Book of Hours Preview/Demo Impressions: The Thinnest, Tastiest Vertical Slice
Credit: Title Art from Book of Hours
Book of Hours
Platform: PC
Developer: Weather Factory
Publisher: Weather Factory
Release Date: June 2023
Book of Hours, the latest upcoming game from bizarre art collective/writing duo/indie game studio Weather Factory, has tantalized fans with brief glimpses over the past few years, finally dropping a small playable demo during Steam NextFest. The game, which promises to be something like an “occult librarian simulator” with a similar interface and art style to previous indie smash Cultist Simulator, casts you as the Librarian of a mysterious clifftop library called Hush House, a punishment for some nebulous crime. In your capacity as Librarian, you catalog books, read forbidden knowledge, make nice with the townsfolk, and uncover secret Wisdoms that might lead you down dangerous pathways or cost you your sanity while giving you new skills.
The demo begins with you washing up on the shores of Brancrug Isle, home to the clifftop library of Hush House and the town of Brancrug Village. The Village is a town of suspicious people, requiring you to gain an introduction from an old friend before you continue your journey towards the Library. From there, you unlock a few locations— the local post office where you can send and receive letters, the local pub where you can hire laborers, and one of three places in town where you can gain favors and help: the local blacksmith, the rectory where the Vicar lives, and the curious duplex where the local Midwife and the Undertaker live together. Your goal (as much as there is one in the demo) is to rescue yourself from the beaches of Brancrug, find your way up through the Village, and eventually make your way into Hush House itself, where the demo ends.
The Wisdom Map from Book of Hours. Credit: The Gamer’s Lounge/Screenshot
There’s a lot to love here. The expressionistic visual style, rendering everything out of blocks of color in a way that feels one part painting and one part collage. The return of Weather Factory’s unique adventure-game system, one that sees you collecting cards and slotting them into various actions around the map. Even the newer elements of the work, which include a scrollable map and the ability to arrange objects inside the individual rooms of your library. It’s very impressive, and the way the game handles larger map elements with progress bars beneath each location is a novel way to deal with the constantly advancing clock, letting the player see what’s going on as they zoom in and out of the map.
Credit: The Gamer’s Lounge/Screenshot
The problem is that the demo is very short, comprising barely the beginning of the game (in fact, the demo ends when you get to Hush House, where the meat of the game supposedly takes place). It makes it difficult to get too many impressions from it. Book of Hours hints a lot at interlocking systems, from the simple (telling fortunes at the local pub for money) to the complicated (the upgrade tree is a dizzying web that dwarfs Cultist Simulator’s Mansus screen, with cryptic hints as to what you need to upgrade). Even getting off the opening beach requires careful and slow consideration of your options. What you get is fantastic and finely tuned, though, in spite of being abrupt.
Maybe that was the idea? Hint at something grand, show what you have for now in a sort of playable alpha format, and get people on board for the rest? If so, it’s certainly intriguing. Given the degree of control in the demo, one can only hope that the full game is as promising and broad as the demo suggests, the systems as deep as Weather Factory promises.
Regardless, we won’t have long to wait, as Book of Hours arrives in full resplendence this June for PC. If this is the thin vertical slice we’re getting so far, I for one can’t wait to dive in.