Cult of the Lamb Specs: What You Need to Play It [PC]

Cult of the Lamb is one of the surprise successes of 2022, garnering heaps of praise from industry reviewers and gamers alike for its mix of roguelite and colony sim themes, with a dash of Lovecraftian horror. It’s Animal Crossing if all the villagers were bloodthirsty followers of the one true eldritch god. The fact that the game is relatively affordable at just £20 doesn’t hurt, either.

Neither do its relatively low system demands, meaning anyone can play and enjoy Cult of the Lamb whatever their gaming PC is like. Like always, however, if you want to play it at its highest settings at higher resolutions, you might want to bring some heftier hardware to the table.

Here’s everything you need to play Cult of the Lamb at any setting.

Minimum System Requirements

Processor: Intel Core i3-3240, AMD FX-4300

Memory: 4 GB RAM

Graphics: GeForce GTX 560 Ti, Radeon HD 7750

Storage: 4 GB available space

Operating System: Windows 7 or later

The official minimum specifications for Cult of the Lamb are low enough that just about any PC released in the past five years will be able to play it. The processors are over a decade old, and the graphics cards were mid-range options when they debuted around 10 years ago.

With a demand of just 4GB of install space, even the most modest of laptops will be able to install and play this game. You’ll still want an SSD for it if you can, as that will make game load times far better, but there’s no stipulation here. So, if you need to load Cult of the Lamb onto a hard drive, it’s not the end of the world.

If you try to play it on a PC or laptop that’s stuck with integrated graphics, frame rates won’t necessarily be stellar or stable, especially when the on-screen action heats up, but it should be more than playable.

As long as you can meet or beat these specifications, though, you should see at least 30 FPS at 1080p with most of the graphics options set to medium.

Note: While Cult of the Lamb will play perfectly well on Windows 7, you shouldn’t run that operating system to play it. Windows 7 hasn’t been officially supported by Microsoft for years and is missing modern security protections. It is innately insecure and you run the risk of malware attacks or hacking by using it, even just to play games. If you can, upgrade to Windows 10.

Meeting the minimum with a modern PC

If you don’t have a gaming PC – or even a non-gaming PC – to play Cult of the Lamb already, you’ll need something new. Thanks to how low the minimum system requirements for this game are, you could pick up almost any second-hand PC on auction sites or through classified adverts and have no problem playing the game.

However, with second-hand PCs and components, there is no guarantee of them working properly or how long they’ll last. Especially if they’re as old as those recommended here. There’s no warranty either if something goes wrong.

Buying or building a new PC is almost always better, even with lightweight games like this, and with the raw speed of modern components, you’ll have no problem building a lightweight budget gaming machine that can make Cult of the Lamb look and play great.

For the CPU, a cutting-edge 12th-generation Intel Core i3-12100F would be a perfect chip for lightweight gaming and will have more than enough power to deliver excellent frame rates and detail settings in Cult of the Lamb. Its four cores can boost to 4.3GHz, and with hyperthreading, its eight threads give it impressive multi-tasking performance.

For RAM, you’ll want 8GB of generic DDR4 as you won’t need any more for a game like this and that helps keep costs down. Any motherboard with an H610 or B660 chipset will do fine, though consider what other features you might want before buying – for more help, check out our comprehensive guide to modern motherboards.

The GPU can be just about anything you want to pay for, though a modern entry-level card like the RX 6400 would be a great starting point and will give you more than enough power for Cult of the Lamb and more besides.

Recommended System Requirements

Processor: Intel Core i5-3470

Memory: 8 GB RAM

Graphics: GeForce GTX 1050; Radeon R9 380

Storage: 4 GB available space

Operating System: Windows 10 or 11

The recommended system requirements are, for many people, the true minimum they want to target, as it usually guarantees a stable 60 FPS at 1080p with most settings turned up close to their maximum. And that’s certainly the case here with Cult of the Lamb.

The CPU recommendation hasn’t risen much, going from a dual to a quad-core, but in both cases, these CPUs have very low frequencies by modern standards and antiquated architectures. The graphics cards are a little more modern, but even they are entry-level or mid-range components from over five years ago.

That should mean that any gaming PC from the past five years will be able to run Cult of the Lamb at that sweet spot of 1080p with most of the settings turned up at their highest. And even giving you a little wiggle room for picking and choosing the settings you like to open up higher frame rates if you prefer.

Meeting the recommended specs with a modern PC

Even though the recommended CPU and graphics cards are more modern than the minimum system requirements, you still aren’t going to find any of these recommended components in new condition. Like the minimum specced system, you could find them on auction sites secondhand, but they’re likely over half a decade old at this point and they may well be reaching the end of their operational life.

If you can’t meet the recommended specs for Cult of the Lamb, then your best bet would be to build a new gaming PC instead. You can keep it affordable, though, by targeting the areas which are most important to your gaming experience.

For the processor, the same Core i3-12100F would be a great pick for this kind of system, but if you want to go a little more powerful to give you more scope for playing other games as well, then a Core i5-12400F is a great option too. If you’re more interested in an AMD gaming PC, then a Ryzen 5 5500 would be an excellent alternative and super affordable while prices are coming down ahead of the next-gen Ryzen 7000 launch.

For graphics, you’ll want to opt for something a little more capable just to guarantee those frame rates and open up the option for 1440p play if you want. The AMD RX 6500 XT is an option there, but if you were happy to stretch your budget, you’ll get much more value for money from an RX 6600, or even an RTX 3050.

Since the game recommends 8GB of RAM for this tier, we’re going to suggest you aim for 16GB of DDR4 instead, as it’s very affordable in 2022 and will give you a better baseline for playing other games, as well as make for a snappier system overall.

Building a 4K PC for Cult of the Lamb

There are no official specifications for gaming PCs that target higher resolutions with Cult of the Lamb. It’s not the kind of game that really benefits from being played at an ultra-high definition, but if you have a 4K gaming TV or monitor and you want to run the game at native resolution, what kind of PC do you need to run it?

For most games, 4K gaming demands the most expensive of graphics cards and benefits from the most capable processors. You’d also need heaps of RAM and impressive cooling to keep such a monstrous machine in check. However, with Cult of the Lamb, where even the recommended specs are so low, you can get away with playing the game on a much more modest system and still enjoy the crisp clarity of 4K.

For a CPU, you’ll want something more capable than what we’ve targeted before, but you don’t need to go all out. The Intel Core i5-12600K is one of the best CPUs of its generation and a gaming powerhouse: a great centrepiece for a 4K gaming PC that targets more approachable games like this.

As for the GPU, you’ll get better performance with the best cards, like the RTX 3080 Ti, or RX 6900 XT, but they’re complete overkill for a game like this. If you want to save some money but still target 4K, a great GPU would be the Nvidia RTX 3070.

It won’t handle 4K at high frame rates in every other game, but it can still do it at lower settings and frame rates, and for Cult of the Lamb, it’s more than enough. If you’re an AMD fan, an RX 6700 XT would be a great, and even slightly more affordable, alternative.

You might want to consider 32GB of RAM too, but 16GB is still enough for this sort of system.

Do you need an SSD for Cult of the Lamb?

The storage demands for Massive Monster’s Cult of the Lamb are very modest. A mere 4GB is almost unheard of in modern gaming, especially more popular mainstream games. However, Cult of the Lamb is an indie game at heart and that’s where you find the most efficient use of your storage.

But what about storage speed? The developers don’t suggest that you need an SSD to play the game and though that might be the case, you are always going to get the absolute best gaming experience with an SSD. They help to boot your games up faster and make the whole system more responsive.

You don’t need a cutting-edge PCIExpress 4 or even 5 SSD to run Cult of the Lamb, and in fact, you won’t see much benefit if you do. But, make sure that you run it from at least a SATA SSD and the game will start up fast and have limited downtime during loading screens.

All Chillblast gaming PCs are built with a fast NVMe SSD as the default boot drive and with such a small game install size, you’ll easily be able to fit Cult of the Lamb on it.

Do you need a high refresh rate monitor for Cult of the Lamb?

You don’t need a high refresh rate monitor for this game, but if you’re going to be playing it at over 60 FPS – and most gaming PCs will – then a high refresh rate display lets you make the most of it.  You don’t need to go all out with some of the latest and fastest gaming monitors, as 360Hz, or even 500 Hz is complete overkill for anything outside of the fastest and least-demanding esports games.

For a non-competitive single-player game like this, colour vibrance, brightness, and resolution are typically more important. That said, you’ll get a much smoother-looking game at 120Hz than you will at 60Hz, and to the discerning eye, a 240Hz display might make the game look and feel that bit more responsive too; if your PC can handle frame rates that high.

What about the Steam Deck?

Cult of the Lamb isn’t rated on Steam Deck yet, as it hasn’t gone through certification. However, the developer, Massive Monster, claims that the game should run just fine on it. It will no doubt receive its verified status before long, although it’s possible it will be only compatible until further optimizations are made.

Keep an eye on the Steam Deck verification page to see when the game is officially approved.