Cult Wars
Game overview
Welcome to the first alpha release of Cult Wars — a (hopefully!) challenging mix of strategy and action, inspired by classics like Populous and other RTS games.
Lead your cult to spiritual dominance in this god-like pixel-art game!
In Cult Wars, you are a divine force guiding a growing population of red-robed believers. Shape the land, expand your influence, and help your followers thrive — not through direct control, but through divine manipulation and clever use of supernatural powers.
Here is The Believer's Life Cycle:
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- Find a flat place to build an house (2 people per house)
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- Gather wood for construction
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- Build the house with the collected wood
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- Search for food (only fruits!)
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- Return home for lunch (if it's night: reproduction time!)
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- Then, prayer time — which grants you divine power
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- Loop back to step 4 (or 2 if their house is damaged!)
Your Divine Powers
Raise or lower terrain (only on neutral or red areas)
You need to shape the landscape to make your believers comfortable to move, build houses and seek for wood and food.
You also need to shape the terrain to facilitate the attack of the blue village (by Kamikaze pigs, Zealots or Clerics).
You can only shape neutral terrain or terrain under your influence (marked by a cross or a house). Terrain under blue influence cannot be shaped.
Place crosses (each supports up to 10 believers)
Crosses allow you to support more believers. They also allow you to see the ground during the night, expanding your visibility.
Unleash small or massive earthquakes on the blue cult
You can target a specific area to unleash an earthquake. This earthquake can damage houses and hurt people.
Summon kamikaze pigs to attack the enemy
Kamikaze pigs are a terrible weapon. They are created in batches of ten from your village. The pigs will then head to the blue village (day or night) and explode on contact.
Summon kamikaze bees for extra chaos
Kamikaze bees will fly to the blue village (day or night) and will hurt blue people. They can cross any river or body of water. Their life is short.
Summon an High Cleric to attack the blue village, protect your houses and resurrect dead believers.
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By choosing this power, the next believer who prays will be upgraded into a cleric.
This cleric will attack the blue village during the day and protect your village during the night.
The cleric can heal itself at night. The cleric can launch electric bolts to hurt or resurrect (and convert) blue believers.
Summon a strong Holly zealot to attack the blue village and protect your houses.
By choosing this power, the next believer who prays will be upgraded into a zealot.
This zealot will attack the blue village during the day and protect your village during the night.
The zealot can heal itself at night. The zealot is stronger than the cleric and can launch energy blasts at blue believers.
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👉 20 handcrafted worlds are currently available (with 3 distinct color themes)
Creating this game has been a real pleasure, Pico-8 is awesome!
I hope you'll enjoy playing it,
feel free to reach out with any feedback to [email protected].
Controls
ARROWS: Move around the world
👉 During the day: the entire world is visible
👉 At night: visibility is limited to your village
ENTER/START: Choose a divine power
HUD elements
Version History
1.00 - 2025/08/13 - Released.
1.02 - 2025/08/17 - Added "back to game" menu-item.
Minified using the Shrinko8 Minifier:
https://github.com/thisismypassport/shrinko8
It's always nice to see an RTS game for Pico-8. Especially, a god simulator - I don't think I've remember another one.
One suggestion that I have is to add an option to divine power menu, so that a player could leave it without purchasing anything, cause right now both fire buttons + enter activate selected powers and the last item quits the game completely.
Have a star and a heart.
I've had tons of fun playing Cult Wars for the next week's Pico-8 Adventures episode :3
Thanks for your kind feedback!
Your suggestion is well noted, I will add a new menu-item asap (even if I'm really tokens short... Cult wars/Picolous will evolve thanks to this kind of feedback!)
In the meantime, you can choose the first menu-item (raise or lower land) or you can even choose a menu-item that is "too expensive", you will then go back to the game screen.
Thanks again for your feedback.
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