Priest Simulator Preview

Priest Simulator is an Early Access title on Steam from the Polish developers, Asmodev. Anyone who knows me knows I enjoy weird-as-hell games, and Priest Simulator fits this description to a tee.

In Priest Simulator, you play the role of Orlok, a vampire who was summoned from Hell after a battle. He’s something of a celebrity, and so he’s put in a fish-out-of-water situation when he ends up in a small Polish village. Here, he is at the whims of the local Father — Torpedo, a blasphemous sock puppet who you make a deal with to get your powers back. You then end up making multiple deals with multiple villagers throughout the whole game.

What makes Priest Simulator different from other games in the simulator genre is that it has a story that follows a mockumentary-style format; This is a first-person shooter where you meet the villagers and get some surprising character development from Orlok’s perspective.

Here is a simulator that isn’t trying to be realistic — when I say Torpedo is a sock puppet, I’m not joking. Most of the people are wooden figures with sentience, and some of them have anthropomorphic frog- or bird-like features. Plainly put, it’s insanity, and admittedly, it made a lot more sense by the end of the game.

When I started Priest Simulator, I was thrown into a boss fight immediately, and I have to admit: I would have liked a tutorial. However, I’m well aware this might just be me — the controls are simple, especially when using a controller. You use your right trigger and left trigger to attack with each hand. However, if you’re using your mouse and keyboard? Well, it can get a little tricky. Admittedly, I spent a small chunk of time at the beginning of the game dying, until I figured out how combat worked; after that, it was pretty easy to understand what was happening.

When you arrive in the village, you’re given some basic weapons, and you need to work with Torpedo in the hopes of getting your powers back. You complete a quest, and then you need to search for the nearest phone to get further instructions. These quests are a combination of different types, mostly item gathering, weapon crafting, and defeating enemy Shatanists. Yes, the Satanists are called Shatanists in this game, and Christians are known as Christianists.

Now, Orlok needs to spread Christianism and is known as Father Orlok by the villagers. However, his girlfriend, Vamela (who was also sent here with him), is focused on finding a way back home. She even contacts her ex-girlfriend, Diabolina, to help them get back to Hell. Why is Diabolina here? Oh, she’s just the demon that the Shatanists are worshipping, so it’s pretty handy that she’s here. Naturally, Orlok isn’t too thrilled to be getting help from Diabolina, and he’s more concerned with getting his powers back.

To progress in the game, you need to refurbish your church using money and recycled materials. You can get money from quests, side-quests, and holding confessions in the church. When you take a confession, you’re given two bible quote options to parrot at your followers. If you answer them quickly and correctly, you get a bonus. Then, as you get further into the game, you’ll be given a total of four options to choose from while listening to their confession.

Admittedly, getting money is a little bit more frustrating in this game than you would think. You can get some dough when searching for items in other people’s houses, but you’re limited to what you can get. The easiest, albeit a tad mind-numbing, way to get money is to take confessions. Many of the side quests in Priest Simulator involve finding specific objects or handling community tasks. So, you need to find holy pictures, clean the village alongside removing graffiti, and turn all the crosses around.

I’ll be honest with you, reader, I did not find all of these things, and I did not manage to clean all the graffiti from the village. Now, you’re probably wondering why you need money. Not only do you need cash to buy ammo for your weapons and refurbish your church, but you need it to improve your attack, defence, and health regeneration stats. Using your money, you can buy supplements, and this is the only way to improve them. If I’m honest, I wasn’t a fan of this system. If you’re like me, you’ll make the mistake of earning a bunch of money and maxing out your stats. It turns grinding into a chore because you’re not even fighting to improve — that’s my main gripe with this system.

Likewise, improving weapons also proved to be a challenge. To upgrade your weapons, you need to find black metal. Earlier in the game, you have specific quests to find this item, but later on, you’re introduced to exorcisms. Now, the exorcisms themselves are fun. However, I’m the type of person who struggles with directions, and I get stressed with time limits. You have roughly two or three minutes to destroy totems and turn the crosses the right way down. When they add the holy statues you need to place? Oh boy, was I stressed by these little tasks. While the time limit was frustrating, you were at least transported outside when you died, and they never actually counted as deaths. This, I was grateful for, because so many of these exorcisms were quite a while away from my church.

You’re probably wondering why this is an issue. After all, surely you can drive in Priest Simulator? And the answer to that is yes, you do indeed get a car at the midway point of the game. But I’ll be honest here: I hated driving in this game. The problem with driving is that you still control Orlok in the car, and you’re controlling Orlok with the right camera. I crashed too many times for driving to be worth it. It just was not nearly as intuitive as the combat controls. So, when I got to Rolaf’s Castle, he introduced us to his Portaloo to travel between his castle and the church; I was grateful.

Honestly, that was my only gripe with the game. Generally, it’s a very well-put-together game. The soundtrack is filled with some awesome metal combat music, and I only noticed a few moments where the NPCs walk in one spot. The voice acting works well because it makes the comedy stick well, although I did notice at least once where the dubbed dialogue was replaced with the original Polish dialogue. However, this was later on in the game, and I’m sure that Azmodev won’t have any issues patching that in.

Truthfully, the issues in the game are minor, and I found it pretty damn addictive. The storyline was pure chaos, and I couldn’t predict what would happen next. There’s even a surprising amount of character development, especially for a game that doesn’t take itself too seriously. Personally, I can’t wait for Priest Simulator to leave Early Access because this was a hell of a ride. It has a lot of heart, with there being more than I expected.