Book of Hours News

A S T R O L A B E

- 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
- 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

Well, *I* didn't sleep last night. Thank you so much to everyone who's taken a chance on BOOK OF HOURS so far - it's the best launch AK or I have ever been a part of, and I can't believe so many people seem to like it. ALL THE FEELS.

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!

• 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
  

• 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 [email protected], 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!

“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

If you're lucky enough to have a preview key... I've uploaded a beta patch with some teeny narrative easter eggs, some UI improvements, some fixes to things like inaccessible glasses of water.

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