prompts showed keyboard controls and I couldn’t figure out how to switch them back, but there is a controls menu available for reference at any time.