Book of Hours News

"Mrs Kille respectfully addresses Morgen as 'Chaculette'- a title that Morgen seems to recognise - and bows her head. Morgen touches a finger to her lips, and then to Mrs Kille's forehead - perhaps a blessing, perhaps something else."

It's finally here! HOUSE OF LIGHT is now available on Steam. Don't keep reading this! Go play it! That honey-haunted pumpkin pie ain't gonna bake itself!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2834350/BOOK_OF_HOURS_HOUSE_OF_LIGHT/

HOUSE OF LIGHT adds a novel's worth of new content to BOOK OF HOURS. It's free to anyone with Perpetual Edition and 10% off for everyone in the first week of sale. It's also purchasable as a new Anthology Edition bundle (including BOOK OF HOURS, HOUSE OF LIGHT and the soundtrack) all with an extra 15% off everything - just like the Anthology Edition of Cultist Simulator. This is the best value and most definitive version of the game you can buy.

Once purchased (or if you're a PE owner, once you update to the latest version of the game), you should see a new HOUSE OF LIGHT button on the bottom left-hand corner of the main menu screen. Clicking it will open a 'spoiler-light' introduction to the new content (and how to get it in-game), but I'll share it here too to whet your appetite:

[h3]FOOD[/h3]
Combine Ingredients, Sustenance, and Kitchenware items at the three Kitchen workstations to create nearly a hundred new dishes. TIP: The Spice Scales, and the Spices & Savours skill, will substitute for each other.



[h3]A WRITING-CASE[/h3]
Once you've received this gift, you can record addresses from the calling-cards left by satisfied visitors; and write to these visitors to invite them back to the House. TIP: Visitors don't arrive instantly; visitors don't leave calling cards until you've helped them; and some visitors are easier to summon than others.



[h3]SALONS[/h3]
Place food and drink in one of the six Salon rooms, and then use the bell to begin a Salon. Do it right and you'll be rewarded with sparkling conversation... and Lessons. TIP: Visitors usually prefer food and drink which matches their primary Interest, but some have additional requirements.



[h3]MANUSCRIPTS[/h3]
Use Paper, Ink, and a Skill to write a Manuscript based on that skill. These Manuscripts may be necessary to satisfy thirsts for specific knowledge in FURTHER STORIES. Lessons from Salons will help you improve those Skills and write more useful Manuscripts. TIP: You can't reliably control what Visitors will discuss - it's a party, not an interrogation - but they'll usually provide lessons related to their shared Interests.



[h3]FURTHER STORIES[/h3]
Once you've completed an Incident, follow it up in the Tree of Wisdoms. Visitors will need more specific help here - perhaps a book on a specific topic, or a specific book. TIP: An Affair opens to Further Stories once all interested Visitors have had the opportunity to ask you for help with it. Be aware in some Further Stories, it can make a difference who you originally helped. Be careful. This is the one part of the game where choices can sometimes have permanent consequences.



[h3]THE INSTITUTE[/h3]
Look for the lighthouse, out at sea. When your Visitors are ready, use it to establish the true heirs to the Curia of the Isle. TIP: Further Stories outcomes can inspire your Visitors to support the Institute - for their own reasons. Their nature is constant, but some story outcomes can make them decide to emphasise one agenda over another.







If you like HOUSE OF LIGHT, please leave it a positive review! People tend not to leave reviews for expansions / DLC, but it would be extremely helpful if you do for this expansion. So if you can, please give us a nice blue thumbs up! ✨👍✨






HOUSE OF LIGHT is currently being translated into Russian and Simplified Chinese, to match the tip-top localisations of the base game. Please be patient with us while our wonderful localisers complete their work. We're actually planning to launch Simplified Chinese beta for HOUSE OF LIGHT next week!

Japanese is coming for the full game and the beta ASAP. More news on that when we have confirmed dates.

We're still considering translating BOOK OF HOURS into other languages. We'll let everyone know if we decide to go ahead with any additional localisations, just as soon as they're confirmed in studio.






Everyone's favourite Canadian (OK, after Benton Fraser from Due South), Systemchalk, is livestreaming BOOK OF HOURS on the store page right now. If you'd like to experience the sensation of pouring warm maple syrup into your ear while you drowse by a library fireplace, tune in.

Also, all merch is currently 25% off in the shop to celebrate HOUSE OF LIGHT's launch, so go nuts with all the things you've had your eyes on but wanted to wait for a good deal (here's looking at you, Lady Afterwards).

Fingers crossed you enjoy all the love we put into HOUSE OF LIGHT. Thanks so much for playing, and happy hosting in Hush House!

"Before gods arose from blood, before ever ape stood upright, this was the language heard in the House of the Sun...”

All 200,000 words of BOOK OF HOURS are now available in Simplified Chinese and Russian! (Japanese language is coming a little later.) We’ve tried to capture the poetry of the original English as much as possible, so whatever language you choose, we hope it’s a joy to play.



Firstly, make sure you’ve updated the game to the latest version. BOOK OF HOURS should then automatically load in your default language (so if you browse Steam in Simplified Chinese, the game should automatically display in Simplified Chinese). If it doesn’t, just select the language you want from the ‘Languages’ drop-down menu on the title screen. We strongly recommend - we urge you with a desperate passion - to start a new game after switching languages. It might bork your game if you don’t!

If you encounter any bugs (particularly language bugs, like typos or translations that don’t make sense) please email [email protected] and let us know. Some things might be a stylistic choice on behalf of our excellent localisers, but we want to make these the best they can be. All feedback is welcome.

Please note that our major expansion, HOUSE OF LIGHT, launches next month on Thursday 26th September. It’s huge - including hundreds of new recipes, Visitor interactions, and more - so it will not be playable in Russian or Simplified Chinese on launch day. We’ll release Russian and Simplified Chinese for HOUSE OF LIGHT as soon as it’s humanly possible to translate it. Thank you for being patient with us while we make it happen!

If you like BOOK OF HOURS, please leave us a nice review and tell your friends about it. It’s really hard getting the word out to people we can’t speak to directly, so help us spread the melancholy joy of Brancrug by using the enviable language skills we don’t have. Thank you! ♥

"Facts are like cows. If you stare them in the face hard enough, they generally run away."
— Mervyn Bunter, Clouds of Witness (1926)

Facts are the bricks of life, but they need a few licks of paint before you want to look at them. Mr Gradgrind of Hard Times said: "Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else." And he turned out to be the villain of the piece! So today I am giving you facts, but coated in glorious technicolour.



You all know that HOUSE OF LIGHT is launching on Thursday 26th September at 6PM BST. I can now confirm that it will cost $14.99 / £12.99 / €13.99 with a 10% launch discount in the first week of sale (except if you're a Perpetual Edition owner, in which case it's free). We'll also be adding a new BOOK OF HOURS: Anthology Edition bundle, just like Cultist Simulator, which includes the base game, the soundtrack and HOUSE OF LIGHT with a 15%-off-everything discount (making it about $43.32 / £35.67 / €41.21 in total). This should make it easy for first-time buyers to get the definitive edition of the game with one click, and for existing fans to force gentle occult librarianship on all their friends by buying it as a gift for someone else.



AK has already mentioned this in a few places, but it's worth reiterating that HOUSE OF LIGHT is roughly comparable in size to all Cultist's DLCs wrapped up in one. Cultist had lots of smaller expansions, but we tried something different with BOOK OF HOURS and spent much longer making one really chunky expansion rather than lots of little pieces. So just in case anyone was worried about the value of Perpetual Edition dropping, it hasn't! It's all just coming at once this time.

Depending on how HOUSE OF LIGHT goes, and how pre-production on our Mysterious Game Three goes, we'll make a decision in the first half of 2025 about whether we come back to BOOK OF HOURS and release additional expansions like HOUSE OF HUES. More on that as/when we have updates.



Now, for some long-awaited news...



It finally has a release date! That release date is:

[h2]🎴🎃🦇 HALLOWEEN 🦇🎃🎴
(Thursday 31st October 2024)[/h2]



We'll be releasing it on our Etsy shop at 6PM GMT, it'll cost £70 + shipping, and we'll be starting with 500 signed, limited edition copies. Every deck comes with a velvet tarot bag and quick start guide, but the first 500 decks will also contain a certificate of authenticity, signed and numbered by 'the artist'. Once these are gone, they're gone - so if the Tarot of the Hours and the Lady Afterwards launches are anything to go by, I'd suggest camping out on the Etsy shop at this time on Halloween and grabbing a copy while they're still there.

If you miss out on the first 500, don't worry. Like we did with the Tarot of the Hours - to make sure everyone in all time zones had a fair chance of getting a deck - we'll release another 500 Lucid Tarots over November / December. If we sell out, we'll restock for 2025. So everyone who wants a deck will be able to get one - we just have to take it slow so I (and my mum and dad, who have been unceremoniously roped in for packing duty) can manage demand.

Right. See you on the other side of Simplified Chinese and Russian release, which is happening next week on Thursday 29th August. Wish us luck!

* A fix specifically for the logo not changing when you switched specifically from Chinese to Russian in the menu.
* Another fix for the bug the logo fix caused, where all buildings in Brancrug looked like the Sweet Bones.