JOIN US Review: A Darkly Playful Sandbox About Cult Life and Recruitment

What happens when a game treats cult life like a sandbox to be played for laughs and emergent moments? Mike Nelson's Xbox Wire piece on Join Us lays out just that: a game about joining and growing a commune called the Infants of Sheep that combines base-building, recruitment, and violent skirmishes.

Recruitment is conversational and social. The piece shows how you meet people around town and use charm (or other methods) to bring them into the commune. Inside the compound there's a Teachings area where you choose an ideology that alters how your group operates. One stated gameplay outcome is that conversion can include violent acts—hitting non-believers with a baseball bat is called out as an example of how belief choices affect behavior.

Despite the communal framing, weapons and combat are prominent. Players can access weapon caches with pistols, machetes, and even an AK-47. Locals and organized groups may attack the commune—Nelson describes an assault where bodies are left behind and the player's party must respond. The narrative warns that local peace officers might shoot on sight.

The game supports a party of four for certain missions, such as driving a camper van into town to recruit or confront neighbors. Combat can be costly: Nelson recounts losing members of the flock during an engagement and specifically notes the permanent loss of a character named John.

Join Us is less about straightforward moralizing and more about placing players inside a system that combines community building with morally grey choices and violence. Expect a mix of base management, social encounters, recruitment mechanics, and combat. The tone will often be playful and satirical, but the systems allow for escalation into lethal outcomes.

If you want to experience a game that leans into satire while letting you design a commune, recruit followers, and engage in both social and violent interactions, Join Us presents those mechanics together. The juxtaposition of cheerful recruitment language and explicit weaponized mechanics creates a distinct, if unsettling, gameplay flavor.