Book of Hours News

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.

There was a glitch that could occur if you played during a particular combination of patches in the last week

"HOTFIX: If Hendrik's bust niche disappeared, it's now back. If so, you may also find one or more Pale Mommets in there. DON'T ASK IT'S BEEN A WEIRD ONE, JUST CALL IT A CHRISTMAS PRESENT"

This has spent the usual couple of weeks on the beta branch, and I have had ALMOST NO bug reports... but now that fewer people are playing the game my fear is that this is because it's had fewer eyeballs, not just because it's the most stable patch ever. It _is_ a very stable patch, but do hit us up at [email protected] if you run into problems.

Notes below - you'll probably be most interested in the bolded things.

* You can now order some goods through the post (if you don't have an order form, one will arrive inside a year)
* You can now label bookshelves
* Timers for workstations look a bit spiffier
* You can now zoom while moving the camera
* Crafting helper panel now also works for Determinations and Histories
* Histories page now includes the pre-ending text for your later referencing pleasure
* Tightened up zooming controls
* That annoying shelf in the Westcott Room is less annoying
* Game won't unexpectedly switch between fullscreen and windowed when you open options
* Notification windows now universally respect the timeout option in Settings
* HOTFIX: swoosh-to-house-threshold button no longer forces close zoom.
* HOTFIX: Deep Mandaic books can now be translated again (you wouldn't believe what caused this prob)
* HOTFIX: Bookshelf plaques sometimes didn't appear on load
* ...and one additional small, fun, hidden feature

--

There'll be at least one more patch before Christmas, with another small, fun, less hidden feature.

After that, the updates will keep coming, but at the pace of snowflakes rather than raindrops. As Lottie mentioned last time, we'll be shifting our focus to the first BOOK OF HOURS content expansion. I just spent three days in a quiet room on a shingle headland writing on cards and moving 'em around on the floor, so I know now what it'll be. We can't talk about that quite yet, but I can share this partial photo of
the early design process:



this helpful excerpt from our design docs:



this charming picture of a lighthouse:



and this news item from a UK charity:

Some fun announcements below, but first -



If you like BOOK OF HOURS, vote for us in this year's Steam Awards! We're a husband and wife team making extremely niche, weird indie games, so we're very much an underdog here. But if you like weird, warped indie gems, please cast your vote for us. Thank you! ♥



We released Steam trading cards for BOOK OF HOURS along with badges, backgrounds and emoticons! Check 'em out in the Points Shop, and a gigantic pitcher of eigengrau to the first person who crafts the 'Librarian of Hush House' foil badge.





I'm listening to it now! Mickymar Production's haunting soundtrack will be coming to Steam, GOG, Spotify, YouTube, Apple Music and... probably some other places before the end of the year. It's a rich, lustrous OST and the perfect accompaniment to cold winter days, studying ancient grimoires and/or trying to get your pet snake to stop gnawing up the furniture. Good luck with that.





BOOK OF HOURS' next update will be DAYMARE. It's already on the beta branch and will be coming to main next week. Here are the confirmed headline features so far - there may be more but these are definite!

• Mail ordering some items (from Cater & Hero, and from TRN Ltd). Ordering from a catalogue will be a baroque and leisurely process. It'll reinforce Brancrug's remoteness, and it won't be trivial to top up supplies. But it'll fill some gaps and it'll add some flavour.
  
• In-game shelf labels! The Skolekosophy section? The Possibly Contaminated section? Unconfirmed Crafting Recipes? Useful Memories (though the book/Memory system may be coming up for a change)? Notes to yourself about who Janus is and who Hendrick was?
  
• Some UI refresh stuff - e.g. what Lottie refers to as 'spiffing timers' to make workstations a bit prettier
  
• Some more zoom tuning (restoring simultaneous arrow key movement and zoom-to, and I'll look at the zoom levels again)
  

(WIP! Please do not take as the Final Thing.)

Once DAYMARE is live, we'll focus on BOOK OF HOURS' first content expansion. (To confirm, this will be paid DLC, but free to anyone with Perpetual Edition.) You may still see some updates while we're working on that, and before the year is out we should have more details on what exactly will be included in this first new content update.

And finally - did we mention we love Christmas? Look out for something festive, starting 1st December. More from us then!

The long-awaited DAYMARE update, with a small but tasty list of features, is now on the beta branch. Expect this to make it to the live branch before Christmas.

So what've we got?

You can now order some goods through the post (if you don't have an order form, one will arrive inside a year)

You'll need to go to the Post Office to send it, but the Royal Mail delivers directly even to Brancrug. Why does the UK call it 'post' not 'mail' but our org is the Royal Mail? Ask the Queen NO YOU CAN'T NOT ANY MORE 😢

You can now label bookshelves

All the plaques were hand-placed by the charming other half of Weather Factory. We might move them if things get in the way.

Timers for workstations look a bit spiffier Further future spiffier-ness is probable.

You can now zoom while moving the camera
Tightened up zooming controls

I had to do a whole lot of fiddadling around when I was just back from holiday with Japanese flu, so there might be some leftover eccentricities. I've taken the slow easing effect off mouse zoom too. I liked it but a lot of other people didn't.

Specifically, zoom level 2 now takes you to a level that allows interaction with room contents. This was always supposed to be the case! thanks to everyone who pointed out the bug, I finally tracked it down

That annoying shelf in the Westcott Room is less annoying You know the one.

Game won't unexpectedly switch between fullscreen and windowed when you open options Though I could have tried to pass this off as a 'hilarious prank

Crafting helper panel now also works for Determinations and Histories This resolves some priority issues with recipes, and also gives you a bit more clarity generally

Histories page now includes the pre-ending text for your later referencing pleasure Ending text is pretty elliptical already. It's even more elliptical when you can't see the pre and post texts side by side, which I wasn't as aware of as I should be because that's how I look at 'em in my spreadsheet

Notification windows now universally respect the timeout option in Settings Sometimes software development is interesting and sometimes software development is less interesting than at other times when it's more interesting

BONUS CONTENT! People get asking us when we were bringing our podcast, Skeleton Songs, back. We did, it's here again, with an episode about invisible magicians pinching the Pope's parts: https://weatherfactory.biz/skeleton-songs/

--

[A weird Unity problem means I can't build on Mac right now, so there's no Mac beta just yet. Mac players, we haven't forgotten you, I'm working on it]