BOOK OF HOURS

A wonderful installment in the Cultist Simulator universe. The sense of discovery as you experiment with crafting, cataloging, and exploring the house is so fun. This is a game that takes a good amount of time and thinking, but is also quite relaxing. If you're looking for something to engross your mind in and feel clever when you figure things out, this is a great option.

It's also great for people like me who don't tend to like more traditional horror video games, but still appreciate horror elements in media. "Horror" might be a strong word for what Book of Hours is, but there are so many delightfully creepy, chilling implications to the lore that it feels remiss not to mention it. The coziest horror game around!

Fair warning, though; I *do* have a very extensive spreadsheet I keep open while playing, which is not technically required but I can't imagine being able to keep everything straight by memory alone. The game also lets you copy in-game text to your clipboard at the click of a button, so it feels like a subtle encouragement to keep notes outside of the game. Putting that out there because I know this could make or break someone's enjoyment of the game. I personally think it's very cool, but could definitely see others not thinking that's fun at all.

The game is a bit confusing as there is no real tutorial but I am hooked. I like organizing the books and keeping notes and meeting all the goals. It's a casual game with a bit of a time pressure.

steps and bounds better than cultist simulator !

Bought this day one online only recently got the hardware to play it and I'm so damn glad I did. It's like cultist sim on crack with the absolute torrent of tiny lore tidbits hell even the furniture has lore and I'm loving it, absolute 10/10 game would recommend for the chair lore

I tried to order three shillings worth of ham and copper wire with Uzult, the ink in which the First History was written, and the game stopped me, chastised me and told me that this was improper use of an Ink that can alter reality and to go get a lesser ink lest I embarrass myself.

9/10, game has a lot of heart. The audio and visuals are impeccable. The whistling of wind atop the high spire, the creaking floorboards, the pattering of summer rain. You are comfortable, at Hush House. (Just don't linger in the depths)

I do wish the UI was less clunky. Arranging books on bookshelves tends to take seconds longer than it should, and zooming in and out is a pattern that does not suit me.

If you do play, keep a notebook on hand! Having a place to organise your thoughts, excitedly scrawl notes in the margin, and keep references as you pore over fresh lore is incredibly helpful. And the feeling of pen on paper is quite satisfying besides.

It is certainly not for everyone. But it is for me,yay!

I think other reviews capture the good and the not so good quite well, so i just want to relay my experience so far a bit. I played cultist simulator and sunless sea, so i had an idea about what to expect. I find Book of hours better graspable than CS in terms of sparking my imagination to visualize how my character spends their day cataloguing books, contemplating esoteric knowledge, getting help from the villagers. And this experience walks side-by-side with me getting a grasp of the mechanics. Its a beautiful moment to discover ways to do things differently or somewhere else. I might have wasted the first year being not as efficient as possible, but what a joy was the discovery that followed. Thank you for not just plain telling me. This game understands how discovery works. It lately led to slightly mad ramblings and screenshots to my friends when i see new details about the history or think to have understood the tree of wisdoms. I am sure i haven't seen everything yet and i am looking forward to where this journey will take me. Oh and i learned a lot about english currency, what a lovely inconsistent and complicated thing they had there.
So yes i do recommend this gem of a game to all occult enjoying, cat loving librarians out there.

I'm giving this game a 8/10 because while the 50+ hours I've spent on this game has been an amazing experience, there are some very obvious flaws to it.
I really love the text in game and has enjoyed reading books, giving consultations and clearing rooms in Hush House. The lore is a huge bonus to the game.
However, later on, the events and visitors have proved to come at too slow a pace, and even with dlc contents, it is taking too long a time to meet new ones. Therefore I gave up the Lighthouse ending because it is taking forever to get enough members to found a institute with initiatives matching every person.
Moreover, the mechanics can be quite confusing to newcomers (a bit better than Cultist Simulator, but not much), even after watching tutorial videos, it took me like 20+ hours to sort everything out and I have to constantly refer to the wiki.
I've already achieved the Prodigal victory and topped 4 branches in the Tree of Wisdom, but I just don't feel compelled to start a new round again because I feel the experiences will be too repetitive, which comes as a minor disappointment.

I love this game for ever and ever. If you are autistic, this game will consume your life. The playtime I have is inaccurate as I've played this extensively offline and would guess my actual time in game is closer to 300 or 400 hours. I haven't played it in ages, but know when I start again I won't be able to stop. This game is extremely fun if you like repeated processes, keeping track of multiple things at once, and planning out your game in spreadsheets (I have an excel spreadsheet for each Numa). I think you may have to be a certain type of person to get into this game, but if you do, you will be completely absorbed in it. All my love to the devs, amazing job :)

I recommend this game with the caveat that this is a flawed game that is not for everyone. Either this game scratches a certain itch for you, or it doesn't. If it doesn't scratch that itch, I highly doubt you will enjoy this game at all. The UI is clunky at best, the time system is a tad annoying, and it's a very grindy game that requires doing the same thing over and over again to make progress. HOWEVER. The vibes are immaculate, and crafting new things is pretty satisfying for me. I, personally, can't put it down. I just finished one ending (I got the world card!) and I really want to unlock the other endings, discover all the numen and 100% the game. However, I have work to do and cannot do that right now. Perhaps later. If what I said sounds appealing and you like the vibes shown in the trailer, give it a whirl.

One of the most innovative and enjoyable games I've played in years - beautiful board with a detailed and compelling pile of lore to unlock and sort through, lovely score that creates incredible atmosphere, and incredible replayability. There's also a real pleasure in mastering the the mechanics and capably unlocking more complicated rooms, and discovering the hidden secrets. I strongly recommend.

It took me over 30 hours to finally understand what I was doing here. Unlocking the rooms and skills involves many repetitive steps. The system also needs improvement to be a bit more helpful for the players. I do like the alternative history concept in the story, but a word of caution to newcomers.

Probably won't be everyone's cup of tea, but I enjoyed this game a lot. It's slow-paced, atmospheric, and very management-heavy with lots of mysteries and obscure mechanics to discover. If you enjoyed Cultist Simulator think a more atmospheric and less tense version of that game would be a good time, then this is it.

just finished this wonderful game - as in, 100% Achievement completion. To reach this i had to
beat the game (full from start to finish, not counting save scumming some extra endings) like 9 times?
and i dont really understand why but i enjoyed every second of it.

+ lore, depth of the lore, mystique of the lore, level of details put into this game
+ the uniqueness of the gameplay, i dont know anything that compares and i love it
+ visuals, big time
- complexity, becomes much much more easy a few dozens hours in, but start into the game is tough
- theoretically 100+ different endings but "endings" just means you get a different small paragraph at the end? kinda useless
+/- you have to have your own motivation, you either want to learn about the game and the lore or not, the game doesnt hold your hand. theres very few set "goals" to work towards. i think you could compare it to an exploration kind of game, which i think isnt what People expect when they get it (but if aware this can deffo become a positive thing)
- (for achievement hunters: time to 100%, Needs 9 runs and you dont get anything new by replaying it, its just doing the same thing again)

The devs have built such a wonderful world with this game and Cult Simulator, it will never stop fascinating me. The visuals are just perfect for the kind of game that it is, i enjoyed them a lot and i fr love the design of every single card of the game.
I played Cult Simulator before and had this game on my wishlist for a long time until it finally released. Sooo i will say im probably not 100% objective bc i already loved their prior game so much.

Funny thing about this game it that this is probably in my top 5 or even top 3 favorite games ive ever played, but i wouldnt really recommend it to everyone. Its quite a peculiar game. You spend the first 10-20 Hours of playtime being confused, maybe overwhelmed, most likely frustrated at some point. Well, definitely if you make the mistake that i did to start into the game with minimal help by guides or the wiki (honestly dont do this, just use the wiki if you want to remain sane).
I think the best way to play this game is to see it as a one-run game. Yes theres several endings, several starts into the game, but realistically theyre not very different and dont really have any Impact or different lore (except a small paragraph for the specific ending you got). So i would say best way to do this is to just get to know everything, READ everything (as the game reminds you plenty), craft everything, get all the skills, zoom in and look at everything, just fully take it all in and dont hurry. So if youre the kind of person to like this then 100% recommend
(Hypocritically i say this while not having played the game this way and still having really enjoyed it.. but as i said i dont really understand why i did lmao.)

Full disclosure if you want to get all achievements in this game then ouf, at latest by the third run you really have understood the deal of the game and its just very plainly doing the same thing over and over again for the next six or so runs - each run.. probably 10 Hours at least ? can probably Speedrun it even more, i never tried. Nonetheless for casual players thats a big time investment, especially with the fact that you have to do 9 runs at LEAST, since even with save scumming, those 9 runs depend on your very first decision when you start into the game. So objectively it should really be boring to do the last few runs. But again, i loved them all - probably just because i loved the game so much that i didnt mind replaying it over and over.

so thats all, im gonna go sit here in silence for a minute and grief that its over and that i have to say goodbye to this lovely game

If you're impatient and just want to know the lore of the story I wouldn't recommend it because personally I thought this game was really hard. But if you're patient, and you like figuring out rules, and enjoy playing for hours on end with minimal breakthroughs at times, then I would recommend it.

You might enjoy it if you think mindlessly clicking the same stuff over and over again because the devs can't be bothered to explain *literally* anything to you, but I'd rather play something where I don't spend hours spinning in circles trying to figure out what to do. That isn't "fun" or interesting to me, it's just a chore. They don't need to explain everything in excruciating detail, but at least give me a DIRECTION or a hint as to what I should be doing. I gave it a few tries, but it's just not for me. If you don't like wilfully obtuse games, you probably won't either.

Brilliant worldbuilding, dull game. There are 13 aspects, all attached to different interesting philisophical and religious themes but why pay attention to that when they all work the same? just get enough of the right color to meet the current challenge. 53 skills and 10 language skills, mostly interchangable. 99 endings, all acheved the same, you just need to plug in a diffrent aspect+Numen. there's 2 more but they aren't that interesting either, gameplay wise.

Again the writing itself is brilliant but the gameplay practically discourages actually paying attention to that, story should prompt action, encourage forming hypothesises and plans then reward figuring things out and if it doesn't work then the faliure should also be interesting and informative.

I kind of see the idea, it means there's multiple ways to acheive any goal but in practice it means all the methods are basically the same and so are the goals. I suppose finding some of the hidden numens is a bit interesting.

House of light is noticeably better with it's cooking and entertaining guests, and to find more interesting interactions it actually helps to pay attention to what they've said before. But I'm still not sure it's worth buying.

I like the game, and I still wanna recommend it, but stay away if you're dyslexic.

Very nice game. It doesn't explain how to play itself, but once (if) you figure it out, you're up for hours of reading, crafting, talking, imagining the occult.

I respect and enjoy games that don't explain themselves. I enjoy figuring out how new systems work; it can be exciting and rewarding to have that kind of mystery in a game. However, there is a difference between that kind of mystique and poor user experience. This game is unfortunately the latter. The UI is needlessly and frustratingly obtuse. Within 5 minutes I was hard-locked and unable to progress. There was no tutorial, not even a few simple pop-ups to guide the user through the first few sequences of actions. After trying to click everything I could think of for fifteen more minutes, and still being stuck, it was clear this game is not being thoughtful or empathetic toward its users at all.

Disclaimer: I am only commenting on the base game.

What I like:
* It's generally a pretty and relaxing experience.
* Unlocking new rooms in steady exploration is rewarding. I've almost always liked reading their flavor text.
* The mechanic marries very well into the theme. The potency of cards from being mundane like taste, to the knowledge that stars dreaming about human beings as an experience can be given form is really cool.

What I dislike:
* There's a point where you have way too many knowledge cards to keep track of that looking at them all (in order to highlight ones that has the quality you're looking for) basically takes the entire screen.
* Hunting for new recipes for better cards eventually becomes incredibly tedious.
* Finding out what you can make with cards later becomes unrewarding because 80% of the time it made something you already knew how to make.

Overall, game succeeds in semi-simulating the experience of a librarian organizing an abandoned mansion with a very cool magic system. I get the feeling that you are supposed to write down your notes outside the game, and I haven't. Eventually the game just started to bore me because I couldn't figure out how to get higher potency to unlock the next rooms, and I end up spending longer and longer time trying to find the correct table to craft.

I feel the game would improve immensely if there is a in-game way to keep notes, and a way to highlight based on multiple traits, not just one.

I wish occultist librarian was a real job :(

So I don't last long in most crafting games because I get bored of the repetition and tedium, but Book of Hours hits different?! Compared to activities like farming or base building, which have never held much appeal for me, cataloguing books of eldritch lore in a mysterious mansion feels much more interesting. While reasonably pacing myself, the process hasn't felt too grindy (yet), with satisfying art and sound design to accompany it.

Upon starting, I felt equal parts intrigue and overwhelm. It's one of thooose games that don't like to explain much directly. Somehow, the atmosphere of Hush House helped to quell my anxiety and trust the process of learning its language. There was a period of aimlessly unlocking rooms and shuffling books around with little understanding of my actions, trying to keep the faith that soul cards and aspects and memories and mysteries and wisdoms would reveal their meaning in time. Gradually, I am figuring out what all this shit means, how it needs organized, and how I can use it. I expect there is much, much more to learn.

If you like the idea of being engrossed in your Excel spreadsheet as much as the game itself, welcome. Thanks for the fake employment!

I like this game a lot from a sheer mechanic standpoint, enough to go out of my way to play enough playthroughs to 100% it. I honestly don't care much for the lore and worldbuilding despite appreciating that it exists in the form that it does; that said, I fully understand that I'm in the minority here.

There is something simply addicting in the gameplay loop. Open up a room, maybe decipher a book to learn or level up a skill, planning out what soul cards to unlock next with those skills, in order to read more books and to assist opening more rooms. Every action starts a timer, anywhere from a few seconds up to a three minutes, and this surprisingly evokes a compelling "just one more turn" feeling. (as an aside, Cultist Simulator has somehow never hooked me quite like Book of Hours.)

[hr][/hr]

However, the sole reason I'm not recommending this game is because it basically requires the House of Light DLC for exactly one feature: the Writing-Case. I don't want to spoil too much, but the Writing-Case is an item in House of Light that lets you, for a small cost, invite a past visitor back to the Hush House. This ability singlehandedly alleviates language roadblocks that the base game has, which become especially apparent in later stretches of the game.

Without the Writing-Case, Book of Hours eventually devolves to fast forwarding through seasons while praying to RNG that you'll get a visitor you need at the start of the next one. Endgame in base Book of Hours is awful and kind of sours the earlier portions of the game, only for the solution to be sold in DLC.

At the time of writing, I would recommend Book of Hours only in conjunction with the House of Light DLC. As a standalone game, there is plenty to enjoy, but pushing through the final portions of the game is miserable at best.

I absolutely love this series and recommend you trying it. The game style is so different than anything else I've ever played, and I become obsessed with the puzzle that is Hush House every time I return to it. 11/10 review!!

This satisfies my imagination and my OCD at the same time, it's definitely something special!

Cataloging has never been so fun!

Very disappointing compared to Cultist Simulator.

CS was a flawed but great game, and I was hoping that Book of Hours would be a better version of that. But aside from the visuals I found this game to be worse in every way.

Gameplay loop is completely linear. It's pretty much just wait until you get the memory you need -> read a book -> get a skill -> hope you can use it to upgrade something

The setting just straight up sucks. In CS, I always felt like I had to keep going and try to unlock stuff because there was an actual cool goal - make a cult, and find a way to "ascend". Here there's absolutely nothing that keeps me engaged. You're basically just dropped into the setting and are told like okay, here's this big house and here are a bunch of books that you need to figure out how to read.... Okay and? I felt absolutely no need to keep playing and maybe unlock cool stuff down the road because of this. Yeah CS had issues with regards to being hard to understand at times but at least I felt compelled to try and figure stuff out.

And because of that, the writing suffers too. In CS you're gradually introduced into this world and learn about it as you delve deeper into the lore. Here, you're basically expected to have played CS before and remember everything about the lore to even begin to understand anything. And my biggest problem with the writing is that 90% of exposition you get is reading the small descriptions of the books as you unlock and read them. And because you unlock the books completely at random there is no coherent way to receive the exposition at all. Considering that writing is basically the whole appeal of CS and BoH, I really don't get why it's presented to me this way. I'm sorry, but how am I supposed to care about anything when the exposition is presented to me through basically glorified unsorted post-it notes.

Lastly, this is just my personal gripe but why did we need to almost double the number of aspects? I thought the aspects in CM were cool as fuck and learning about all of them was great but why the hell did we need to add Nectar/Moon/Sky/Scale/Rose on top of that? It makes no sense lore-wise to me, it dilutes what I thought was a nicely done lore and "power" system and it makes the original aspects feel less special since now we just added a bunch of new ones on top of that.

I love this game so much. If you like crafting, cozy games this is one of them. More forgiving than Cultist Simulator (which I also love) but takes place in the world. The lore is a bit confusing but it is meant to be. It's like when you read a good fantasy or sci-fi book and don't really know what is going on but you learn as you go. Literally one of my favorite cozy games. The mechanics take some getting used to but you'll get it. It isn't for everyone but if you love books, cozy games, and eldritch lore, this is for you!

Who up booking they hour.

Disliked the game at first, but as you keep learning and trying new things out it starts to become very enjoyable. It helps that the Secret Histories universe has amazing worldbuilding

I like this game its atmosphere is perfect and its gameplay is an interesting take on the old cultist simulator. However, there are some things that are a bit obtuse that should be elaborated on.

A very good game, taking and improving the formula of Cultist Simulator.
Very dense narration, very intricate and dense systems that makes for an extremely good experience, given that you like to read a little. Although it does implement some things to smooth your jump into the gameplay, Book of Hours doesn't hold you by the hand, and you will probably spend a lot of time just trying random stuff in order to progress forward in the story. This is not bad in itself (it is the point of the game to experiment), but you can spend several minutes of gameplay repeating the same thing over and over waiting to find something that will make you progress in the story, which is probably according to me the biggest flaw of the game.
The ambiance, whether visual or Sound, is amazing. Since there is no real threat of you dying, contrary to Cultist Simulator, you can really take the time to roam around, discover every little details and texts about the big occult library you are managing. You can reorder things around, decorate rooms as you see fit and classify books. It really gives the feeling that this story is yours and it makes you all the more invested into the game.

In conclusion, so far, I really enjoyed my time being a librarian. Weather Factory are really one of my favourites studios, and if you liked Cultist Simulator, this is an improved version that you should enjoy as well. It also has the same flaw in some capacity, but nothing that will make me not recommend it in any way. But please, give me more ink so I can send my damn orders to glover & glovers !

Book of Hours is one of the most interesting and unique games I've ever played. Every single line of dialogue has charming character, the music is deeply immersive, and every challenge you surpass feels like a real accomplishment. The mysteries you uncover by gradually piecing together the lore of the world and the House are mind boggling and incredibly rich. Truly a 10/10.

It's good at what it does, it just needs an in game notebook to track recipes. In the current build it is almost impossible to play without using excel or google spreadsheets. If it compromises the vision just make the player fill it out them self. You could probably get away just text but could also get fancy with a tagging system and a simple addition function, a journal section and abacus would be about right for flavor

A wonderful game to play for relaxation when you just lost 3 LOL games in a row.

1. All these items are scattered around the place, and when looking for sth there is no searching or filter function. And UI design makes it even more difficult.
2. Memories decay away at dawn and many items are single use. Such fact makes me constantly worried.
So if you have trouble keeping your room tidy, don't play this. I would even say it's ADHD inducing()

1. 物品都散落在场景各处，也没有搜索功能和筛选功能，界面设计更是雪上加霜。
2. 记忆会在黎明消失，很多物品还只能单次使用，这种设定让人时刻处于焦虑状态。
如果桌子都收拾不干净就更别玩这个了，简直是ADHD体验券

If you liked the universe of cultist simulator, this game is very fun and you can play it at your own pace. The second half gets tedious but discovering the lore keeps it interesting

too expensive

This is the first game I've broken out an old fashioned notebook and taken notes on like we were back in the 90s in a very long time. It's a puzzle. It's obtuse. Learning to play is a puzzle in itself. But it's also low-stakes. It's chill. You're organizing books (and the rest of the castle) and slowly uncovering mysteries and lore of the world. As far as I can tell, you're somewhere off the coast of Cornwall in the 1930s, in an altered timeline, but it seems fairly removed from real history save for a handful of mentions of European historical figures. Great game to play when feeling quiet, contemplative, on a misty morning with a cup of coffee or late afternoon tea.

Not the game for you if you don't want to read everything. Probably not your thing if you don't have a fantastic (and I mean top 5%) memory, like writing things down, or don't mind frequently referencing the wiki.

Do you want to play a game that does not feel like a mindless distraction? To have an audiovisual, brain-spine-tingling experience akin to reading your favourite book while the rain patters outside? Then you should pick up this game. You will have to be willing to take your own notes, to enjoy discovering the secrets of the histories, to immerse yourself in the worlds these wonderful devs have built. If this all sounds good to you, then give it a try.

As a fan of Cultist Simulator, I already knew I was in for an esoteric and artistic treat with this game. The sense of 'forbidden knowledge' is just tantalising, and I really love how they've kept with the theme of throwing you into the action with zero tutorial. it might not be to everyone's taste, but I absolutely love this game, and the online community it has who help and inspire.

BOOK OF HOURS contains all the esoteria of Cultist Simulator, in a much more accessible package. Fans of Weather Factory's "dark academia" aesthetic who are more inclined towards "cozy games" than brain-burning puzzles will find much more satisfaction here than in their freshman effort. These developers really know how to immerse you in a world, providing just enough bits and pieces to keep you interested while withholding most of the setting's reality from your view. It's truly a happy medium between FromSoft's item description breadcrumbs and Disco Elysium's breathless infodumping that captures all the mystery of the former along with the detail of the latter.

Figuring out how to use and combine elements to progress is maddeningly addictive. In a lot of ways, BOOK OF HOURS is a crafting game bar none; yet one where what you're crafting is "emotions and impressions" rather than pickaxes and furniture. Hush House seems to be the perfect place to crystallize a thought out of beams of light and spiderwebs using a piano or a telescope; it's the kind of historical amalgam that only an old world mansion can be. Just when you think you've unlocked the perfect room to place your brewed hot tea or cocoa in, you learn how to get a cat and the cozy vibes just skyrocket.

If Cultist Simulator was evocative of madness being a kind of magic, BOOK OF HOURS is a meditation on the arcana of introspection. Every item, every person, every thought has one of several elements to it; kind of like a feng shui that is revealed through a mouseover tooltip rather than an augury-driven journey through the I Ching. Combining these elements and guessing what item will give which becomes intuitive after a while, and experimenting with them to progress your Journal makes you feel like a real alchemist. Combine them into ever more distilled and powerful forms to drive goals that the game refuses to set for you.

BOOK OF HOURS makes me wonder whether my own issues are due to some kind of failure to curate the elements of my own thoughts and impressions of the objects that surround me. Do I really need to know what Knife or Moth actually _is_ to know that I have too much of it in my life? Is there a Journal inside me where these elements are slotting in to lead towards some kind of transcendence? Or are they, like the Journal in my first playthrough attempt, just an unfocused scattering that makes it more difficult for me to progress?

It wouldn't be hard to simply review the mechanics of BOOK OF HOURS the way I do for other games. However, it feels like it would take something away from them to do so. BOOK OF HOURS is a game that provides space and atmosphere for you to think through a million mysteries that the developers have lovingly ensconced within it. However it also provides space for you to bring yourself into it, and hopefully take something out of it too. For example, the thought that changing up your blend of tea or coffee and spending an extra moment looking out the window at a different time of day could lead to a whole new way of seeing the world.

I have played all these guys' games all the way back to Fallen London. Book of Hours (and hours and hours) is in ways both the best AND worst one they've made so far.

Good: Chill, no time pressure like Cultist Sim. So you can read every little snippet, which is required.

Bad: It is definitely required. The game explicitly says so, more than once. Every possible thing in the game has multiple tags and aspects and you need to read pretty much every little note and description, all the time.

Good: It's usually worth the effort. Best vibes/lore/worldbuilding so far imo (shared universe with Cultist), beautiful hand drawn art

Bad bad bad: If you hate to look things up, do not play this. No, for real. I tried to play blind at first; ended up with like 20 tabs of wiki pages. Took over 200 hours to reach ONE ending. I do not think it was worth that kind of time investment.

These guys really need to make their games faster to get through. Not smaller, not shorter... FASTER. But I had a pretty good time nonetheless.

I absolutely love this game! I has spent the last two months playing and loving the world of the game from its secrets to the overall lore. This gameplay style is a first for me, and it has become something I love as you can multitask! and have many eggs in different baskets all at once! As someone who has Cornish family and spent a lot of their childhood and university life in small Cornish fishing villages visiting family, this game resonates with me on a personal level.

I absolutely adore this game.

The world is super rich and I loved slowly piecing together threads of stories every time I opened a new room. Usually I feel the pressure in "cozy" games like stardew to get everything done all at once, but this one really made me feel like I could wander the hush house for hours and feel rewarded for my time even if all I did was put all the knock books on the same shelf and read up on item descriptions.

If you like games that don't rush you, organising books, and learning secrets about a world that is truly stranger under the skin, then I beg you to give Book of Hours a try.

reading is cool

I love this game. I've beaten it three times. I don't know why it's so addicting.

I tried this once and got incredibly frustrated. I came back to it about a year later and have promptly sunk 80+ hours into one playthrough. The difference was, on attempt 2... I made a spreadsheet.

The game gets so much more fun when you treat it like a sort of meditation - especially in the early game, when it seems to actively resist any optimization strategies. Balance that with the lore and the joy of gradually understanding the core gameplay loops, though, and you've got an absolute banger of a game.

But like other reviewers have said, I was one of those kids who got in trouble for reading at the dinner table, and I absolutely get a kick out of updating spreadsheets, so it's definitely aimed at a specific audience.

10/10 would rant at friends about the paucity of low level Moth books again.

This game is so pretty! The writing, the art, the music. It's something you can chill out to without having to turn off your brain. It's one of my personal favorites.

This comes with a caveat, though. Book of Hours won't guide you by the hand with upfront tutorials or convenient task markers. It wants you to approach it with curiosity and an open mind. If you're not into figuring out esoteric writing and having no idea what you're doing well into the late game, then you might want to pass. However, if you DO enjoy truly unique writing and learning, then this might be just the thing you need.

I won't do too deep a dive into the mechanics of Book of Hours, as there are other reviews that have already laid them out in thorough detail, but suffice it to say that it's a rather unique blend of puzzle and exploration with some elements that call for diving into the deep occult lore that underpins both this game and Cultist Simulator. One of the best tips I've seen oft repeated is "read everything" - not just because the lore in this game is rich and deep and worth it, but because there are key passages and hints in various pieces of descriptive text that will help you reach the various endings.

Two of the things I think I most appreciate mechanically about BoH are (1) the fact that you can pick it up for as long as you want - the save mechanic allows you to pop in and out of the world at a whim - and (2) the fact that it is more forgiving than Cultist Simulator in terms of not having menaces that have to be closely managed to prevent a bad end.

In addition to the carefully crafted lore, I also want to give a nod to the visual and audio design. While you can see examples of both in the provided trailer and screenshots, listening to the soundtrack in-game really does set the mood, with the various tracks paired to the game's in-game seasons rather well.

Overall, I enjoy diving into BoH when I want to spend a little (or a lot of) time pretending to be an occult librarian uncovering the secret histories of a sprawling castle-turned-prison-turned-library while having visitors and hosting soirees to delve further into the hidden world of some wonderfully strange immortal powers.

I played this without first having played Cultist Simulator, which seems to be less common. The worldbuilding is enchanting and the writing firmly and deeply scratches the itch for the occult, the esoteric, and the rule-of-threes-bound; the game looks beautiful and for the first half at least the joy of puzzling out its unique mechanics is real. The soundtrack is perhaps a little sparse, but by no means bad, and you can find good additional music easily enough (I suggest "The Wooden Wheel" by Robes of Snow). After about halfway I went back and tried CultSim and yeah there's really no comparison, Book of Hours sweeps the floor. Not just in being more flavourful and immersive, but also in the gameplay and especially the start of the game being enticing. It's great to see how far the devs have come!

The latter half of the game becomes a bit long and repetitive. I kind of wish that, for example, each skill you leveled up "saved" the memories used to do so into itself, so that the focus is on the fun part (figuring out what options you have remaining to get another distinct memory for it) rather than the chore (re-acquiring the same ones over and over). Comfy-games enjoyers might prefer it the way it is, though. The game also seems to want to be replayed to get various "endings" but, ah, hmm, you're gonna need a bit more *ending* to the ending than that, if you catch my drift, I get that we can't all be Spiritfarer but c'mon. That's a lot of re-doing. Having replayability just for the sake of spending more time soaking in the vibes is good, though, can't argue with that.

Overall it's a gem and well worth trying - but also, though the phrase sounds sadder than I mean it, well worth putting down.