Congratulations on the game. It's great!

Cult of the Lamb is one of those games I call a "game developer's game". There's so much in there that other developers would recognise as cool but players may not notice. Can you tell us about the journey and the team that made it?

Thanks, I completely agree it's a game developer's game!

This game is the culmination of a decade of making games and combining everything that we learned along the way. It's like the love child of a roguelike and a colony sim, but way less messy than that sounds.

We had this crazy idea that combining the two could create something bigger than the sum of its parts, and it definitely took all our game dev knowledge to make it work. It was like a game development buffet, we took everything we learned over the past decade and threw it in there.

We wanted to create emergent narratives where the game creates stories for you out of the mechanics and systems interacting together in unexpected ways. It was a colossal task to make everything fit together into one cohesive package. But now that you can see all the different systems at play, we can finally sleep at night!

When we first pitched the game, there were only three of us. We were so small we could fit in a cultist's closet. But as we progressed, we realized we needed more hands on deck. So we brought in a few more people and now there are eleven people who make up Massive Monster.

We couldn't have reached such a big audience if it wasn't for our amazing publisher Devolver Digital. They're like the Tony Stark of game marketing, giving us instant credibility.

The game really came together like a painting, starting with the big colors and adding details until we got down to the nitty-gritty.

We had a clear vision and design pillars, so if an idea didn't achieve the vision, we'd scrap it faster than a cultist shedding their mortal coil. And because we're such a tiny team with a great culture, we were able to iterate constantly without anyone getting too attached to an idea.

It was like an ongoing game development jam session. And it all clicked into place just three months before release, which is cutting it a bit close, but hey, we made it work!

Cult of the Lamb is hilariously dark. How did you know where the line was for "too dark"?

The great thing about the cute art style is that we can get away with anything - nothing is too dark! The adorableness lulls you into a false sense of security, and before you know it you are sacrificing your spouse and feeding cannibal meat to your unwitting loyal followers!

But in all seriousness, we did avoid blood deliberately as we felt it wasn't needed and would only serve to reduce the game's appeal, and had we had a more serious art style people might realise just how dark this game is!

The polish in Cult of the Lamb is exceptional, so many minor details have had time and attention on them. One example that springs to mind is the little animations on the captives in the background at Helob the spider merchant's shop. What is important to prioritise when getting a game polished?

This goes back to being a game developer's game. We knew we had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity having a game picked up by Devolver and the built in audience we knew that would give us.

Having hustled for over a decade making games we knew it was time to pull out all the stops! We poured our hearts and souls in to every little corner of this game, and I think people can pick up on that, even if you don't see it explicitly, it's something that you can 'feel' in a game.

As far as hitting deadlines - we have something called 'Team Sneaky' in which we sneakily add little details in to the game without anyone knowing or signing off on it. It's the reason we were able to sprinkle so much magic sauce in to the game despite the tight deadlines!

You've just this week released Relics of the Old Faith, the first downloadable content (DLC) pack for Cult of the Lamb. Looking back on the game, what areas were you hoping to address with Relics of the Old Faith?

It was amazing to be able to create a free DLC for the game, it meant we had the opportunity to address the criticisms the game had at launch - primarily that combat wasn't as deep as people wanted, so we have added a whole bunch of features including the all new 'Relics' to address that.

One of the difficulties of creating a game like Cult of the Lamb is that it's essentially two games in one, which means that each half of your game is being compared to the gold standard of each of those genres - despite the fact that they only do one thing and ours is only one half of a wider game!

But what's so great now is that we are able to continue to develop each side of the game and add the depth that people are looking for. I'm super grateful that we can do this and I can't wait for people to experience all the things we have planned for our little Lamb's future!

What's next for Massive Monster?

Definitely a lot more Cult of the Lamb! We feel like we are only scratching the surface with where we want to take this game.

We are excited to continue to deepen the experience that people have been enjoying, its our way of saying thank you to all our loyal cultists out there!

Thanks for your time!