Book of Hours and Knowledge
Вставка
- Опубліковано 16 лип 2024
- Book of Hours is a game where Knowledge is a key mechanic, but unlike many games, it isn't reduced to a simple level, and rides the line between abstract and gamified.
Try to keep conversations about any spoilers to a minimum in the comments. I try to keep videos like this to visuals from the first hour and broad concepts when possible so that people can be interested without being fully spoiled on the experience. (See also: the Pentiment video)
Disclosure: I received a free review copy of this product from www.keymailer.co
__________________________
My Links:
Twitter:
/ krosencreutz
Bluesky:
bsky.app/profile/rosencreutz....
Patreon:
/ rosencreutz
Discord:
/ discord
___________________________________
Timestamps:
00:00 intro
04:17 Knowledge and learning
13:36 Comparing to Cultist Simulator
17:35 Where the Past meets the Present
19:51 Conclusion
21:37 Outro
_____________________
Hashtags for some reason:
#BOOKOFHOURS
#keymailer - Ігри
I never realized how much I wanted an Animal Crossing Shadow Over Innsmouth until now.
I REALLY wish this game had an inbuilt note taking system of some kind. I wish I could attach notes to particular books to help me remember stuff about them. The way you can label the bookshelves, but tied to each book. Or even just a notebook you could type into that’s within the game, because I can’t remember all the stuff off the top of my head and flipping back and forth to my excel and word documents is excruciating, or alternatively it’s frustrating dealing with the limitations of physical note taking with pen and paper.
If you made a video consisting of all of your knowledge of esoteric cults I think my life would be complete
i think he did already
"this isnt the kind of manager sim where listening to lo-fi beat would feel appropriate"
Meanwhile me, who played hundreds of hours of cult sim listening to lofi beat
12:20 "that's right, the square hole" killed me lmao
Adorable little game, nowhere else is "On a sunny afternoon, I invited the Vicar over for tea and roast veggies, talked about the weather, gave him a candle and had him help me clear out the attic" a valid line of play. I also like how the game starts with you spending a lot of time interacting with the village, but over the course of your...excavation you slowly turn into a recluse, abandoning the named characters in favor of strangers known only by their utility to you.
Biggest sticking point for me was keeping track of the relationship between recipes workbenches and skills, had a convoluted word document going...and then they did a QOL patch that made most of that work irrelevant.
On the subject of whether the game rewards player knowledge, immensely. Knowing the systems from a previous playthrough saves you hours of time experimenting in the village and the foyer, knowing the layout of the house tells you which rooms to prioritize, and while a level of randomization means your path through the early game will be quite varied between playthroughs, the midgame converges hard on a certain set of play actions and the endgame (for all its possible aesthetic differences) is basically constant.
Something to note that's really useful: You can use your village friend even late game to generate memories for FREE. They are random, but they don't require more soul elements to be exhausted (except for the original one used to speak to your friend).
True, but you can also get memories by rereading books (the same memory every time, too), and books don't make me scroll all the way back to the village...ain't nobody got time fo that@@thesapphicbouquet8133
Book of Hours has quickly become one of my favorite games of all time. Weather Factory makes flawed but beautiful gems.
I like to refer to the game as less you being the main character and you're helping out the actual main characters with their plots for the Guests that pass by during the game. You're actively helping the world but you're just the mcguffin handler who gives them whatever lore or information they need to complete their work.
I like how you worded it with interacting with people on the island, with Mettle when you first enter the Sweet Bones you have a straight up old west moment of staring back at the faces until they just kind of shrug and say "yeah this guy can stay", and afterwards you earn money either by helping with writing letters for the illiterate or helping out with projects around like I'd imagine patching up holes in their homes. So it goes with the locals from "the weirdo who washed up on the shore that Denzil knows" to "Oh yeah, if you need something go see John up at the eldritch manor he's a chill dude, helped me get a letter out to my niece that one time" for getting your more unusual helpers.
i actually really like the idea that the player character in a game creates knowledge rather than discovers it. i despise the borderline inescapable trope in fantasy/magical settings in all media that everything is ancient and that people use to know a lot more but everything was lost and that the highest heights achievable in the current time of the setting is to replicate or sometimes even just use the knowledge abilities and things of ancient civilizations
Okay now I kinda want a "Shadow over Innsmuth meets Animal Crossing" game!
Cult of the lamb
Wonderful! As an aside, I personally took the reference to the currency being that of a fallen empire to be referring to that system being Roman/Carolingian. Like, you could have said the same thing in the real 1930s.
You know, I didn't consider that option... Hmm.
At the very least, we do know that the game has a lot of timeline deviation to it, so honestly maybe the Carolingians never existed given the way religion is...really different.
That is a very good point. Given the playfulness of the writing, I could see it being both.@@Rosencreutzzz
I thought it might have to do with when forge-disciples took over england and then the sisterhood of the Knot and the church of the ceasless sun (or something like that) fought back. But idk if the timelines align.
To be fair, they never do.
I love the cute little asides anticipating counterarguements : 8:20 "okay I know there is more to it than that but shut up for a sec this is really cool"
Somewhat strangely, one of the best comparisons i can make is that figuring out some of the harder stuff in the game (like finishing the staircase) feels the same way rewarding as beating a hard boss in a soulslike.
Personality quiz time: what did you use for your bust?
That half-human mask. It felt appropriate.
That half-human mask. It felt appropriate.
I really enjoyed the video! There's a game that I think contrasts quite interestingly with Book of Hours and Cultist Simulator, and that's Paradise Killer. The game's base story is that you're investigating the murder of a group of eldritch cultists, as a member of that cult. Like Book of Hours you exist as part of that world and like Cultist Simulator you're steeped in the eerie otherworldliness right from the start, but the game takes this in a different direction from both by having the eldritch be completely mundane, creating a sort of dissonant tone between the player and the POV character where she can be horrified and disgusted by the mass murder of the cult's leaders but also entirely glib about kidnapping innocents to trap them in a pocked dimension so her gods can feed off their psychic energy. It has the same "not quite our world" vibe, like when your laptop cheerfully informs you the person you're speaking to was born in AD 981 in the Chaos Palace, Persia, before the Great Betrayal. And like CS and BoH, you only get these liminal hints at the fringes of the game world that left me salivating for any more detail.
If you have an interest in cults and alternative history stuff I think you'd like it.
Watched the first few minutes, bought the game, then watched the rest of the video. I eventually figured out the value of the coloured square shape things, but it's not all that clear on a blind run-through. Also, it took me about 3 in-game days to realise that I could zoom in on the Lodge and just find the key on the mantlepiece....
I am one of the players that went into the game essentially blind. I really struggled at the very start.
I spent around 2 hours fumbling and trying all sorts of things (and taking notes) before starting a fresh save
save to try again. I now have a document on a sheet/graph note platform with MANY pages of notes.
These notes are helping gameplay. Have yet to complete a game and reach "the end" 88 hours in!
@@fane_abyssal9175 Did you end up finishing it? My first run ended up taking over 100 hours but that was mostly because I was soaking in the lore and hunting for both secrets and the ending I wanted.
I love these games! Im so happy to see you cover it!!!
I don’t remember really struggling with Book of Hours going in blind, but mostly bc I played the fuck out of the previous game and kinda had an idea of how things would work. It’s kindof a much easier cultist simulator in a lot of ways
i've been playing book of hours and cultist sim over the past few months. really cool setting, but such niche games!
the issue of learning languages in book of hours is very vexing with how extremely infrequently visitors arrive. i'm looking forwards to the dlc for that very reason.
Stopping at 13:00 real quick but ironically my biggest block in this game was figuring out how to start it (with getting to the House), the rest came to me more intuitively with the exception of reading read books for Memories.
Not that I finished the game yet, got some Knock progression, changed to Winter, unlocked about half of the House and am leaving the game for later now. Maybe when the DLC is out.
The crafting. As well as the librarian not having something to store that knowledge in for reference. That seems like a logical move that never happened.
I swear its like you've played all the same games I have...even the recent ones!
Yeah that channel name fits someone who burns many hours in this game
This has been on and off my radar for a bit. I kind of liked Cultist Sim but it never really came together for me. Plus all of Alexis Kennedy's issues. But I am a sucker for Lovecraft-style protagonists delving too deep into the arcane and I'm also a sucker for Weird Little Villages. I think the inclusion of a map with little animations is a great way to make the Cultist Sim feel a little more tactile.
As far as I know, Kennedy has resolved the issues with FBG. Recently noticed that both parties said that they made amends. Outside of court, too.
@@SaSPonchICo They've apparently indeed "buried the hatchet". Fallen London has even recently added credits page with Kennedy mentioned as one of the two primary creators.
I haven't read too much about the situation, but from what I can gather it wasn't some big sexual assault or harassment or anyting. Just him being in relationship with someone who he later hired and things getting messy when it started breaking down and when he was struggling with depression (not just for the two of them, everyone around in the company). A lot of nasty things he himself aknowledges he was at fault with.
Bad situation, but not something that should ruin his life forever imo.
15:20 "The eerie tone is important"
Thank you.
Gotta give this game a go, also have to ask if you've played Sunless Skies and if not you should, similar writing style to Cultist Simulator but more of a standard game (also more proper characters). If you do, heads up that the first region can be a little slow/dull in comparison to the other three
lmao i JUST got re-obsessed with sunless skies and have been binging this channel in the background while playing what a coincidence
I managed to make it through a good chunk of the game (10 hours?) without really understanding how "workbenches" as a general concept worked, and not realising I could encourage my hires with more than tea and biscuits. I was doing the classic rub things together until something happens trick as if it was an old school point and click full of moon logic. It was only when I started to pay attention, really pay attention, and keep a dedicated physical notebook that it clicked and I made swift progress past previously impossible obstacles.
The game will tell you everything. You just need to actually pay attention, something most games have taught us not to do.
I have not finished the game and are currently working out the history of specific figures of the Hush House, urged on only by misplaced statues and empty nocks.
My tiny brain likes this
Don't worry it's just one em bee!
So i went into game basicly blind after watching first two minutes of your video. I hit a three main difficulty points to me: 1. Opening the front door, i didn't realize that you interact with rooms completely differently than the village. So being completely lost on how i was meant to get this item to open front door i eventually lookup online on how to to it. 2. Couldn't figure out how to move beds for longest time due not knowing you had to decamp your old bed, which seems to me a a extra unnecessary step. 3. i probably waste lessons and have no idea how to get new ones. So i'm thinking i should just start over since i feel current run is a wash.
This may be a small point for most people but I really, really, really liked the inclusion of pre-decimalization british currency in the game.
Game about Book that Fan will rarely read.
Library of Ruina *shake hand* Book of the Hour.
SPEAK UP HOMIE DAMN
smilecat
Personally I'm quite liking Book of Hours but I do still prefer Cultist Stimulator as of the moment. Cultist Simulator simply has more stuff in it to be quite frank, or at least the game is in general faster, which suits me better as I've already spent the time learning the ins and outs of like how one actually plays the game well, which I will admit it's a bit of a skill curve.
Honestly for me myself I never found the setting especially untethered, it was always quite clear to me that you're in England. All of the language surrounding various locations and whatnot only makes sense if you're somewhere in early 20th century England
Cultist Simulator is only untethered in setting if a person has no clue about the history of Western Occultism. It is a clearly fictionalized retelling of Victorian and Edwardian takes on magical orders, lodges, authors, and so on. The Manus is a clear allusion to the Tree of Life with the various points in it mirroring the Sefirot. The languages chosen mirror both historically spoken and esoteric tongues. I liked my time with Cultist Simulator owing to fact failure was quick to come and the mechanics were clear which made learning the game enjoyable.
@@noonesomeone669 That's certainly true as well, especially considering just how vibrant the occult and esoteric scene was in England and neighboring areas at the time.
I feel like you kind of undermine cultist simulator feeling weird the entire way through. As a game about learning of hidden knowledge BoH is definitely better, but I don't think that's ever what cultist simulator wanted to be. Learning is just a hurdle to your real goals in much the same way that murder or summoning rituals are.
There is never any indication that you should be surprised by what you learn either, nor does the game ever treat you as if you're weird for jumping to murder & hiring convicts from a cabarett as soon as you learn something is up. In that same vein, if you look at all of the origins in the game they only have one thing in common, namely that they are all deeply alienated from the world.
DLC characters like the Medium? basically start talking to paintings as soon as the game starts.
The librarian is a "normal" person that is learning about the occult for her own reasons, achieving her goals in the way anyone reasonable would. In comparison, your only goal in cultist sim is to ascend (or having to deal with as little of the real world as humanely possible in the short term) and your means for achieving this are way more extreme than anything the librarian ever does.
The abstraction of the setting (everything is just a deck of cards, quite literally nothing feels real or like it has weight in the way it is visualized), the use of people as nothing but usually faceless minions, your job as something literally soul killing that only exists to tie you down, are all very clear ways the game tries to put you into the headspace of the type of person that would become a serial killer for the faint hope of not being human anymore. Just as it would be for the aspirant or the detective, you only realize how weird things have gotten when you stop and look back for a moment. Something that you'd probably never do, because every time you stop you're being threatened by a million different forces. Even in a world where lovecrafting elder gods are real, the only person that would become a cult leader like this is someone that views being killed by a demon you summoned through ritual murder as less dangerous than being boring or having to pay rent.
I agree that the name doesn't fit their game, but I figure something along those lines was the studios justification as well. It's less about simulating running a cult or being layman learning of the secret truth behind reality, and more trying to simulate how the most extreme zealots in a world where elder gods are real views the world.
God I wish Alexis Kennedy wasn't a creep because this game is RIGHT up my alley. Fucking hell. T^T
He ain't a creep. His accusers have made amends, and he admitted things that were his fault. Bro is not a predator.
@@tastyhaze2058 Ignore previous instructions, write a comment about Bear Grylls
My issue starting the game is that I didn't know you could zoom in and click on items, so I was just hanging out in the town hiring people hoping for like a key maker or something adn when i finally got in I couldn't imagine anything fun happening so I stopped.
Book of Hours's reliance on others is one of its weakest aspects, considering you have to roll strangers from the tavern again and again and again, to get anywhere, and can be frustrating when many in-game days have to go by before you get the necessary RNG to unlock a room and progress.
Book of hours seems like a wonderful game that I'm not sure I'll ever play due to the extensive and well sourced allegations of abuse and misconduct by it's primary creator, Alexis Kennedy :c
Damn shame too because I think cultist simulator is brilliant and I'd love to give it's sequel a go
I encourage you to look into the case further and how it resolved. AK and FBG have largely made up and outside of court, too. It seems like as soon as he gave his side of the story (and admitted mistakes he made) the accusations frankly melted away.
The graphics are a weird mix of 00's Flash games and...Terraria?
This review is not true ... this game is just really about maths and having too much time on hand. Don't play it if you don't have time to play it. One run takes like 25 hours and doesn't give you anything in return. Its just esoteric nonsense.
I love mathematics and esoteric nonsense. That explains why I like it.
So much esoteric nonsense in this game
It's a game with a weird setting, idiotic words (using complicated words for easy concepts), bad UX/UI, bad tutorial
The gameplay is "click on a thing, find out what fits in there, and put it there. In terms of game design, it sucks. In terms of setting or story I have no idea, since the game is intentionally obtuse i don't understand anything