Games worth discovering

Roleplay as a Occult Librarian with Book of Hours!

2K View2023-08-19

BOOK OF HOURS

6.3

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Book of Hours (Reviewed)

Developer: Weather Factory

Publisher: Weather Factory

Released: Aug 17th, 2023

Price: $30 USD

Book of hours is a very unique and weird take on time management cult simulation.

It's not quite a card game, and it's not quite a story game. Yet you feel obligated to keep pushing for that "one more try" before the hours change to multiple digits and the days fly by, regardless of whether or not any genuine progress has been made.

Order, alphabetize, and govern your shelves, books, and history anyway you see fit, all while attempting to discover the mysteries that lie within each book.

In some ways, the game is a direct successor to the developer's previous introduction with Cultist Simulator, but with a more casual approach to things. Their prior game was brutal and confusing in terms of how they handled many of their tasks and management, so the criticism was justified; however, it appears to have been corrected over the years of patching and adjustments.

This does not change the reality that it is a fairly specialized genre directed to few.

Story

The Last Librarian
The principle of this game is quite simple. The previous Librarian died, and the Library has ceased to exist, being sealed away on the island of Brancrug.

You wash up on the beach, looking for answers about who you are, how you got here, and what to do next. However, you eventually become the new Librarian, entrusted with repairing the institution and unlocking all the knowledge within to help develop tales for the public who come from far and wide in search of knowledge. Which you will give with management of several books and expertise gained through research.

Presentation

Stagnant
I say this with honesty. The audio is fantastic when it plays in the background or sneaks up on you, especially the choruses of songs. However, unlike other simulation games, this game's visual appeal is limited as it just looks like a boring book.

I'd like to see at least some movement to bring the world to life outside of lights and flickering flames. Something that will keep me looking at a still image for hours.

Even when you go out of your way to hire or find someone to help guide you through rooms, I would have been nice to have something as simple as NPC cutouts roaming around the town or library, even small cut scenes to show off more of the art-style the game has to offer, rather than feeling so devoid of life and meaning.

Investigating
It took hours to realize, but you can zoom into the world close up to look for books, items, and trinkets to help increase your chances of gleaning knowledge you've already found, increase an assistance's perks, or do other tasks like writing letters, filling orders, and so on. Something so basic was overlooked for hours by me.

Gameplay

Management
There's a lot and not much to say. Shortly after washing up on the beach, you must laboriously figure out how the game works on your own. It's beyond perplexing, but to summarize in a few words and images. The bottom of the screen contains all of the information you can utilize to advance and manage your current occupation. Current events, such as the weather, might be used in dialogue with visitors and potential employees unlocking powerful Stories and Lessons to heavily empower another.

This grants them bonuses, indicated by the icons below their name. These powers will help them unlock more rooms within the Hush Mansion for you to explore and receive more books, knowledge and things to empower assistants.

To get visitors or employees you need currency. The way to get currency is to work, using your Elements, effectively meaning your body, mind and soul. You unlock more as you progress through the game and unravel the mysteries within books.

Once you start to make progression recovering your memories you can utilize them to help you unlock more of your elements to provide you with more things to do for every rotation of your day, rather than having to waste any time sitting around.

Concerns
I can see where the game is going. It's time management and resource management in the sense of where you put your books and having to go off to find them with no actual pressure put on you because you can just pause the game, or if you choose to make it a little more difficult by never using the pause feature. Which, if you ask me, is a bit foolish since I don't see why these kinds of games are so popular to play.

It has the same dynamic as Idlers, where you are frequently just waiting for the next day to make any progress for the likely impending book request or buy request. So you continually get the feeling that you want to see what happens next, but nothing really happens unless there is a major discovery or an event request popping up.

Conclusion

Boring
I don't mean to imply that it's not a good game; rather, I wish the developers had promoted their game as it is rather than the perspective of being able to zoom in so much that the books and items became a lot more detailed, as shown in the above visual. It tends to be a way to lead people to an untrue conclusion.

I had to struggle for a long time before I found my footing. However, the game still lacks a sense of logic, motivation, or direction. After 6 hours of uninteresting gameplay, it simply seemed so empty that I didn't want to continue. The only advancement I felt was unlocking new rooms, which led to additional rooms, which led to needing to figure out how to earn the right number of perks to unlock the next.

That's all there is to it while you're waiting for requests after hours of waiting and planning for the upcoming events that take their sweet time showing up.

This concludes my views of this game; while my opinions may be met with criticism, that is what distinguishes gamers; you don't have to like the same things as others, nor do you have to agree with them.

If you want to catch me on one of my streams or locate me on social media, you may do so at the following locations, I'm always playing something new.

- Pawkt