Draft:Lost in Cult

Lost in Cult is an independent publishing house based in the United Kingdom, primarily producing non-fiction works on video game design and gaming history. The imprint has received acclaim for their video game art journal, Lock-On (stylized as [lock-on]), as well as its range of collaborators or guest writers, including Hookshot Media, Jacob Geller, and Did You Know Gaming?.

History
Lost in Cult is headed by CEO Jon Doyle, and describes its goals as the preservation of gaming history in physical format.

Lost in Cult's artists include Kilian Eng and Stephen Graham.

Lock-On
Lock-On acts as Lost in Cult's flagship publication, compiling video game development information from across the industry, with six volumes as of 2023 (each volume is enumerated with two leading zeroes as 001 002 etc.). It is described as both community funded and 'premium'.

The third volume focused on the Sega Dreamcast, alongside writings on the Pikmin and Darksiders series. Volume 006 of Lock-On released in 2023, focusing on the design of Final Fantasy and Legend of Zelda with over 400 pages of art and writing. The volume was produced in collaboration with Final Fantasy Union, a large Final Fantasy fan organization, and featured interviews with Hironobu Sakaguchi, Nobuo Uematsu, and Matt Mercer. alongside an exclusive cover illustration of Terra Branford by veteran Final Fantasy concept artist and illustrator Yoshitaka Amano.

Other game design publications
Gareth Damian Martin, developer of Citizen Sleeper, collaborated with Lost in Cult to launch Heterotopias, a periodical on architecture in game development named after the philosophical concept coined by Michel Foucault. Heterotopias maintains both a physical zine and an online archive, exploring the role of fictional spaces in works like Inside and Tomb Raider. It was lauded as "the video game publication that your favourite video game publication reads" by TheGamer.

Lost in Cult has also received praise for their full-length non-fiction books on video game history, which include A Handheld History and The Console Chronicles.

Tie-in publications
Lost in Cult published a trivia-based card game by Did You Know Gaming?. In 2024, Lost in Cult published How a Game Lives, an annotated print collection of the video essay scripts of YouTuber and critic Jacob Geller.

Lost in Cult has released extensive artbooks for Citizen Sleeper and Sable and is also the publisher behind Cycles of the Eye, the official tabletop role-playing game adaptation of Ctizen Sleeper, designed by Damien Martin and Alfred Valley.