Черная Книга

Great, full of Russian folklore and the rare video game depictions of Orthodoxy and Orthodox theology.
For believers: you can avoid sin, which is counted in the game, and bring a positive impact to many people.
Highly recommend for the atmosphere, style, art, and folklore. not a fan of card battle games, but i really enjoyed this.

Story is amazing

It's fantastic. It's not the kind of game you can put down and return to later, because the information the game gives you is actually pretty important if you want to do well. It's a fascinating look into the culture of the place and era it is set in, and the gameplay is fun.

"Black Book" - although the project is punk, postmodernly ironic, and accessible in the light format of a visual novel, it does something completely unique for us - it allows us to experience this core, authentic magical Russia that we didn't witness. And you were telling me that "Hellblade" is a "simulator of walking through an ethnographic museum."
Nothing of the sort! If "Hellblade" is a simulator of anything, it's psychosis, and the bizarre and painful perception of the eschatological Nordic epic by a Pictish girl is so out of focus in the narrative that it most likely went unnoticed by most players. But "Black Book" is a game with a bright and lovingly crafted emphasis on folklore, about an ordinary witch girl from the Cherdyn district in the Perm Governorate.

We play as a girl named Vaska, a wise woman, a sorceress, a witch, who, for the sake of the plot, sets out to save her beloved from Hell, who died under the most mysterious circumstances. But that's always the case, lovers do that left and right in games. We wander through towns and villages, listen to folk tales, sing folk songs on the porch, talk to all sorts of very real unclean spirits - house spirits and bath spirits, and even save Russia a little from demonocracy. In the process, we immerse ourselves in folk life - this is how they took a bath in Russia, this is how they got married, and this is how, for example, salt was mined in Solikamsk!

Behind all this, there may be some deep subtext about the nature of evil, because formally, the game has "good," "evil," and "neutral" playthroughs, but these are all shades of a very gray morality, and the protagonist's power is demonic in any case.

The entry threshold for the game is low - the main mechanic here is card-based, and, honestly, the developers, in my opinion, realize that it didn't turn out very exciting (I have something to compare it to, a hundred and fifty hours in "Slay the Spire" won't let me lie), so after a couple of losses, the game gives a "skip battle" button, so that you don't have to suffer.

In conclusion: I think "Black Book" is worth playing if you can handle games that focus on text rather than action. There's zero action here, but the opportunity for a journey, to pre-revolutionary Perm Krai. And you can also reflect a bit on your cultural code.

PPS. You'll definitely need a Russian-to-Russian dictionary in this game XD.

+вайб +кайф норм игра

An incredible game, if I had to describe it in one word - it would be magical.

Sure, the graphics and animations are kinda bad and the story starts really slow, but in spite of all this, it is still a great game. Despite the graphics, the game still produces a beautiful picture (especially at the last chapter) and despite the slow start, the story IS good, even if some plot twists are kind of obvious. But the best part of the game, in my opinion, is the setting. The setting is very unique in a sense of maturity, I've never seen this dark fantasy-like twist on my native slavic mythology, it gives off such a unique feeling to the game. Judging by the reviews, a lot of people say that one of the worst parts of this game is that it is unnecessarily long. I dont really agree with that, I completed the game with 100% completion in 18 hours, which is not really that long, if you ask me.

Overall, I'd say the game is solid 7.5/10, I recommend this game to everyone, especially the ones who are interested in slavic folklore and/or Russian culture.

card animation too slow but it's beautiful game

I liked vibes. Not very difficult game (unless the boss counters your build, then you have to redo fight with another build, but there are only few fights like that).

Great game!

it's just not fun to play, and the quality of life isn't very good. the card game has clunky physics that don't feel good. the game makes you read these long sections of stories in order to try to diagnose problems, and they're just not interesting to read. sometimes you don't know what it's asking you. it's right on the cusp of being good but it isn't to me. the save system also resets you to the beginning of whatever location you're in, so up to about 30 minutes of gameplay that you can lose. maybe just something to get on deep sale.

This game is SPECTACULAR. The Protagonist, the storytelling, the dialogues, the Lore, the characters that actually reappeared and contributed to the main story even after their story quests had ended, the art concepts, the colours, the actual freedom of choices that would eventually matter in the long run, the initiative allowed to the player whether and how much they would explore and interact and dig into the what is given, everything. I will be honest, it took me a lil to warm up to the aesthetics of the game, however considering myself a fan of role play games and mythology I soon found myself immersed to the point of finding it was dawn.
However the game mechanics were at times challenging as to their rules (Durak Card Game) and I did find myself more than once restarting the battles.
All in all however, it was a wonderful experience and I recommend this game to everyone who has a love for Old Folklore Style adventures, for Slavic Mythology and Paganism, or simply enjoy card games with AN AMAZING STORY.
Beyond happy to have experienced this game, it's one of my favourites.

Общий вайб игры очень хорош, поддерживаю минималистичную 3D графику с живописными цветами, проработанный саунд дизайн, музыка, леттеринг - вау. Хороший славянский ответ Инскрипшну.

Темп игры как будто слишком долгий для 2020х годов - это касается и развития сюжета, и появления новых карт. Если срезать часть промежуточных квестов и открывать печати быстрее, игра была бы гораздо аддиктивнее.

Баланс. Пока не встретил проблем, играя первый раз на макс сложности. Если есть опыт декбилдинга, то нужно было подумать над боем только в начале, пока не сориентировался в способностях и не набрал карт. Пока нашёл только одну рабочую связку, которая уводит колоду далеко вперёд - это масс блессинг и жесты. Видно, что со второй печати игра поощряет тебя на другие комбы, но они пока сильно слабее. Это пока ощущается как минус, но надо будет ещё потестить. И в целом, если любой бой на высокой сложности заканчивается за 2 хода, а боссы - за 3-4, без применения трав, то наверное это не ок.

Если воспринимать игру как текстовый квест с элементами боёвки - то всё гораздо приятнее. Видно сколько работы с лором и сюжетом, нравится как всё увязано, отлично сделали этнографические вставки - они недлинные и их реально читаешь, потому что это поможет в игре + это просто интересно. Лёгкий анимешный вайб в характере персонажей только добавляет задора. Огромный вклад в популяризацию славянских мифов и культуры.

Отдельное вау - как озвучили такое количество текста, я не представляю.

В целом, за игру респект, сделано круто, продолжу играть, посмотрим что меня ждёт на следующих печатях.

Ещё мелкие пожелания отдельным списком:
- Не всегда понятно, как будет работать предмет, несколько раз купил фигню по незнанию.
- Не помешала бы короткая вики по механикам: как исчезают статусы, чем отличается "получить способность" и "+1 к способности", и тд. Чтобы можно было свериться перед ответственными решениями.
- Хорошо бы более разнообразную тактику в действиях мобов.
- Режим живого беганья по местности выглядит довольно сырым, василиса делает странные круги и бежит не туда куда кликаешь.
- Иногда путает, что в следующую локацию можно пойти ТОЛЬКО через диалог, когда ты уже всё проговорил и всё осмотрел, было бы уместнее разлочить перемещение через карту.

So far I'm really into it! So much orthodox Christianity, Paganism, and it feels eerie and a pretty educational too! Learning a lot from it. The battle system is fun (and I think I chose the normal difficulty, which is pretty easy). I reeeeaaaally wish they would keep the Russian voice acting w/ Eng subtitles. Please add this option. It will greatly improve the gameplay for me.

Just not for me. Maybe if I got past where I am at it will liven up, but it is just boring.

Dialogue is lame. Voice acting is bad. I generally would be interested in the lore but the presentation makes me sleepy.

Terminology is odd for cards. Walking around clicking on things is lame.

literally my favourite game

The game integrates culture and worldbuilding very well, which reminded me of Golden Kamuy, a manga I really like!
The characters in this game, shaped by its setting and era, felt well-developed, and the narrative choices are also well-designed, which kept me immersed until the end. (the ending made me really sad!!)
The battle system felt a bit unbalanced, but since I wasn’t too focused on it, I stuck with one effective deck and spent most of the focus on the story lol.
The game’s storytelling, worldbuilding, narrative choices, and dialogue made the experience really enjoyable and beautiful. I’d recommend it to players drawn to its worldbuilding and story.

fully recommend to someone that wants to poke around Slavic folklore and culture. i had fun playing with the MC and seeing how she either chooses to be literally plagued by demons or send them to cause chaos elsewhere. like yeah you can be all nice in the main storyline, but you're literally cursing people and killing crops, damn right your "sin" count is that high.

Not exactly a game for me, but surely a worthy experience with its world and lore.

The grounding of the game in folklore and an incentive to explore the folklore notes for riddles made a great experience. the puzzles themselves and writing around them was really entertaining and the plot (as little as I played it) felt like a classic fairy tale... or an old folk tale for that matter (which only adds to the experience)

What did not grip me (and made me end wventually) was the gameplay of the card game battles. The card mechanics feel like they have potential to be entertaining. But getting to the point where that potential can be reached feels like a bit of a slog - it takes several battles to get enough experience and a range of cards to start having fun, and each battle is just long enough to get a little sluggish at some point.

In short, a game which I'd like to enjoy more of, but just don't have enough patience for. Still worth a try for folks who sre there for the long run.

Thoroughly enjoyed this game, excellent story and interesting card battler style

One of the most immersive and unique experiences I have had in a game. The world building, characters and stories are great. The gameplay is a bit slow sometimes but this really is more like an interactive story with some decent card building gameplay.

On Chapter 3 and really enjoying it so far! The mythology is interesting, the variety of 'gimmicks' in the enemy fights are good, it's really satisfying when you build up good synergy with your cards and when you level up.

My hot tip: Have English subtitles and Russian voice. The English voice acting is embarrassing.

Great story and fun gameplay. Hooray!

Simple and fun

A playable deck builder, albeit a bit too simple.

The game's movement system is a bit awkward, and the character sometimes takes strange roundabout paths when clicking around. The graphics are fine, despite fluctuating a lot between fairly realistic and low-polygon models.

While the full voice acting is great, the save system is frustratingly outdated. Instead of saving your exact location, it only saves at the start of an area, reminiscent of old games that required entering area codes to continue where you stopped. The limited number of save slots is also bad, especially given the save state is small, making the limitation feel unnecessarily restrictive for a modern game.

the game is so good.

This game has a great story, lots of content, and was overall really fun.

Black Book is an excellent game that's lead by its story.
Do not mistakenly think it's a "rogue-alike card battler" because of the tags on Steam; it's not so basic like that, it's not Slay the Spire.
This is a story-driven RPG, where combat takes the form of a "card battler" using the titular Black Book's pages to order to cast spells (offensive and defensive).
It's story-first, voice-acted, and has you making your way through the countryside to your objectives' locations, where you can choose to bee-line there or explore side locales. Being a card battler is simply how combat is played in this game. The combat is well-designed, taking cues from Slay the Spire with providing you the info on what the enemy is going to do on their next turn as well as most of your spells being attacks or putting up protective shields on you or your ally (your choice).

Because the story & everything are rooted in Slavic mythology, there may be times when you're asked something and given a choice between several words you don't know. You can look them up online real quick, but fear not as these situations give you no penalty for being wrong and only a bonus of XP if you choose correctly - smart.


The DLC looks for be more like Slay the Spire as a "rogue-alike card battler" but IMHO that's reductive and misses out entirely on the point of Black Book: the story.

+

Very lovely game with great atmosphere. You can really feel the nature of people from the time od 19th century of Russia.

A lot of mythology and folkloric stuff around.

Love it! But some puzzles can be challenging.

I've played a lot of deckbuilders, this stand out from the common keywords and gameplay.

Playing this with russian voices is an incredibly immersive experience.
The lore is amazing, I learned a lot.

Tbh, game is quiet good in the start - the lore and the premise is perfect but i do feel like the story is TOO long. The momentum it built went down the drain as tasks became too repetitive. Sad though as the game is promising.

A card game which a mix of choice matters decision. The game mainly based on Russia mythology and belief. There are two main mechanics to receive EXP. One is to kill demons via the card game mechanics. Other is to answer the riddle or make a right decision. Most of the answers are in the hidden lore that provide in the game as you progress further. However, for a person who want to only play the card game might feels a little bit overwhelm with these lore and text.

The game also adding other game mechanic here and there such as espionage, puzzle, point and click. One thing I have a trouble with is when you have to controlled your character walking in a specific place. Which is a little bit clunky.

Overall. It is a good card game. Take time to understand. Not as great as Slay the spire but quite fun and manage to hold attention until I finish the game within 35 hours.

Beautiful soundtrack, the folklore is very interesting, and I enjoy the story very much. The card game is simple and good, the overwold map is linear, and the third person navigation can be messy at times.

虽然本质上是一款文字游戏（几乎所有对战都能跳），但是达成好结局是有难度的，重要选项前一定记得存档。

The story was unique and interesting but I couldn't get over the increasingly tedious boss battles. At some point I would just spam end turn since you get the option to skip the battle after 3 losses. A mechanic needed in a game where you'll have enemies that do a lot of damage, build up a lot of defense, and then keep you from using cards. Regular battles were fine but it seems like you were supposed to sell every item to buy up every herb just for bosses.

Slay the Spire x Witcher x Deus Ex (every conspiracy Slavic superstition is true)

A love letter to slavic folklore

I bought Black Book due to its theme; I find slavic folklore and pagan traditions in general deeply captivating, but I hadn't much expectations for what seemed at first glance like a small indie game coasting on personality alone.
What I did not expect is how much I would love every aspect of this game.

Theme and general ambiance

First of all, it is a game made with heart and it absolutely shows, it's oozing with the charm of the modest and hardy life of older, rural cultures and their countless traditions, beliefs and superstitions.
Playing as a witch, the player will be in constant contact with such customs and have a particular insight into the surrounding mythology, at the frontier of the real and supernatural.

Black Book also does a great job depicting the blurring of the lines between orthodox faith and pagan spirituality, from its world and dialogues all the way to its combat system and itemization.

The game has an encyclopedia feature where articles of knowledge and lore can be stored as the player collects them on their travels. From real tidbits of local culture or history to tales and legends, the game is a true treasure trove to those who like to take the time to read and learn about a culture where reality and superstition are interwoven, influencing each other in every aspect of daily life.

Visuals

Although some might be put off by the low-poly 3D phases of the game (namely: while exploring/investigating an area or during combat) I think the game truly shines during the visual-novel-like dialogues, which uses a hand-drawn style not unlike one of a story book, bringing details and personality to the characters while remaining simple and humble enough, just like the folks it portrays.
In battle, the pages/cards imitate the style of illustrations one could find accompanying the stories of old or on religious iconography, further reinforcing the omnipresence of this liminal atmosphere, halfway between the world of men and the spiritual realms.

Sound design

In the audio department, the game once again shows sobriety but not austerity: the music and sound effects convey emotions effectively, remaining in the background without taking the spotlight. The deep, low-intensity music or sometimes lack thereof is perfect to explore a forest at night with only the wind and rustling of leaves for company whereas the combat soundtrack brings percussions, drumming in the intensity of battling an evil spirit.

I must say what truly sold me on the game were the songs that can be collected just like encyclopedia entries.
It might be very niche interest but I absolutely love traditional slavic folk music (with or without instruments, monodic or polyphonic, ukrainian, polish, russian or any other origin it doesn't matter) and the unexpected delight of finding a dozen of such acapella songs, very well performed in the traditional "white voice" technique, is what made this game so special to me.

I must give a special mention to the russian voice acting, which consistently hits the nail when it comes to tone and delivery: I don't speak the language yet I could feel the context-appropriate emotion or feeling in every line.
Note: English voices are also available and I was surprised to see one could freely toggle between English - Russian - None (silent) at any time without having to reload the game.

Combat gameplay

I consider the turn-based card battles to be the main gameplay loop of the game, since the rest consists mainly of conversations, making text-based choices, moving rather linearly between areas and interacting with item vendors. Not that it's devoid of interest, far from it - but most of the "meat" is in the combat system.
Mechanically, I would say there are enough different mechanics to be interesting without becoming too confusing, and effect descriptions are correctly worded for the most part.

Early on it is a bit too simplistic and limited but with each chapter of the story, a new collection of cards is unlocked, allowing for more diverse and complex strategies as the game progresses. Also, the player can complement their decks with a wide array of consumables and permanent items, some improving certain effects, or granting stats while others can apply effects at the start of battle, for example. In the same vein, there is a companion system which is basically a cooldown-driven, on-demand buff, the nature of which depends on the chosen companion.

I must say I was surprised with the build diversity and viability (on Normal difficulty), also the game allows the player to save up to 3 decks, which is nice to play around with deckbuilding. Here are examples of decks I personally used to great effect, to give you an idea of what is possible: a slow-ramping deck relying on stacking damage and defense buffs to egregious levels -- an attrition deck based around debuffing enemy attacks into oblivion and applying damage-over-time with a few trump cards scaling their damage on enemy debuffs -- a weird deck that's all about self-inflicted damage to trigger effects, and massive healing/lifesteal to compensate -- a deck based around increasing how many cards can be played per turn and using cards that get stronger the more cards of the same color are played.
There are other mechanics I can imagine building around, but haven't experimented with.

The game features a handful of "puzzle battles" as well, which are encounters where you have no items, no companion and a fixed deck to find the one (sometimes few) play order to "solve" the battle. I found them interesting and creative, often forcing you out of the comfort of your deck to discover new ways to play, but I can understand that voiding player progress even if only for the time of one battle can be frustrating to some people.

Finally, Black Book also offer an optional regular card game of Durak that can be played with peasants and sometimes demons or spirits. It can be fun for a while, especially since the player (and sometimes the more occult-inclined opponents) can employ a couple of sorcerous tricks to cheat.

Conclusion

I cannot overstate the amount of heart and soul that radiates from this game, and even though I am very biased in its favor due to how well it resonates with my personal interests, I know it is not necessarily a game for everyone due to its slower pace, weird-working save feature (think manual saves that just send you back to the beginning of the current area without saving progress or inventory changes made within the area) and minimalist 3D.

However, if you are even somewhat remotely interested in slavic folklore, or more generally in the sort of themes I have described, please do yourself a favor and give Black Book a chance.

too much exposition

yeah, i just can't stand the intro sequence to most of these type of game. i can skip the endless exposition and dialogue and not know what's going on, or i can sit there for an hour pressing "continue". it just doesn't bode well for the sensory experience to be accosted with huge amounts of information and not know how the game works yet. at this point in my life if the content seems to want to include a bunch of stuff that'll be skipped, i probably won't bother.

if it's a deckbuilding game i just want to understand what the rules are and how the game works. so i don't really care about clicking to walk around, readying the dictionary, talking to npcs and taking quizzes, because those are presented as a resource to improve the deckbuilding at a time when i don't see how or why i can improve it. yes, i did not give this game a chance. but i'm sorry, i just can't make it through that type of sensory gauntlet.

The game is great, especially for those who love Slavic and Finno-Ugric mythology and stories about brownies and evil spirits. I really liked the story and the way the texts were made, and also the card battles. But there are also drawbacks.

Sometimes the game feels a little rough. Dialogue choices have almost no effect, and there were times when I accidentally missed lines and the game didn't seem to notice - the characters still reacted as if I had read them. The map is also confusing: it is not clear that some actions will lead to a transition to a new location or to the next day.

But none of this detracts too much from the overall impression. If you like mythology and folk tales, this game is definitely worth playing!

---

Игра прекрасна, особенно она подойдёт для тех, кто любит славянскую и финно-угорскую мифологию и истории про домовых и нечисть. Мне очень понравилась история и как сделаны тексты, а ещё карточные бои. Но есть и минусы.

Иногда игра ощущается сыроватой. В диалогах выборы почти ни на что не влияют, и бывало, что я случайно пропускала реплики, а игра будто не замечала этого — персонажи всё равно реагировали, как будто я их прочитала. На карте тоже путаница: непонятно, что некоторые действия приводят к переходу в новую локацию или к следующему дню.

Но всё это не особо портит впечатление. Если вам близки мифология и народные сказания, то игра точно стоит того, чтобы её пройти!

The game is a wonderful experience to dive into the Slavic and Perm folklore. I loved every par of it! Although I was a bit sceptic about the card-related battle system, I got used to it quickly and fell in love with it. The game is pretty short, but the plot is so intriguing that you're practically living through all of the events, and there's not a single one that is boring.
I saw a negative comment of a person who didn't get, why a witch that got her powers from devil has so many holy-spells. As far as I know, traditional witchcraft in the Eastern Slavic regions is a combination of a witchcraft in its original meaning AND an orthodox religion. The hisory is weird there, the pagan beliefs got interveined with a newcome Byzantine religion since people didn't really want to let go their old beliefs. So it might seem weird to someone unrelated to Slavic Folklore, but it is as it is, and authors managed to show it in a very authentic way! Loved it <3

For a game where you play as a witch whose powers were given to her by a DEVIL, you sure do have a lot of un-witchy religious holy spells. You end up feeling more like a priest and it's very jarring. Aside from that, I don't understand the cards in the slightest. I tried but I couldn't get into it. Maybe I just don't have a good understanding of Slavic folklore but I really wasn't expecting so much religion that it ended up being a MAJOR part of my spell-list.

Overall a great deck builder game with immersive atmosphere albeit weird design choices surrounding it that stop it from being amazing. Those choices are:

1) The game is very preachy. Though I suppose that's natural for a post-Christian Russian folklore setting. This extends to things such as a sin system based on Christian morality which is neat, but also frustratingly unintuitive at times.

2) There's a mechanic where you can enslave demons to do minor beneficial tasks for you, but you can also not force them to work to avoid sins. If they aren't working they will "pester" you with debuffs. The devs sadly captured the pestersome feeling too well, and managing them just feels annoying. But it is a small part of the overall game.

3) The game goes in between good 2D and cheap (but not ugly) 3D graphics. This includes pointless scenes where you have to walk around a 3d world to pick up a flower or do an easy puzzle before moving on.

I would say the game has medium difficulty. I played on the second hardest one, having a lot of experience in strategy games generally, but not deckbuilders. The strategy I came up with early on survived in principle through the entire game, but I did have to restart the occasional battle to hone it.

Lastly, if you've played HypeTrain's first game there will be several easter eggs for you. It was very cool to see how this game expanded on its themes.

Great game for fans of Dredge, Inscryption, Slay the spire, and Witcher. The cards or pages being broken up into different colors or types is a nice spin on the genre. It's fun learning about the Eastern Orthodox lore as well.

I'm leaning slightly towards recommending the game, but there was a lot I didn't care for as well.

I haven't really played card battle games before but might after this. I wish they'd explain the cards better so there would have been more strategising and less guessing. I liked the drawn style of characters but 3D characters were pretty awkward. I liked the lore, especially about the cat and I thought the demons were cute, but the dialogue was too slow and long. Some accents were horrible and some talked so slowly, I started skipping and ended up accidentally killing some people because I didn't listen and know what the answers were. I encountered a couple of glitches that were pretty frustrating.

I'm sure it would have been impossible to stay "good" so after earning 100 sins, I gave up. I ended up marrying the devil because I exhausted my resources fighting him the first time and was too tired to do it again. If the game's autosave made multiple files and I could access previous saves or if there was a restart option to a time just before the fight, I would have gone back and changed gear and deck and tried to get a different ending, but the devil was immune to my deck and I was out of good herbs and mushrooms so we got married.

сатана уступает место барышне убивающей всё и вся колодой из двух карточек

Cool art style, amazing soundtrack, tells one of the best stories i have ever seen in a video game.
And love to Vasilisa the protagonist.

Great game sporting very interesting battle system, nice plot and bold art-style. Very pleasing to play.

++

This was not what I was expecting -- the art is considerably worse, the gameplay is as much RPG as card game, but the use of Slavic mythology and Orthodox Christian legends are so dang rich, so dang full... It's also a much longer game than I expected. You definitely get your money's worth here.