Rating Curve

Dead God Cult is, in my opinion, the pinnacle of Geometry Dash being used as a game engine. It's a fully original deck-builder roguelike complete with multiple game modes and an original soundtrack composed by the creator. Despite being built in the GD editor, the entire thing is extremely polished with no noticeable bugs or cut corners. The art and effects are gorgeous, and they all come together to form a super relaxed but engaging visual style. As far as I can tell, the core gameplay loop is fully original, though it clearly takes inspiration from other deck-builders such as Balatro and Inscryption.

I won't describe all the mechanics of Dead God Cult in this review, but essentially it revolves around strategically playing your cards in order to reach each round's score threshold. Each card has a wildly different effect, so you need to build your deck wisely and balance scoring points with earning 'faith' to play even more cards. All the cards come with gorgeous visuals, and often synergize with many of the other ones in the game. Cards are also very fairly balanced, with stronger effects costing more to play or requiring specific conditions to be met (e.g. play this card last).

After each round, you add a new card to your deck and earn some 'belief' that can be spent on permanent upgrades (such as staring rounds with more cards or faith). Individual cards can also be upgraded multiple times, and the system for it is masterfully done. Pretty much every card upgrades and scales in a different way, and a lot of the game's strategy centers around knowing which ones you should focus on. I love the choice to only let you choose between 3 of your cards, as it prevents going 'all in' on one card while still making you feel very in control. Additionally, the ability to spent belief on destroying cards from your deck is a fantastic addition to the game, as it allows for riskier 'thin-to-win' strategies which are common across the genre.

In my opinion, the game gets most interesting once you reach the later rounds. I'm still a bit mixed on if the balancing is fair or not, as even with seemingly great decks, I've lost a lot of runs to being dealt bad hands. However, that's pretty normal across deck-builder games and it encourages you to reconsider how you plan your deck in the next run. I will say that runs of this game have a bit less variety compared to something like Balatro or Slay the Spire, but you're still presented with many opportunities to try different play styles. If you feel ilke you have a powerful deck, you can choose to play a "hard" round with double the score requirement in order to earn better rewards. This is perhaps my favorite design decision in the entire game - it's an incredibly tempting risk/reward system that requires full confidence in the deck you've constructed.

My biggest complaint with Dead God Cult is simply the fact that it's not a standalone game. The GD editor allows you to make pretty much anything you could imagine, but it comes at the cost of a very limited control scheme. I had no trouble getting used to them, but I still would have preferred to play a game like this with a mouse. I sincerely hope that Dead God Cult gets expanded into a full game outside of GD, since it's a genuinely fantastic work that I keep coming back to. Some of the best indie games of all time have started as simple prototypes (Celeste, Baba is You, Inscryption, etc), and I truly hope that this level marks the start of another massive indie success story. Not only was Soverney able to design a phenomenal game in an unconventional engine, but they also clearly demonstrated that they can make amazing visuals and music for it as well. The Mythic rating is more than deserved and I continue to be so happy that Geometry Dash has given people a platform to build the games they're always wanted to make.