Book of Hours
2023.8.b.9
- Aspect mouseover now works as everyone expected it to ('pulse cards with this aspect') instead of the previous logiconfusing approach ('pulse cards with this aspect at this level')
- Sound effects for pause/unpause
- Village houses update after Unsociable Hours end, without you needing to put a card in them.
- Tantras are now correctly categorised as scrolls.
- Nocturnary now accepts Devices (in existing saves, you might need to run a recipe through it before you see the slot change.)
- Added absent requirements to Solar and Nocturnal workbenches.
- Fixed a weird early softlock where you could send the Fisherman back to the village by mistake.
- Fixed annoying habit of windows of opening mostly-offscreen on load
- Baronial and Curia era uncatalogued books swapped to correct colours. Sorry for any alarm this may cause.
- Daymare wants Knock, not Winter, to deal with the Endless Guest.
- Mommets are slightly more useful.
- Now that we've seen just how many items some Librarians leave outside the house, it stretches across the bridge rather than clumping in antigravity mode
- Bridge button glow doesn't stick on mouseover
- The Poet and the Nun can make use of additional exaltation items.
- You can no longer bind a key to two commands! (if you try, it'll swap the commands)
- ESC exits keybinds
- Commands can now be bound to exotic mouse buttons (let us know if your high-end mouse / accessibility-focused device still has unbindable buttons, we'll do what we can)
- Moved a couple of troublesome starting items to where they're less troublesome
- Added another row to card trays for people who've really gone wide on skills (more QoL to come, here)
- Mirrors in the Hall of Division now correctly allow Knock aspect. (If that's not working for you, run any recipe through the workstation, it'll refresh and catch up with itself)
- Fixed a couple of teeny but significant ending glitches
- Another raft of typos and text tweaks
2023.8.b.8
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WEATHERMAKER
- Scroll bar on news window now responds to scroll wheel!
- Double-click to zoom to room, double-click again to zoom in closer (little rough still, I'll clean it up)
- Animals no longer recover from hunger at dawn (but dw, they won't starve either!)
- Better hints about how to hire rare guests at the Sweet Bones
- Fixed several floaty / odd shelves
- Workstations and items are interactable at a slightly farther distance
- We stopped autosaving when you alt-tab out, for reasons
- Some improvements to camera movement
- Comfort slots are less obtrusive
- Assistance can't be right-clicked to an inappropriate rooms lot
- Fixed Aspect mixup on three Numina
- Drag hints go away forever after a half-dozen times (placeholder for a better system)
- Postage slot will now only accept money
- Various other typos and hint clean-ups
'Though Much is Taken, Much Abides'
The launch went really, really well. Lottie and I teared up more than once, basically the max number of times Brits are allowed to show emotion and a bit over. Thank you, everyone.
The downside of the launch going really well is that I've answered something like a hundred help tickets since Thursday night and I have another 135 in my inbox right now! So I'm taking today off but next week I'll be back on the patch train. Our regular freelancer, Chelnoque, is pitching in, and we're getting a specialist in from the Knights of Unity for optimisation and obscure technical issues ('why is my mouse cursor insanely tiny on this Linux distro') .
The next month is going to be all about quality of life improvements and bug fixes - after that, a holiday - after that, we'll start looking at content updates and, ultimately, localisation. But it's QoL first. We don't want to polish away the intentionally eccentric design decisions that some people have fallen in love with... but we don't want to annoy people needlessly, either. There's almost always a smart third way.
We probably won't add an in-game recipe book... but we probably will add in-game note-taking as room notes or bookshelf plaques.
We probably won't add fast-travel to Brancrug, because I want the House to feel remote... but we definitely will tweak and improve ways to get around the map and reduce wear on the wrist.
We might add mouseover to view on slots... and we definitely will find ways to make the game less 'clicky'.
And so on and so on and so on and so on. We're nowhere near done with this game: we're going to keep on improving and expanding it. Thank you to everyone who's left a review. As I said elsewhere, I enjoy reading the rave reviews much more. But the nuanced positive reviews, and even the negative ones, are also the designer's meat and drink, and we're going to use them to polish this game until you can see your face in it.
EDIT: yes polish the game with meat AND WHAT
2023.8.b.5
- Fixed broken tooltips on Essential/Required/Forbidden
- Disabled saving (and autosaving) in Wisdoms Tree for now
- Increased number of backup saves from 7 to 14
- Fixed Linux and Steam Deck cloud config (I think!)
- You can no longer learn Skills at Desks (it could break skill progression)
Teeny hotfix for shelves blocked by comfort slots
PATCH 2023.8.b.3
- Insane bug where unlocking Brancrug would try trigger an achievement tens of thousands of times: fixed
- Added missing dialogue for Corso re: Apollo and Marsyas ('stains, Librarian'); also he now reads Phrygian
- Resting at the Sweet Bones in Numa has an outcome
- comfort slots are displayed with a gentle uplight hint
- reading... messages appear before ...read messages
- Improved some placement rules for wall art and books
- Oversized Egg no longer has Living Relic aspect
- corrupt autosaves can (again) be bypassed by loading backups from the menu
- Display layout tidier for items/slots with lots of aspects
- Multiple achieved endings displayed more attractively
- Beasts can now be released and items renounced to the Sea
- Dividing a Gold Spintria at the smithy is no longer a perpetual money exploit
- HOTFIX: comfort slots no longer block bust niches on the Grand Ascent
- updated credits in memoriam Mickey Erbe
PATCH 2023.8.b.2
We've just uploaded a bunch of bug fixes and quality of life tweaks to the beta branch, so if anyone fancies jumping on and testing them out, please do!
How to get on the beta branch
- Go to your Steam Library and right click on BOOK OF HOURS
- Select 'Properties'
- Click 'Beta' from the menu on the left
- Select 'beta - here might be dragons' from the 'Beta participation' drop down on the right
Changes in PATCH 2023.8.b.2
- Arrow / WSAD key navigation no longer sticks
- Insane bug where unlocking Brancrug would try trigger an achievement tens of thousands of times: fixed
- Added missing dialogue for Corso re: Apollo and Marsyas ('stains, Librarian'); also he now reads Phrygian
- Resting at the Sweet Bones in Numa has an outcome
- Comfort slots are displayed with a gentle uplight hint
- Reading... messages appear before ...read messages
- Improved some placement rules for wall art and books
- Oversized Egg no longer has Living Relic aspect
- Corrupt autosaves can (again) be bypassed by loading backups from the menu
- Display layout tidier for items/slots with lots of aspects
- Multiple achieved endings displayed more attractively
- Updated credits in memoriam Mickey Erbe
We'll push the beta branch to live later today once we've had a few hours to test it. Let us know if you're having any problems by sending an email to support@weatherfactory.biz, but hopefully your biggest concerns are where to put that nice chaise-longue and finding tinned mackerel to feed the cat.
Happy Friday, have a wonderful weekend, and don't worry about that muffled thumping that definitely isn't coming from the Stair Tenebrous. More soon!
BOOK OF HOURS IS OUT NOW!
“BOOKS ARE THE MEMORY WHICH DOES NOT DIE.”
(inscribed in five languages over the gate of Hush House)
I can’t believe I’m writing this, but: BOOK OF HOURS is OUT NOW! 😱😱😱😱
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1028310/BOOK_OF_HOURS/
If you like what you see, leave us a review. Our games tend towards the weird and inexplicable, and it’s incredibly helpful to let other gamers know that we’ve not just, like, knitted a sock and drawn a face on it or something. Help unweird and explicate us! As much as is possible. ♥
After Cultist Simulator, we wanted to set our next game in the same universe - but AK felt bad that he’d made another game about eating people and bringing the apocalypse, and he wanted to write something kinder. Fast forward four years and here we are, in the soft golden glow of a deep auburn game about managing an occult library, of organising things carefully and thoughtfully, of being left alone in a beautiful Gormenghastian abbey to light candles and read books and walk the parapets, where every so often someone drops by to ask you something or give you a book - and then they go away again. BOOK OF HOURS: the introvert’s dream!
I thought you might be interested in some fragments of development history. You might recognise some things that evolved into the game we’ve just released, and others that (rightly) were left by the wayside because for the love of god how was that UI ever going to work? Here’s a little sample:
Early sketches for our hero art:
Some of the earliest design notes:
The first draft layout of Hush House:
Early Hush House design:
Some early prototypes of what BoH's art might look like:
Our 'porthole' phase:
We wanted to build something that had the crunchy recipe-based mechanics of Cultist Sim but was a welcoming place, somewhere you could go just to be on your own even if you weren’t working to achieve anything: a sun-dappled hammock; a candle-lit nook; a secret walled garden whose only key is yours. BOOK OF HOURS will not be for everyone, but I hope everyone can feel the love we poured in radiating from the worn stones of Hush House, the wave-weathered rocks around Crowcross Sands, the lamp-lit leaded-glass windows of the Sweet Bones, and the purr of the well-fed cat you brought in from the cold.
The mellifluous Systemchalk is broadcasting BOOK OF HOURS live on the Steam page, if you'd like to see the game in action. Alternatively, join us at 8PM BST / 12PM PDT for an AMA on r/Gaming (live here!), or in a live interview on GOG’s Twitch stream tomorrow at 7PM BST / 11AM PDT. Thank you so much for reading, and if you decide to pick up BOOK OF HOURS this week, may the Hours look kindly on your deeds.
Love,
Lottie & Alexis
Tiny Weekend Beta Patch
For everyone else... the beta patch rejoices in the name of 'Release Candidate 7', which means that it's the version you'll see on Thursday, in 5 days 22 hours 36 minutes 37 seconds. Except by the time you read this that time is GUARANTEED TO BE EVEN SHORTER.
pip pip
AK
The Countdown Begins
I thought it’d be useful to collect all the most important release info in one place. Let me know if I’ve missed anything, and feel free to ask questions in the comments!
The main points
- Launching: Thursday 17th August 2023 @ 6PM BST / 10AM PDT
- Platforms: Steam + GOG (on Windows, Mac and Linux)
- Price: £19.99 / $24.99
- Launch deal: 10% launch discount + Perpetual Edition for anyone buying in Week 1
‘Perpetual Edition’ means you get all future paid expansions for FREE for EVER, just like people who bought Cultist Sim in its first week of sale. Every copy of the game sold in Week 1 is automatically Perpetual Edition (you don’t have to do anything special to unlock it), it costs the same as the normal version of the game, and it’s available on both Steam and GOG. You can check if you have Perpetual Edition by looking for this badge of honour on the title screen:
How YOU can help
Now I will let you into one of the deepest and most guarded secrets of professional game development. Knowledge that is passed down in hushed tones from elders to their apprentices and jealously guarded from public view by archons of our industry, lest such power fry your tiny minds. This is how PC games succeed:
Steam is a slumbering god. Steam does not give a pair of foetid dingo’s kidneys about an indie game until something pokes it to say there’s something worth waking up for. And it is only with YOUR help that we can be the twitching and irresistible mouse in this totally viable metaphor that will make the algorithm perk up, dilate its pupils to the sizes of twin moons and bless us with its attention – thus making BOOK OF HOURS a success.
Here are the best things you can do to poke the god:
- Buy BOOK OF HOURS at launch. Lots of people buying very shortly after launch tells Steam: this game is beloved by its people. Perhaps I should attend.
- Leave a positive Steam review. Positive Steam reviews are one off the biggest factors in people’s decision to buy a game (as far as I can tell, it’s screenshots + Steam reviews) AND ALSO they tell Steam: this game is good. It can make money. Promote it!
- Tell all your friends. The more traffic our Steam page gets, the more enticing the game looks to the algorithm (‘If I promote it more, even more mice will come’). So if you enthuse to your friends, suggest BOOK OF HOURS to streamers, talk about it on social media, share screenshots or do anything that might encourage more people to check out the game, that makes the algorithm think: this is the most popular game in the world. It will bring Valve 8 trillion delicious English pounds. I shall put it on the front page.
TLDR: help us twitch enticingly at launch, like a doomed mouse. I am available to explain further hidden mysteries of game dev for a shockingly high day rate, please see my agent (AK) for further details.
What’s coming next
Apart from this damn library game actually, finally, genuinely launching, here’s what to expect over the next week and a bit:
- 17th August – AK and I are running an AMA on launch day at 8PM BST / 12PM PDT on r/Games. We’ll crosspost to the WF subreddit for ease of access, so come say hi and chat with us!
- 18th August – AK and I join Cultist Sim super-streamer Systemchalk for a BOOK OF HOURS dev stream at 7PM BST / 11AM PDT on GOG’s Twitch. Try explaining that sentence to someone from the 1930s.
We have lots of post-launch plans – additional features, QoL updates, big content drops and later paid DLC, localisation, etc – but we’re waiting to see how the game lands before confirming anything. Testers will notice a bunch of improvements since the last beta – an in-game music player, improved workstation UI, adorable pet SFX, more books, loads of art tweaks (including new places to put things down…!) and more. Wish us luck, and thank you so much for your support over the years. Get ready to library your hearts out. ♥