BOOK OF HOURS

Ah nothing better than spending a few hours, tea in hand, cataloguing the books of ages past while the storm batters the walls of the House.
Gorgeous art style and laid-back storytelling. A unique ambience totally unlike Cultist Simulator.
Tips: Remember to read everything, take notes of anything interesting written in the books and cataloguing the books by memories produced massively sped the game up for me.

Poetic, mysterious, contemplative. Also, there's no other game like this; perfect for those who seek originality and avowed authorship.

(+++) Originality
(++) Atmosphere
(++) Progress directly bound to the exploration of the core game mechanics
(++) Minimalistic representation of complex gameplay through items as simple as cards
(+) Everything I liked about the Cultist Simulator is still here, but the reversed sentiment – now the game wants me to actually succeed (and gives me all the time and tools I need) – suits this type of game much better.
(+) Although the art-direction could use a lot more consistency and stricter curation (a lot of art feels like a placeholder), it fits the game perfectly and deepens the experience.

(--) UI and UX are burdensome and the biggest put off by far (moving around the map/board; zoom mechanics; item and card placement and management;...)
(-) Been playing since day one, constantly see the developer talk a lot about some QoL improvement patches being released, but any time I boot up the game, I feel like there are barely any changes (basically the biggest UX issues get some negligible iteration here and there, but stay fundamentally dysfunctional and are never truly addressed despite what the developer wants you to believe).
(-) Some design decisions are a bit frustrating: 'soul' upgrading is very tedious; some random book covers don't follow its attribute color-scheme for no apparent reason (other than making them difficult to spot);...
(-) Half-way down the house I feel like I fell into a rut; a very repetitive gameplay loop.

The longer I play the more aggravated and impatient I feel. Still hasn't felt fun though.

This is an amazing cozy game especially if you like puzzles and figuring things out! I haven't been disappointed even when I'm hitting a wall and don't know how to proceed

Good things
-Very chill and relaxing atmosphere
-Beautiful soundtrack
-Interesting lore that will leave you theorizing for a long time if you engage with it.
Bad things
-Very slow intro that depends a lot on luck
-Can get tedious after multiple playtroughs

'Cultist Simulator' but House Flipper

Sumptuous, relaxing, and deliciously complex---this game is a joy to casually explore and also intently play with focus.

The actual game-play consists of the following: exploring the map by reading, "reading" books, reading the text excerpts from those books for pleasure and information, exploring a vast system of mystical/alchemical crafting, developing your mystical skills, charting/planning your mystical ascendance, restoring the rooms of Hush House, and organizing your library/estate to better facilitate your alchemy, skill development, and final destiny as the newest Librarian of Hush House.

My only note of caution is that the game would be quite difficult to play without some kind of note-taking. I personally made an Excel Book with about 15 pages to help me organize my library and access the exact info I want quickly and easily when trying to gather memories (but this is probably extreme). For me, the element of gathering and organizing information is part of the fun, as is deciding how to organize the books in-game. A more lackadaisical approach may suffice for those with more Fet, less Mettle, and less Ereb than myself, as I cannot help but seek to make the most of each day and each season.

If you think you might like this game, you'll probably love it.

I wholeheartedly recommend this game. It is one of the most unique, relaxing, and enjoyable games I've ever played.

Puzzles, mysteries, and lore. so much lore

meditative, puzzle-driven, obscure in its lore. If you have wild imagination - this game can give u tons of exciting stories. Gameplay revolves around discovering bits & pieces of worlds histrory until u craft your own. Also if u are a fan of Lovecraft, u are most certainly welcome

10/10. A puzzle game at it's core, but also about reading books. Lots and lots of books.

Took me about 50 hours on a blind(ish) playthrough, and it seems to have a lot of replayability! Starting my second one now.

I wrote a powershell script to convert my pasted notes to CSV files that I can play with in Excel.
I'm seriously thinking about putting them into an SQL database.

No, there is absolutely no real need for me to do these things. The lore is just so dang engrossing that I feel compelled to build my own relational database for it instead of relying on the wikis.

10/10

There is nothing that even comes close to a Weather Factory game. They're always so unique, well-written, pretty, seductive, fascinating. They make you wish the world was a more mystical place.

BoH is no different. A true work of art, and as fun (if not more) as Cultist Simulator. Highly recommended!

This game scratches a particular itch, so it might not be for everyone.
If you own a copy of House of Leaves, you don't have a choice, you're buying it now.

I've given the game a thumbs up. It looks great and I can't help feeling there's an exceptional experience hidden away somewhere inside the confusing interface and mechanics.

It is probably one of, if not the, strangest games I have ever played.

I love the idea of the game, it appeals to me in a huge way and yet I have sat scratching my head over the mechanics since the start.

The look and feel of the game are fantastic and thematic. However, it's so opaque, I just cannot fathom how to play or what to do, besides randomly trying things and then wondering why they did or didn't work.

As of writing, I'm still within the refund window, but have no intention of sacking it just yet. There's something compelling me to keep trying to unlock at least some of the secrets of how to play.

I'm also determined not to go in search of a guide online. Something tells me this will ruin the game. So, I will try again and see if I can work out what to do, and why.

No game has had the power to absorb me quite so much in recent memory. Many hours have been lost to Hush House. The game is very clearly made by some passionate people. I often have questioned whether or not any of it actually makes any sense at all, but it doesn't really need to because the writing pulls you into the world so well.
This game is best enjoyed with the absolute minimum knowledge of it. Don't watch videos, don't go to the wiki, just experience and learn it all on your own and you will have a grand time.
This game is a very clear keep/refund within the 2 hour window. You will know what is right for you.

HOWEVER
You should not get this game if you want to get 100% achievements. The achievements in this game do not respect your time, and it would easily take 100-200 hours to get them all. This wouldn't be the end of the world except:
The end game is a GRIND. By the time you are getting near to completing your first game, you have figured out 95% of what's going on in the game, and the discovery is what brings the fun. Without discovery, the game is very repetitive and not all that fun.
Then you do it, you beat the game. You wonder how to get those other achievements and realize:
You have to play the game from the beginning to the end a minimum of 8 more times.
Still, if I could forget everything I know and start again, I would play this game another 8 times and more.

Book of Hours aka the game that launched a thousand spreadsheets

All jokes aside, the game is wonderful and really soothing. You can go at your own pace without being punished. The musica nd the ambience are grat and the story is quite interesting, it made me stop and read every single book I could unlock.

A lot of people say that games beyond a certain mass appeal fall into a category of "It's hard to pin down why I like this" but book of hours is very, very easy to explain the appeal of.

It's cozy as it gets. The opening of the game put me in mind of the original Cultist Simulator - there was a clock ticking down to my death as I desperately tried to figure out how to get my librarian off that beach, out of the storm and to their contact in town. Once you have that out of the way, once their journal is dried out and the chill driven from their bones, the ghost of the constant frantic panic that underpinned the previous game vanishes.

This is the same universe (not quite, but that's Deep Lore) as Cultist Simulator - which I loved, but where that game was frantic and panicked, if the cops weren't on your tail you were starving because you were out of work, if chronic depression wasn't drowning you mania was threatening to bloom; Book of Hours is very relaxed. The Cultist was bootstrapping everything, the esoteric equivalent of a meth chemist that had never passed high school who decided to dabble in explosive synthesis; The Librarian actually knows what they're doing and has a support network, so there is no sense of rush or hurry in the game.

The core loop is restoring the Hush House and building up your Librarian's skills. And the house is gorgeous, there are a million little things to look at and read, the weather of Cornwall brings the whole place to life - rain taps against the windows if you're zoomed in far enough to hear it, wind contrasts with the comfortable crackle of the fire, the soundtrack reminds you of Cultist Simulator but takes the tone of ease and sometimes joy. The Librarian slowly branches out into more and more esoteric skills which makes cataloging and absorbing the wisdom of the books easier, they go from a half-drowned nobody to calling upon the dreams of stars.

If you want a supremely cozy, lore rich world to relax in for a few hours, the Hush House could always use someone to re-shelve the Ink Lore.

Absolutely lovely experience. While its predecessor had a more pressuring time constraint to it, Book of Hours is a much more mellow and relaxed experience, allowing you to progress and discover at your personal pace. I would absolutely recommend it if you wish to have the atmosferic occult experience without the harrowing need to progress here and now, but rather the proper ability to tinker and experiment with every book, object or person without fear of extremely punishing faliures.

Surprisingly addictive solitaire-like gameplay.
I played Cultist Simulator and even bought the DLC but always felt exhausted at the idea of playing another run of Cultist Simulator-- it took so much trial and error and getting stuck and restarting to get to the end of one run. Finishing was truly an achievement.
But this game is a gentler sort with many of the same addictive qualities of puzzling out what to do, with less outright repetition due to not being able to die (at least I think?). You can't get stuck (at least I hope not-- I've made some big hindsight mistakes) and I've been able to trudge on.

The one downside is that it doesn't feel as mystical as Cultist Simulator because you're a librarian in a big cushy mansion, even if that mansion is haunted.

So glad to return to the game world of Cultist Simulator, though, and the lore implications of its mysticism.

This one is obviously similar to "Cultist Simulator", but feels a lot less challenging (to the point where the lack of challenge becomes a bad thing). Playing "Book of Hours" feels fine for the first 15 hours or so, but at some point the base gamplay loop gets really repetative and grindy. At the later stage of the game you are bound to waste lots and lots of time waiting for the right weather and grinding for memory cards every time you want to read a book, level up a skill or unlock a new room. Crafting system is basically unusable if you don't use an excel file with several sheets to write things down. Good visuals and amazing OST though.

First of all, the art and music are astonishing, i really liked it and dont think i will find a game like this anywhere else.

I was really looking forward to this game, the misteries and collector playstyle that are shown in the trailers really captivated me, but the gameplay feels draged and confusing, i spent all my time trying to figure out what to do then i got stuck. And it's not really nice having to wait for timers to finish repeatedly only to find out that's not what you were supposed to do.
I wanted to experience it more but since there's a limit to how long i can play before not being able to get my money back i went to youtube to see if it was worth it, and apparently it is not.
This is a niche game for niche people, and i thought i was in there, but maybe im not as much as this game shows.

I enjoyed the game and played for about 15 hours. It's kind of an ultra complicated version of solitaire, with elements of crafting and hidden objects thrown in. The mood perfection, if you want contemplative and vaguely creepy.

I ultimately gave up because it seems like it will take 50-100 hours to complete the game, and I just don't have it in me. Still, I enjoyed the time I spent with Book of Hours.

Arcane, beautiful, otherworldly and utterly unique.
Like complex solitaire that tells a story, kinda.

"Book of Hours, or How to Use the Lure of Occult Knowledge to Trick a Middle-aged Man into Playing with a Dollhouse for 112 hours."

A game by Weather Factory.

As an early fan of Cultist Simulator, Book of Hours is not for me. The game is *too* relaxed, and there are so many things at your disposal, but none of them feel all that meaningful. Book of Hours asks nothing of you, and I found myself not giving it anything in return. It didn't provide enough motivation to keep interacting with it.

Cultist Simulator's lack of tutorial worked because everything in it had meaning. If you *could* put something somewhere, you *would* get something new out of it. This is nonexistent in Book of Hours. Most things don't have any meaning except for the stats that they have. The ways you interact with anything in the game are incredibly limited, and nothing about those limits is interesting. Everything that should be interesting feels useless and like bloat.

The timers in Cultist Simulator made it a real-time management game. There was a pressure to keep yourself stable and do the things you wanted to do in the same timeframe. The timers in Book of Hours don't really do much. They slow down the gameplay and prevent instant gratification, but not in any way that feels compelling. Messing up your timing feels both easy to avoid and incredibly unfair at the same time. It's a punishment for not thinking about time management in a game that doesn't prioritize managing time as a mechanic.

I found myself not interacting with Book of Hours' systems except for the ones that felt interesting, since I wasn't given any motivation to do otherwise. And then I ran out of the interesting things, because it turns out you need to interact with all the systems to progress. But the only motivation for me was to get back to the part of the game I liked, and I wasn't given much. Because I'd already done so much of what was supposed to be the buffer of that particular thing, the smaller bits given over the course of the game for regular balance were extremely unsatisfying. It just became a terribly boring grind that felt like its only reward was more grind. Exponentially more grind, because the resources that I got from grinding didn't even feel helpful in the next grind.

I feel bad comparing Book of Hours so much to Cultist Simulator, because they're clearly supposed to be different kinds of games. On the other hand, though. Book of Hours implements ideas from Cultist Simulator seemingly for the sake of appearing familiar, and completely fails to understand what made them work in that game.

If you want a game where everything about the gameplay is secondary to The Lore and used mostly as a gate to pace that lore, you might like Book of Hours. But it's really nothing more than that. It is pretty good lore, to be fair, but not compelling enough on its own for me to keep playing.

This game is an acquired taste. The beginning being especially unfriendly to newbies. But the mysteries of The Hush House are many all ripe for the intrepid librarian. The main gameplay loop is unlocking rooms so you can discover books to learn skills. You have many routes as the game has something like 40 endings.

If you enjoy games with lots going on and difficult puzzles then you'll probably enjoy this - for me, it's so dense with information and no explanations that it's incredibly overwhelming.
I don't understand what's going on or how to play really, and there's no guidance in the game to teach you or help you out if you're stuck. I understand in concept the appeal of trying to find solutions yourself, but for me there's just too much of that and no help at all, meaning that within the first half hour I just get frustrated and stuck with seemingly no solutions. I really really wanted to like this game because the art and theme of an occultist librarian are right up my alley, but for now, it's just too much.

I've come to think of this game as the Dark Souls of non-combat games, in two very important ways. First, the lore is everywhere. You don't exactly get cutscenes (it's nice to go without them for a change) so it's up to you to draw conclusions from bits of information scattered around in books, paintings, and even room descriptions. Second, there is little hand-holding. If you want to make sense of something you will have to figure it out yourself, and the community generally does not dispense a lot of tutorials or explanations. They exist, and you can find them, but they aren't nearly as prevalent as in some other games. For these reasons, the game is difficult. It's not difficult in the sense of a tense, pulse-pounding action game where a good guy must use weapons and abilities to defeat bad guys but you get dead if you do so in an unsatisfactory manner. It is difficult in the sense of figuring out how to work with the game mechanics and progress with what you have. This often requires you to use your existing resources in different ways. The game mechanics are deliberately opaque. I haven't found a way to die, and I only know of one way to prevent yourself from making further progress in the game. In that way I suppose it is unlike Souls games.

I love the game for its atmosphere and intellectual bent. Who wouldn't want to wander through an almost certainly haunted, giant Cornish library-mansion during a thunderstorm sipping tea before a crackling fireplace, and either paging through an endless series of books or exploring the mysterious rooms? Well, I would. (As an American who has been to Cornwall, it is delightfully rainy and I would definitely live there.) True, the game is not always easy, but it is satisfying.

Just like Souls players insist that an egregious level of difficulty makes success more enjoyable, figuring out how to do things in this game opens up many new possibilities and means you can progress further. A bit like Metroid, but instead of having to find some kind of upgrade to get to new areas, you have to just figure out how to advance using the available game mechanics. It's much different from other games. That makes it difficult but also fun in a way you won't find elsewhere. I once told an inveterate Soulsborne-player about this game. He appeared horrified and assured me that he would never enjoy a game with such little action or combat. To him I condescendingly retorted, "NO ACTION. ONLY BOOK."

Also, based on the way it was laid out, I expected this to be a short game and relatively simplistic. It is not. I was shocked by the depth of it. If you like depth and complexity, this game has both. (It also has whisky and wine, which are both known to have depth and complexity!)

While this game certainly isn't for everyone, and that's fine, the specious argument about timers being bad seems goofy and arbitrary to me. It sometimes takes time to perform a task. I honestly don't see the problem with it. Yes, life would be easier if actions took no time to perform, but this mechanic allows time to advance in a logical way where you can actually have four (well, 5) seasons.

So, in summary, you might like it for the cozy atmosphere, books, lore, and complexity. You may not like it if you need lots of stuff moving around on the screen all the time, or raytracing, or [EDIT: "if you dislike"] very complex game mechanics that potentially take a long time to learn.

It's not for everybody but it's definitely for me. A lot of planning, thinking, reading, yet very chill and quiet. It's the video game version of listening to LoFi.

Loved Cultist Simulator, but this is the game I could actually recommend to my friends; like many games that have kinder sequels, playing this one first may prepare you for the harshness of Cultist Sim. Anyways, this is a surprisingly cozy and wonderful game, with only the lightest stress with trying to time things properly, which is great! I love this game a lot, cant recommend it enough, and, honestly, would love to see a release of a tarot deck featuring the endings of the game.