Cult of the Lamb has a bug that prevents players from saving files. This can effectively lock them out of the game. This was solved by the Discord server's amazing people! This was not something I discovered, but Sciguystfm posted the fix on the Discord server. I decided to post it here in case others are interested.
 

Discord Post

Originally posted by Sciguystfm on Discord:
 
NOT BEING ABLE TO LOAD SAVES FIX

You'll know you're effected by this if you see a red hat to the left of all three save slots, and you're not able to load your save or delete existing ones.

First and foremost, this fix only works if your save file itself isn't corrupted. 

The save file itself can be found at C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\AppData\LocalLow\Massive Monster\Cult Of The Lamb\saves typically it'll be called slot_0

Easiest way to test whether or not your save is corrupted is to upload your save file to this site. https://pentalex.github.io/COTL-SaveDecryptor/ - [github.io]  If it tries to download a file back, it means you're lucky and your save is probably fine.

If that's the case, the next step is to disable steam cloud saves. 
You can do that by right clicking the game in your steam library, selecting properties, and unticking the check mark labeled "Keep game saves in the Steam Cloud for Cult of the Lamb. 

After that, navigate back to C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\AppData\LocalLow\Massive Monster\Cult Of The Lamb\ and copy that entire folder somewhere else for savekeeping as backup. 

From there, all you need to do is delete the meta_0 file in the C:\Users\stefa\AppData\LocalLow\Massive Monster\Cult Of The Lamb\saves folder and you should be good to go!

If that works, you'll want to turn steam cloud saves back on. To do that:
- Launch the game, hop on your cult, save and quit.
- Go back to that right click menu, then Preferences, and then re-check that box you unchecked previously
- When you relaunch the game, steam should yell at you about conflicting saves, simply choose the "Local Save" and you should be good to go!


IF YOUR SAVE IS CORRUPTED
you might be able to pull an older save from steam's cloud save history, but i don't have personal experience with that https://store.steampowered.com/account/remotestorage - [steampowered.com] 

Special thanks to Alex and LavaStar235 for the decryption tool and figuring out meta_0 ❤️

My Thoughts

It's always a good idea, as with any save-related matter, to make a backup of your save files in the event of a problem. You can simply copy/paste them into another folder. This fix will hopefully be fixed.

 
 
Hope you enjoy the Guide about Cult of the Lamb – Save file issue fix, if you think we should add extra information or forget something, please let us know via comment below, and we will do our best to fix or update as soon as possible!