Book of Hours News

It’s less than one week until BOOK OF HOURS launches. Our social countdown has begun, there’s that terrifying clock ticking down on our blog, and AK and I are finally releasing our most ambitious game ever, the culmination of years of effort.

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!

• 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:





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.



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/Gaming. 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. ♥

* Wisdoms Tree button works again. - It's always been a bit temperamental, this one, so I've taken steps to stabilise it.
Save and Quit immediately followed by Continue gave you a black screen!!! - It doesn't now.

"The Hours are not all-knowing. Perhaps in truth we should not call them gods..."

What secrets lurk in old grimoires? What histories lie beneath Hush House? What's true about the invisible world, and what legacy will you forge with your hard-won numina? It's finally time to share BOOK OF HOURS' launch trailer, the first step across the threshold for all Librarians. Hopefully this gives everyone an appealing taste of the game, from hardcore Cultist Simulator fans (here's looking at you, Apostle Entheates) to people who've never heard of the Secret Histories. Watch below, share it around and let us know what you think! 🤫

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
So shiny! Much heart-feels! Wow!

Now, onto development. Our beta period is now officially over, so a serious thank you to everyone who participated in any of them over the last few months. Your feedback has been incredibly helpful, and AK's full-time job at the moment is tweaking the game based on what we're hearing from players. He only implements a few suggestions - as with all Kennedy games, BOOK OF HOURS is highly distinctive and therefore divisive - but he really does read and think about every email we receive. AK + Feedback in the 'Consider' verb = Better Game + Need of Gin...?



As a result of everyone's hard work, I've finally been able to take some shiny new screenshots (check 'em out on the Steam page if you haven't seen them yet), and have been feverishly finishing off all remaining Aspects, Elements and Things, with some help from veteran element artists Clockwork Cuckoo.



Most importantly, we now have proper states for all pets. Like the Wild, Tame and HONGRY cat below:



AK, meanwhile, has been working flat out on polishing the game post-beta. This mostly means bringing the last 20% of Hush House to life (that's right: the caves under the House remain unexplored until launch), zillions of technical bugs like 'this runs at 3FPS on my potato', 'this runs at 10FPS on my laptop' and 'are you trolling us with the phonograph, where the hell is it'. Having finally had the time to play the game myself, oh my Hours am I sorry I didn't put in more wall art / comfort / thing slots for you all to put things down! I love the idea in theory of picking up a snake and then never, ever being able to put it down, but in reality it's less fun. So... I'm working on that! But let me hand over to AK for one moment...

★★★

In Sheri S. Tepper's Sideshow, there's a recurring children's story that has always stayed with me. I re-read it today, and it sounds oddly relevant in some expected and unexpected ways.

"And so, sustained by this ambition, he went higher and higher yet, gray stone and gray cliff and gray rain falling, year after year, until he came at last to the place the swallows danced in the air above the bottomless void..."

Back in 2021, Lottie and I described BOOK OF HOURS as a game of 'peace, melancholy, satisfaction and curiosity'. If you've followed our work, you'll know that we're theme-first; you might also know that I have a thing about there always being an core, understated theme that the others orbit like an invisible sun. In BOOK OF HOURS, this understated theme is loneliness.

"When they saw him, they stopped dancing to perch beside him on the stone, and when he saw them there, silver and black, beautiful as a night lit with stars, he was possessed once again by a great longing, and he told them of his desire for wings. “‘Perhaps you may have wings, but you must give up your shell,’ they cried..."

One of the things they tell you in children's books is that if you're a loner, but gifted, or virtuous, or interesting, you will have a happy ending. This much is often true. But many children's books end with the loner getting a medal, or a big parade, or a special hat, while everyone cheers. This is not, in my experience, how it generally works.

"And even as they told him he might have wings, he seemed to hear in their voices some of the carelessness he had heard in the voice of the owl and the bat and the bullfrog, who had told him where to go without telling him the dangers of the way. He heard them rightly, for the winged gods have a divine indifference toward those who seek flight. They will not entice and they will not promise and they will not make the way easy, for those who wish to soar must do so out of their heart’s desire and their mind’s consent and not for any other reason..."

The Librarian of Hush House has left the world behind. Visitors will pass like seasons into their life and out of it, and the Librarian may never see them again, let alone know the end of their stories. The Librarian will live, die, and leave something for whoever might come after. This is of course what all of us do, all our lives. Much is taken, but much abides.

"And the turtle struggled with himself, wanting wings but not wanting wings, for if he had wings, they told him, he would no longer be interested in going back to the pond to tell the creatures there of his journey—that comfortable telling, the anticipation of which had been, perhaps, more important to him than the wings themselves. So, he struggled, wanting and not wanting …"

I don't think anyone will enjoy BOOK OF HOURS if they have never been lonely. I hope that people who've never been lonely will still like the game. But, honestly, I don't know if there's anyone in the world like that.

★★★

.........I always come across as a bit of a cheesepuff (light; dusted; non-profound) after I let AK write anything, so I shall epilogue succinctly. We've a bunch of stuff coming between now and actual release, including streamer access, social countdowns, a launch-day AMA on r/Games and a gameplay-focused final video. It should all be terribly exciting and I will be appealing to YOU good souls to help us, if you like, make BOOK OF HOURS' release as big as a game about being left alone to read quietly in a library can possibly be. Thank you for sticking with us so far - you must now enjoy launch on our behalf while we run around with our hair on fire saying terribly British things like 'ah, I am a-pother' and 'halp'. Stay tuned.

And for our final 'dog on a skateboard' story, I leave you with news that everybody's favourite Weary Detective from Cultist Simulator has been working hard, working out and has duly received a much-deserved promotion. Good job, Douglas! That means you get a cooler hat. ♥

"Detective-Illuminate of the Suppression Bureau. A stoic, but weary, fellow. His dearest wish is to move to Chingford and grow roses. But the buggers won't let him retire."

"Write a truth in a book that no-one reads. Then drop dead. No-one knows what you wrote. Unless the truth is numen."

We've just emailed a bunch of new and existing testers to confirm the release of our final and most lore-heavy beta, NOCTURNAL. Unless we run into significant bugs we're not expecting, this beta will only run for one week (we'll remove access from everyone on Monday 24th July), and will be BOOK OF HOURS' last beta release. Get your early access while stocks last!

Having a beta build live is fantastic for catching issues but adds a support and development burden to us for the duration. So we want a short sharp pinch of testing to make sure the game's still holding up okay, then focused dev time in the run up to launch so we can get stuck into final content passes, technical optimisations and all the little baubles that make an inanimate fir tree you've stuck in a pot into a magical Christmas tree.



LOADS. Everything but the underground 'Dawn' area is available to visit. Most of the content, grace notes, polish, bug fixing, achievements (!), most of the endings (just not the ones that need access to the underground caves)... you name it, there's probably some of it in there.



Well, the teeny LAUNCH will happen on LAUNCH DAY which as I'm sure you all know is THURSDAY 17th AUGUST. Did I mention I'd love you to burn this into your memories and those of everyone else you know? Thank you kindly.

I'll probably post a final update on game dev progress next week, when we hit our internal 'release candidate' milestone, and we'll have some pre-launch reveals over the course of the next month. For now, I leave you with news that we recently completed all our Numen cards - 'truths so powerful that they, tentatively, believe themselves' - and there is one I particularly want you to meet: