Book of Hours News

I've been working on some new revolutionary (!) UI for our upcoming BOOK OF HOURS expansion, but I can't show you it yet because it's not final functionality, and we don't want people misconstruing an early mock-up of an eight-slot situation window devoted entirely to teacakes as a promise that HOUSE OF LIGHT will feature, at minimum, 400 different types of bun. But I am very excited to show it to you when we're more certain of the direction: it makes a lot of our upcoming expansion functionality much clearer.

What I can share, though, are some juicy new details: because the HOUSE OF LIGHT Steam page is now live! If you can, please head over and wishlist it, even if you're a lucky Perpetual Edition holder who'll get the expansion for free when it launches. (Wishlists make Steam think we'll make them £££ which means they're more likely to promote HoL / BOOK OF HOURS. Cf the algorithm section on this page from history.) It also means you'll receive an email the moment the expansion is live, so you can dive in and start playing lickety-split. Thank you!

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

Here's a gloss on the main points you'll see on the HoL Steam page, to explain where we're taking things...

[h2]Social Events[/h2]

Host influential dinner parties in the crumbling splendour of Hush House. Choose a location that suits you - the Hall of Division, the Chapter House, or the Physic Garden, perhaps? - and send out invitations. Become tastemaker of the occult demimonde, or curate an exclusive society of only the most select adepts. Get to know the great and the good, introduce topics for discussion around the table, and observe the chemistry - or animus - between your guests. You'll need food, drink, ambience, entertainment and more, but a successful soirée will influence the world in subtle ways, sending ripples far beyond your walls.

NB: AK is still working on the design and this is TBC, but it might be possible to to invite Visitors AND named Assistants - which means you could sit Reverend Timothy down next to Aunt Mopsy and see whether Good triumphs over Evil, or sandwich Denzil between Franklin Bancroft and Daymare to torture his saturnine soul.


[h2]Cooking[/h2]

Your guests will grow hungry, and it's up to you to cater to their interesting palates. Bake honey sandwich cakes and pair with port. Perfect beef suet pudding. Serve veal and cucumber, dark-smelling 'garden nectar', or a simple bowl of tinned peaches and cream. Dive into the dangerous world of 1930s European recipes and influence your attendees with your choice of spices, sweetmeats and dainties.

NB: like my teacake point above, PLEASE NOTE that we do not guarantee the presence of honey sandwich cakes, port, beef suet pudding, veal and/or cucumber, or tinned peaches and cream. We haven't yet confirmed exactly what recipes you'll be able to cook in the game, though we will update the description to reflect specific recipes nearer the time if they change from this list. If it makes you feel better, 'garden nectar' was actually a thing in 1930s English cuisine, apparently 'an elegant variation of borscht' which AK will undoubtedly turn into something horrible like Mondays broiled in the blood of the Thunderskin or something. In hindsight, maybe that doesn't make you feel better.


[h2]Advanced Visitor Stories[/h2]

You've dabbled in the Affair of the Oriflamme Heist. You've guessed what lies in the Messenger's Casket. Now help your Visitors delve deeper. Encourage alliances between strangers, or convince an ally to help you stymie a foe. Using an innovative new system, influence the wider world with in-depth Visitor stories and see the results between the branches of the Wisdom Tree. Where now does the dappled rose flourish? What did Zuthi hear at the Roost? What is the deeper connection between Rowena, Yvette, and Ys?

Once you've met someone, you'll also be able to add them to your address book and invite them to Hush House to pursue their business at a time of your choosing. When the Librarian calls, the invisible world listens.

NB: take particular note of 'innovative new system' and 'see the results between the branches of the Wisdom Tree'. Again, this is more UI I can't show you yet but it is a new format for storytelling in BOOK OF HOURS that a) looks significantly different from stories played out elsewhere in situation windows and b) connects more closely with the Wisdom Tree. More on that later, with pictures.


[h2]The Lighthouse Institute[/h2]

You've wined, dined and appraised your chosen guests - now decide who's worthy to form the board of the Lighthouse Institute. Who should be Treasurer? Who might suit Secretary Vigilant? Does your group all share the same agenda, or does one boardmember sympathise with the Chandler, while another fears his coming Dawn?

Your selection will found the influential Lighthouse Institute and set its course through the world. So take your time, and choose wisely.





On another news-y note, we announced earlier this week that the Lucid Tarot colouring book - showcasing all 78 cards from our upcoming transparent stained-glass PVC deck - will launch on the merch shop on Wednesday 28th February. As with all our new merch, this is an experiment so it's initially a limited edition: there're only 500 copies of this colouring book, to get a sense of appetite for the item in question. They're really lovely, though - so if you fancy a quiet night in with a glass of wine, or a sunlit afternoon watching YouTube and doodling or something - I think you might like them. :)

"January 9th, 1838. A heavy snow falls on Brancrug. When the staff dig themselves out, Solomon Husher, third Librarian of the House, has disappeared from his quarters in the Long Tower, leaving a letter of resignation. 'Winter,' the letter concludes, 'does not wait forever; though Janus might.' Husher is never seen again, but every year on the same day, his footprints can be found beneath the Tree."

What were you doing on the 9th, when Husher's footprints once again appeared beneath the tree? We were working on BOOK OF HOURS' latest patch, EHSAN, which contains:



I haven't heard of anyone finding the 'well-hidden surprises' yet - I yelped with surprise and delight the first time I found them - so perhaps they're too well-hidden. It'll move to the main branch some time next month now AK's fixed the bug that removed all unlocking requirements from certain rooms, and the one that seemed to play the shrieking howl of the Wolf-Divided every time you clicked a button.

The EHSAN e.7 patch is the fifth major patch and the... fortieth? incremental update since launch. AK started typing a long preening bit about all the changes we'd put in and then realised that would be interesting mostly to us, so we'll spare you lot, but if you are interested, the in-game patch notes go all the way back to October, and the TWELVE DISMAYS OF CHRISTMAS post explains the silliest bug of his career. On the upside, those well-hidden surprises mentioned earlier: apparently one player found one with the assistance of their dog; others may be available to a keen-eyed, or a forward-looking, Librarian. There'll be more quality-of-life updates eventually, but for now we're shifting focus to the HOUSE OF LIGHT expansion, so those updates will likely arrive in a free update alongside it.



Over to AK...

While I work on HOUSE OF LIGHT I'm also answering dozens of questions from our Chinese, Japanese and Russian translators. Just as with Cultist Simulator,  localisation is a trip. We vetted all three teams to make sure they include fans who understand the context, and it's bloody great to be answering questions this detailed, but it's hard work. I remember sitting in a hut in Dungeness inventing daft hybrid etymologies and thinking 'this'll haunt me if we do Chinese again'; well, now I'm haunted. Some of my recent answers:

• "Both suggest a cross in English. 'Rood' is an Old English term for the Christian cross, 'Cruciate' is from Latin crucis, cross. 'Chancel' has several meanings in English but one is the dividing screen between the more and less holy parts of a church - which is also known as the 'rood screen'. The terms are as you say all largely equivalent and the general sense of 'something that separates the profane from the sacred / more sacred from less sacred' would be good. If in doubt, I'd just use the same term three times."
  
  
• "There's an obscure adjective, 'nivean', from Latin nix/nivis, which means snow-white. I used a variant spelling because 'Nivea' is a popular European skin-care brand. 🙃"
  
  
• "Speculum is Latin for mirror, and later in English was used to mean (a) a particular kind of mirror used in telescopes (b) a scrying-mirror used by seers. So 'speculist' implies a mirror-specialist, probably with an occult connection. NB a speculum in modern English refers exclusively to a medical instrument used by gynaecologists! This is definitely not a reference I want to imply here."
  
  

[LB: This is our upcoming BOOK OF HOURS expansion! If you haven't heard of it I'm not doing marketing properly. Excuse me while I go cry over there. Sorry, back to AK.]

I want to do three things with this:

• Variety of outcomes from the Visitor stories. I actually loathe the term 'branching narrative' because it imprisons us in a 1990s idea of CYOA tree-diagram structures, but 'stories with variety in outcome' lacks zing. Whichever term you use, there ain't any of it in the Visitor stories as they stand. Partly this is just because I wouldn't have had time to write the things, partly because it's hard, maybe impossible, to write stories with variant outcomes in a game that explicitly tells you that there are no mistakes and you can't lock yourself out of anything (ask ten dedicated CRPG players of your acquaintance how many of them don't look at a wiki nowadays before making a key narrative decision - and then imagine finding you've missed out on a decision because the visitor came and went while you were unlocking the Wine Cellar). But obviously people were always going to want more (a) relevant story about (b) known characters with (c) choices that allow self-expression. So releasing that as an expansion neatly addresses both probs: we now have some months we didn't have before launch, and it'll be an opt-in for people who've played the game once already or who want a bit more variety in their outcome, FOMO be damned.
  
  
• Cooking, and social events. There's a bag of flour and a mixing bowl in the Hush House kitchens, but you can't bake a cake. This is because we started with art for the kitchens, which we sliced up and turned into manipulable objects, and some fitted more naturally into the crafting system than others. But that's not relevant to people who just want to bake a cake. Or have vegetables less generic than a sack. Meanwhile I've seen a heartening number of players talk about how they in-game RP afternoon tea with Visitors and villagers. And it ties together with more Visitor engagement. Some parts of this point may end up in the game as a free update - I don't know until I've worked through the design - it depends on how easy or not it is to tease apart from the rest.
  
  
• A bridge to the next game. Lottie and I have an unusually clear idea about Game Three - though we might change our minds and we won't be starting on it until at least 2025 - and I want to lay down a few barrels of the good story so it'll be aged and flavourful by the time it shows up in Three. I'm also planning ahead and trying out some ideas with design, with narrative structure and with UI that - by Three - should ultimately take us beyond windows-and-slots. It's a good model, it's brought us a long way, but it does feel sometimes like trying to write through a keyhole.

To establish a skeleton that links all that, I'm going off to spend a week in a quiet place with good light, a very large table and a boxful of cards and coloured pens (and zero cats, so I can go to bed with a tableful of cards and enjoy a morning without regret) - while Lottie tinkers with a prototype for something to do with BOOK OF HOURS' visuals which will, we hope, make some people fall off their chairs.

"Scholars and adepts recognise nine Wisdoms... though they disagree where one Wisdom ends and another begins."

Now, back to LB for a final arty update. Remember this from the advent calendar?



It is now a reality! Our very first piece of jewellery - the golden Wisdom Tree necklace - is out now on the Etsy shop. Featuring all the Wisdoms from Birdsong to Skolekosophy, you can now adorn yourself with the occult symbol over which scholars have squabbled for centuries. We're only making 500 of these as a test run, to see how jewellery sells. Maybe Cultist fans despise vanity! Maybe BOOK OF HOURS players are too busy reading books! Well, if you *do* want a beautiful gold-plated pendant for your or someone else's neck, get it while stocks last...



(I especially recommend purchasing now if you intend these as any sort of Valentine's gift. International shipping takes 3+weeks, so sooner is better!)

While we're talking merch, we have the Hours notebooks (replacing the long-lost Cultist notebook which ran out a few years ago now), our tarot adult colouring book...



...and the Lucid Tarot itself finally shouldering its way through the world's skin, like a clawed and ruthless uncle or a headless flapping bear. Hush House cat is on the scene to inspect the latest prototype, featuring for the first time ever our custom velvet tarot bag.



If you're signed up to the mailing list you'll get an email any time we launch any of these, so I recommend it! Especially as The Lucid Tarot will initially launch with 500 limited editions including a signed certificate of authenticity, so those might go quickly...

Anyway, that's it for this update! May January treat you with an unusual consistency and warmth, may your beard never grow thin, and may the winter light of the Madrugad catch you flatteringly upon your cheekbones. More updates on HOUSE OF LIGHT soon...

"How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!"

— 'Ulysses', Alfred Lord Tennyson

Tennyson knows what's what. It's hard to sit still with art: it jiggles around like a catnipped kitten or a goose on a Roomba or a kid who needs the loo. We've been updating BOOK OF HOURS a lot, and it's put new wind in our sails as a studio - but we have mountains of ideas, and we've been working on other things as well.

Tennyson also says that you are a part of all that you have met - so if you're here, reading this, you're part of the Secret Histories, too. Here's a round-up of all the things that have just launched or that you and we both can look forward to in 2024.

"Only twins drown twice."

Europe, 1937. The War in the World is coming, and worse yet, the War in the Sun. In this gathering gloom, the notables of the occult underworld consider new weapons; new alliances; new paths. Who can they turn to for help, if not the Librarian of Hush House?

Explore visitors and their stories in much greater depth. Host exotic feasts and sophisticated soirées. And in your own quiet way, shape the genesis of the controversial Lighthouse Institute.

The big ticket item is the HOUSE OF LIGHT content expansion, coming to BOOK OF HOURS in 2024. It'll be more like Cultist Simulator's Exile DLC in size than The Dancer, and will be a paid DLC (though free to anyone with Perpetual Edition).

It's one of several content expansions planned for BOOK OF HOURS, which we're hoping to release next year alongside with the QoL / general improvement patches you've been seeing already. So buckle up, librarians! Or more appropriately, get yourself nice and comfy under that charming wool blanket. Brancrug calls.





ICYMI, we released BOOK OF HOURS's glorious soundtrack earlier this month. It features twenty-five remastered tracks from the game, arranged by the composer, Maribeth Solomon, herself. It costs $10.99 / £8.99 / €9.99 and is available now!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2340780/BOOK_OF_HOURS_Original_Soundtrack/



A small but significant confirmation that we are now working on Simplified Chinese, Russian and Japanese translations of BOOK OF HOURS. These will almost certainly come out next year!

Depending on how these languages do at launch, we may add more localisation in future. Fingers crossed.



The Church o' Merch has been in need of a bit of a revamp for a while, but I was too busy with BOOK OF HOURS to give it the love it deserved. December was a great time to right this wrong, so we now have a variety of new items coming to the shop next year:

[h3]Tarot colouring book[/h3]



An A5 wiro-bound colouring book with all 78 Lucid Tarot cards in glorious black and white for you to bring to life. Pages are thick so they'll carry everything from crayon to felt-tip pens. Colour in while listening to your favourite piece of music, sipping your favourite beverage, and generally having a jolly chill time.

[h3]Wisdom Tree necklace[/h3]



The first piece of jewellery we've ever made! Keep your Wisdoms close with this gold pendant chain with embossing, coloured enamel and cut-out detailing. Photos of the actual necklace IRL coming soon!

[h3]Hours notebooks[/h3]



Hardback French-creased notebooks with cloth covers, foiled detailing and page-marker ribbons! Inside, the Magician has lined paper, the Hermit plain and the Wheel of Fortune dotted. They'll be available individually or as a beautiful threefold set. These should look classy and occult at the same time - more photos when I get them from the printers.

(The scholars of the House watched the courses of the stars to determine their pasts and understand their future. You just need to be on the mailing list if you want to know when these items come out. They'll all be limited runs initially, so get in quick!)





A number of small gifts appeared by Reverend Timothy's Christmas tree in BOOK OF HOURS. They're still there if you haven't collected them, and they'll remain until midnight on 31st December 2023. If you'd like your in-game advent calendar gifts, load up BOOK OF HOURS some time between now and the end of the year, wait until in-game winter rolls around and find your horde by the Rectory. For those of you who don't like surprises, hover to reveal your presents beneath the Christmas tree: Seaglass, a Dearday Lens, moly, canned ham, mackerel, ambergris, a jar of rose-pearls, an awakened feather, a flushed mommet, a chronsicord, a phial of January Sanguinary and uzult.



Finally, we updated user flairs on the subreddit (tag yourself with any of the nine starting Legacies, from Archaeologist to Twice-Born), released a new Skeleton Songs all about how much we love Susanna Clarke, and there's a wintry HD Hush House wallpaper for PC and mobile at the bottom of our freebie On the House page, in case you'd like to festive-up your backgrounds.

Merry Christmas and a happy new year! Kiss your beloveds, hug your loved ones. If you've had a good year, long may that continue. If a bad one, remember: though much is taken, much abides. Love from AK, myself and the House Without Walls. See you in 2024. ♥

"[The music] was deep and wide and beautiful, but slow and blended with an immeasurable sorrow, from which its beauty chiefly came..."

- The Silmarillion, J. R. R. Tolkien

No, you started a Steam post with a quote from The Silmarillion! YOU'RE the nerd!

...Okay okay maybe not in this case. Regardless, a quick update to let you know that the long-awaited OST for BOOK OF HOURS is out now, with a 10% launch discount for anyone who gets it in the first week.



The album features twenty-five remastered tracks from the game, arranged by its composer, Maribeth Solomon, herself. It's totally beautiful, and we've tried to keep some of the game's sense of seasonal change in the track listing. An extra bundle of Christmas candles to anyone who can guess AK's and my favourite tracks.

The OST costs $10.99 / £8.99 / €9.99 and is available now. Go forth and float by the shores of Brancrug.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2340780/BOOK_OF_HOURS_Original_Soundtrack/

It's the first of December, and we're trying something NEW this year! BOOK OF HOURS seems such an obvious fit, so starting from today we're running...

[h2]...a 25-day advent calendar of Hush House! 🎄🎁[/h2]



Each day we'll open a door containing treats in BOOK OF HOURS or the 'real' world (you'll see it on all of our socials [ Twitter / Facebook / Instagram ], and we'll update our advent megablog daily with What's Behind Today's Door).

Most are tasty amuses-bouches. Some are pretty major reveals. A few real world treats will only last for 24hrs, but you'll never miss anything in-game. Playing BOOK OF HOURS any time in December will give you everything the calendar's revealed to date whenever in-game winter rolls around. So there's no stress if you're 'out' having 'fun' with 'friends'. Except, you know. Have a think about your life choices there.

To start with today's door as an example, it reveals:

[h3]Door 1: Seasonal art in BOOK OF HOURS[/h3]

The next time you're playing BOOK OF HOURS and winter comes around, you'll notice some festive cheer sprinkled throughout Brancrug Village and Hush House. For anyone who wants to be left alone like the Weary Detective and his Illustrated London News, there's an option to turn off seasonal art in the Settings menu. For everyone else, take careful note of Reverend Timothy's Christmas tree next to the Rectory...



More like this every day from now until Christmas Day. Check the advent megablog if you're not sure what today's gift is - we'll announce them every day at noon.

That's it! Warmth, good cheer and a glass of Chateau Raveline to you and yours. Merry Christmas, friend.