The Shrouded Isle

The Shrouded Isle is a cult management game set in a secluded island village whose people have followed bloody sacred traditions for 495 years. As high priest, you investigate villagers for heresy and choose who to purge, preparing for the awakening of a god beneath the waves. Your decisions must balance the village’s beliefs and strategies with the fact that nobody wants their child sacrificed.

The village and its families

Five aristocratic families oversee different parts of the community, each with an ancient task. You choose one advisor from each family to help with that work, then designate a human sacrifice at the end of every season. Their loyalties can shift, and the families’ duties shape how the village is managed:

• House Kegnni: manages the farmlands and protects the community’s sacred ignorance through book-burning, erasing traces of the old world and its sins.
• House Iosefka: builds with carpentry and masonry, creating monuments to sustain the village’s Fervor. Adjudicator Iosefka is said to favor pyromaniacs, whose ritual fires burn brightest.
• House Efferson: judges souls and enforces Penitence by punishing sinners. Vicar Efferson teaches flagellation techniques intended to appease the god.
• House Cadwell: counts the village’s wealth, largely held by merchants and miners, and enforces Discipline by searching for forbidden distractions.
• House Blackborn: guards the village and enforces Obedience. Inquisitor Blackborn’s dungeons are feared, though lawful, peace-keeping citizens have nothing to fear.

Investigate the villagers

Every villager has two hidden traits: one virtuous and one heretical. If you have earned a House’s favor, you can investigate a villager’s reputation. You can also appoint villagers to the seasonal council and watch their work for clues. Their randomly assigned traits make each run call for a different strategy, as you search for true heretics whose sins threaten the community.

Contagion and purification

A mysterious spiritual contagion reaches the island and infects its citizens. You can lock the infected in the purification tower and let holy salt water wash away their sins, but the treatment can have ill effects on healthy villagers. The seas surrounding the island also hold dangers, and strange occurrences may appear among your devotees.

The Sunken Sins expansion

The Sunken Sins expansion adds a more strategic inquiry system, a longer campaign and the purification tower mechanic. It also includes additional events, personality traits, art and animation, as well as a cinematic ending. The game has seven cinematic endings to discover, each tied to meeting the god’s expectations of purity.