Image: Chasing Rats Games

Nintendo's classic Pikmin series always had some dark undertones, with you swooping in from the start to raise and manipulate a swarm of blank-eyed native creatures to do your bidding. Worship, leaving early access today, fully embraces that discomfort by making you the servant of a clearly evil old god, and instead of cute little plant-creatures you're sending to your death, you've got a procession of cheerfully enthusiastic brainwashed cultists, just itching to be next in line to be sacrificed.

For the savvy gamer, this isn't a new concept for a game. Cult of the Lamb was a mega-hit, and similar ideas were explored in the very undersold God's Gift. It is, however, still fun to be the bad guy, especially when your minions are squishy little faceless guys who cackle and laugh as you throw them by the dozens to their inevitable demise.

Worship is a mixture of Pikmin-style minion abuse and roguelite strategy, with a fun glyph-based magic system. As you progress through the game, you learn magic symbols, which, if drawn on the ground in fresh blood (always a good reason to keep a spare minion on hand or three), will allow you to cast the associated spell, from basic stuff like a circle to indoctrinate hapless villagers into your evil ways, to more complex combat summoning spells that you can lure opponents into range of.

The game is also self-evidently very pretty. The world may be mostly monochrome, but every sprite is smoothly animated and full of character. From the enthusiastically wobbly, toddler-like minions (man, that just makes cutting one open even more creepy, huh?) to the bigger monsters and bosses, everything feels like it's come straight from the game's multiple animated trailers and fallen straight into gameplay. Good stuff.

Unlike many recent early access graduations, it seems that Worship has gone all-in on making the final release version a beefy, well-rounded product. There's a whole new set of long-term progression mechanics based upon completing achievement-like goals for extradimensional beings, huge rebalancing done to the basic gameplay, lots of new enemies, a fast-travel system, cult customization, and - of course - the finale of the game's story.

The launch version adds the third major area, and a quest-line where all the factions come together to face down the menace threatening the safety of the world: You. Nice to see the power of friendship being turned into the final challenge to overcome, and fitting for a game about being the monster. None of that Cult of the Lamb moral relativism here!

Initial reviews of the launch version have been very positive so far, with some people who were lukewarm on the early access version quite content with the final game. Worship is out now for £16.75/$20, with a 25% launch discount running until November 11th.