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Rebuild an occult library in this chill follow-up to Cultist Simulator - Book of Hours Quick Review

7K View2023-08-18

BOOK OF HOURS

6.3

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SHOULD I PLAY BOOK OF HOURS?

Play it if you’re a fan of Cultist Simulator or like complex games with unique mechanics. Book of Hours is an odd and fascinating game with a Lovecraftian narrative. It’s technically a deck-building RPG, but there are no battles with monsters or trips through dungeons. Instead, you play as a librarian working to rebuild an occult library. The gameplay can be pretty confusing, especially if you haven’t played Cultist Simulator, but once you get a handle on the mechanics, it’s a satisfying experience that’s unlike anything else.

TIME PLAYED

I played around eight hours of Book of Hours, which gave me plenty of time to uncover strange cards, unlock old memories, and work on restoring the massive library. Depending on your playstyle, Book of Hours has anywhere from twenty to forty hours of gameplay, so I’ve only gotten a glimpse of its narrative. What I’ve seen so far is absolutely enthralling, and I’m eager to uncover more of the game’s secrets.

WHAT’S AWESOME ABOUT BOOK OF HOURS?

• Incredible atmosphere. When I began Book of Hours, the character I played was washed up on a rocky beach, clutching a water-soaked book while his health card slowly ticked down. The high-stakes opening does a fantastic job of setting the game’s tone, and it managed to keep me on edge even after I found shelter and dried myself off.

There’s no voice acting in Book of Hours, and I spent most of my time clicking through cards and reading their descriptions. In spite of that, the game manages to feel incredibly immersive. Whether I was listening to the sound of wind and rainfall, getting swept away by the phenomenal soundtrack, or watching the light change from day to night, I felt like I was really visiting an old seaside village.

• Unique gameplay mechanics. Book of Hours is similar to Cultist Simulator, but the mechanics have been streamlined and refined. I started the game with a handful of cards, and it was up to me to figure out what to do with them. The system is difficult to explain, but it’s essentially a complex crafting game. Every card is associated with certain aspects and colors, and using like-colored cards in the same way allowed me to generate new cards, and those cards opened up new possibilities.

At first, my character's head was hazy, and he wasn’t sure where to go next. I used soul cards to refine his memories, and he eventually recalled the address of an old friend. I shared that address with a passing fisherman, who kindly guided me to my next destination. Every card I collected opened up new paths, and it was up to me to decide which path I wanted to follow. It’s a system that requires a lot of experimentation, and it might feel frustrating or overwhelming at first, but once I had the basics down, it was hard to stop playing.

• Fantastic world-building. Narrative-focused games like Book of Hours live or die by their story, and thankfully, the writing here is absolutely fantastic. Instead of asking me to read long walls of text, Book of Hours doled out its story in tiny, tantalizing bites. It’s filled with shady characters and strange secrets, and uncovering new pieces of information was always a delight. Even at its oddest, the game feels like it takes place in a living, breathing world.

• Surprisingly chill gameplay. “Book of Hours is not a punishing game, unless you want it to be.” That’s the message that greeted me when I launched Book of Hours for the first time, and it wound up being true. If you’ve played Cultist Simulator, you know it can be absolutely brutal. It’s normal to starve to death, go insane, or die of a strange malady before you ever figure out its mechanics.

Book of Hours does have some time management, but it’s a pretty low-pressure game overall. I never ran into a fail state during my playtime, and I’m not sure if it’s even possible to die. Since I didn’t have many in-game consequences to worry about, I felt free to take my time, experiment, and figure out the game at my own pace.

WHAT SUCKS ABOUT BOOK OF HOURS?

• It’s really confusing. Book of Hours throws players straight into the deep end and leaves them to find their own way out. People that have played Cultist Simulator will grasp the basics quickly enough, but many newcomers will be completely lost. There’s no tutorial and barely any instructions. For me, figuring out what to do next was part of the fun, but if you don’t want to piece together rules and systems, this probably won’t be up your alley.

• The UI is frustrating. I love how complex and bizarre Book of Hours is, but there were many times when the interface left me feeling annoyed. If I placed a card in the wrong destination, it brought up a screen-blocking pop-up that didn’t disappear on its own, but other, more useful pop-ups faded away in an instant. At first, I struggled to read the tiny in-game text, but thankfully, I realized I could fix this issue by turning on “Accessible Card Text” in the settings menu.

Not only is the UI clunkier than it should be, but the game doesn’t track a lot of essential information, which meant I had to track things by hand. I’m pretty sure I read a lot of books several times over before I started writing down what I had and hadn’t read. Book of Hours is already hard to make sense of, and the awkward UI makes things even more complicated.

💬 Will you uncover bizarre mysteries in Book of Hours, or will you let its dark secrets stay buried? Share your thoughts in the comments!