Разработчик: Morteshka
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Юной крестьянке Василисе судьбой предначертано стать колдуньей. Идя наперекор своей участи, она решает бросить колдовство и обвенчаться со своим возлюбленным. Но ее мечтам не суждено сбыться - как узнала Василиса, когда ее суженый трагически погибает при неизвестных обстоятельствах.
Не желая смириться с утратой, Василиса обретает Черную Книгу - древний артефакт, который, если верить мифам, настолько силен, что исполнит любое желание того храбреца, что откроет все 7 печатей Книги.
Отправьтесь в полное тайн приключение по деревням и селам России! Выручайте отчаявшихся крестьян, изгоняйте бесов и нечистую силу, и смело стойте против сил Тьмы.
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Собирайте заклинания и открывайте новые навыки по мере продвижения по игре.Историческое приключение
Распутывайте таинственные истории и разгадывайте загадки, чтобы узнать больше о России прошлого.Возглавьте стаю бесов
Но остерегайтесь — если вы не найдете, чем их занять, праздные демоны начнут мучать саму Василису!Мифы и легенды
Исследуйте мир, основанный на северной русской мифологии. Познавайте новое при помощи внутриигровой энциклопедии, созданной с помощью опытных антропологов - и найдите все народные сказки, спрятанные в игре!
Поддерживаемые языки: english, russian, simplified chinese, japanese, korean
Системные требования
Windows
- ОС *: Windows 7, 8, 10
- Процессор: Intel Core i3 3.0 GHz
- Оперативная память: 4 GB ОЗУ
- Видеокарта: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 / AMD Radeon R9 280X
- DirectX: версии 10
- Место на диске: 5 GB
Mac
- ОС: MacOS version 10.13.4 or 10.14.1 or 10.15.4 or newer
- Процессор: Intel Core i3 3.0 GHz
- Оперативная память: 4 GB ОЗУ
- Видеокарта: An OpenGL supported GPU
- Место на диске: 5 GB
Отзывы пользователей
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!
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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.
This game is basically a really good dnd campeign drenched in creepy russian fiary tales and nursery rhymes. If you like the atmosphere of the witcher, i think you would probably be into this.
This game is so enchanting. The turn based system is extremely well designed. The storytelling is really good - but I would advise you to use the russian audio, as it is a LOT better than the English audio. It can be a little tedious in the beginning, but once you get a hang of the game, it's a lot of fun to even do the side quests. It's also got multiple, equally satisfying endings depending on how you play Vasilisa. Even the ending with the most amount of sin is an interesting one!
The atmosphere of this game is beautiful, and I love that you get to learn about Slavic folklore while playing. Adding the songs into the experience was a nice touch too. Really enjoy the story!
Only thing that felt odd was if you accidentally scrolled down during some dialogue, it just skips through all the dialogue in that scene? Missed a little of it because of that. Easily avoided though, didn't happen again.
Simply, great game!
хлябь и хтонь
great style and interesting obscure lore
I did somewhat enjoy the game and I wish there was a neutral option. The good is that we explore an underrepresented mythology rooted in slavic/ russian folklore, so learning about it through piecing bits of information around the story was great.
I like the card game battle mechanics too, just been a fan of card games all my life and I like ones that have a story and are more than just PvP or Roguelike.
However, there are issues:
-The story has its twists and turns, but there are over 100 characters (apparently), and it's quite difficult to keep track of everyone. I lost a bit of interest towards the end.
-The 3D point-and-click section is really poor and janky. The puzzles are really not difficult and you find everything you need in the same or adjacent rooms. Could have been skipped I think.
-Every one of the book's 7 seals unlocks basically another "expansion" of cards. However, they still remain black or white, with no distinction (not even a symbol). Doesn't feel like you unlock new content, which could have been visually represented in some ways.
And this would have been all right, except for the biggest "sin" of this game:
-no balancing. Yeah, the game gets too easy. After about a quarter of a game, it stopped being challenging. Due to no deckbuilding restrictions, and you can make a very concentrated deck of 13 cards (you can have up to 33, but I cannot see a reason why you would), you have some combos that at first deal 100 damage in one turn, then you can scale to obscene levels doing 600, 100+ damage through different strategy (like cursing the enemies, or buffing your multi-attack cards, or stacking a lot of defense, doubling it four times, and then bonking the enemies with it).
I believe that a game that has card battles at its core should be challenging. It should encourage you to explore multiple strategies, die many times and trying different ways around different opponrnts. Having said that, if you are on the fence and don't mind cruising through the story, it's still somewhat enjoyable and satisfying. The soundtrack is good, the voice acting suffers a bit but it's passable. I would rate this a solid 5/10.
Amazing game.
Pros.:
- The story.
- The characters.
- The myths and legends, the inside of paganism and religion in Russia, not very often viewed in the video games and popular culture.
- Songs!
Cons.:
- Some minor issues in battles, which you can turn to your own good.
A tad too cryptic to be fun and neither mouse nor controller really works well as input.
I get to fulfill my witch fantasies! I have a creepy book that casts curses, I told a demon to take food away from children, and I'm respected by my family!
Almost the same game type as Slay the Spire, no rogue part and the main story is not highly replayable unless you want to toy with the sin levels. Much better story, sounds, characters, progression and visuals. Not as much combat synergies and options. Certainly worth the money.
There is a ridiculous amount of content in this game for the price. Lots of story, lots of deckbuilding and all in all a good to itch the deckbuilding itch. Hard to go wrong with this game if you like deckbuilding with supernatural elements. The illustrations are nice as well.
Русь матушка эхх
Okay, so this is a strange one. The writing is... well, "poor" would be generous. It's very badly localized and the voice acting is so heavily accented and clumsy is sounds as if it was done by the game developers themselves.
That being said, this game is fun. And I mean really fun. I'm the first person to put down a book or game because of bad writing, so it's saying a lot that I sunk 20+ hours into this one DESPITE it's terribly writing.
The deckbuilding is fluid, unique, and addictive. It's not a rogue-like deckbuilder, so you don't have to worry about losing your deck and starting over. And also in spite of its terrible writing, there's a great tooltip system that lets you hover over any highlighted word to learn about it, and because the game is HEAVY on Russian mythology/folklore, practically everything is highlighted. I actually learned A TON about Russian folklore from this and I found it all fascinating. Those skills have even translated to the real-world!
So, if you're like me and writing matter a lot to you, you might be put off by this game's first hour. However. If you turn off the sound on the dialogue (the acting is really irredeemably bad) and focus on the gameplay, you're going to find yourself loving this one.
An amazing Game focused on Russian and overall Slavic folklore about witch craft, rituals, charms and how it was during the early period of orthodox church era.
it's a deck building game that is not complicated and fun. I played it in russian localization and it's amazing. Highly recommend it.
Дополнительная информация
| Разработчик | Morteshka |
| Платформы | Windows, Mac |
| Ограничение возраста | Нет |
| Дата релиза | 24.01.2025 |
| Metacritic | 75 |
| Отзывы пользователей | 89% положительных (931) |