BOOK OF HOURS

This game is absolutely incredible. The art, aesthetics, and story/lore are utterly immaculate. If you enjoyed Cultist Simulator, you'll enjoy this game for sure.

I have almost 200 hours in this game on a single save, and I plan to make a new one now that I'm aware of the mistakes I made on the first one. It's an occult librarian simulator. Do you want to be an occult librarian, in a deep and lore-filled world that you'll learn more about with every book you read and every skill you master? Do you want to know more about these complex, compelling, completely ♥♥♥♥♥♥-up deities and their adherents than you were ever supposed to? Do you want to end up making your own card catalogue? If you answered yes to these questions, you'll delight in this game. You will end up making your own card catalogue, though. You have been warned. But that's the beauty of this game, in that it makes the activity of cataloguing books compelling. The gameplay loop is a carefully-tuned cycle of opening rooms, learning about their fascinating and horrifying former occupants, and reading the books you find within to gain skills. These skills, in turn, help you craft items, which you can use to open more rooms and read more books, replete with more forbidden knowledge. (If you like words like "replete", you'll also enjoy Book of Hours.) If you bounced off Cult Sim because it was too hard, give this one a try. It's a lot less stressful (and actually very soothing in many ways), yet doesn't lose the edge on its occult horrors and wonders.

I would rate this as NEUTRAL if Steam allowed it. Overall, the game isn’t bad. But I can’t recommend it, mainly because for me it is cryptic in a way that doesn’t feel satisfying. I understand that Book of Hours is meant to be a mystery-driven exploration game, and I usually enjoy when a game gives only light hints. But here I often ended up checking every possible slot and hovering over each one to see which item might fit. Even with the helpful highlighting, the game gives too little insight into what the actual goals are or why I should pursue certain actions. Once you reach the Mansion, this becomes even more noticeable. The game presents you with many items, rooms, books, and tasks, but it’s rarely clear what any of them mean, how they connect, or what should take priority. Most of the time I felt unsure why I was doing something, what purpose it served, or how it helped me progress—beyond “earn money, open more rooms, identify more books.” It all starts to feel cluttered rather than mysterious. Compared to the "prequel" , where you always have at least a rough idea of your major objectives and some structure for how to reach them, Book of Hours lacks that clarity. In short: the game is too cryptic and too cluttered with unclear items for my taste. If you enjoy very opaque, puzzle-heavy mystery systems, you may still like it. But if you prefer clearer goals or more transparent progression, this might not be the right fit.

Over a hundred hours and still on my first playthrough! What a marvel of game and story craftsmanship! Highly recommend !!!!

你妈的，现在5级技能升6级技能凑回忆凑得感觉自己要崩溃了。 九术登顶的是什么神人！ 如果谁和你有仇，请买这个游戏送给他┗|｀O′|┛ 能玩司辰之书玩到底的毫无疑问妥妥的吃屎大王，AK孝子！

Do you like twiddling your thumbs while watching timers tick down? Do you enjoy incorporating excel spreadsheets into your gaming experience? If the answer is no to either of these - this game is not for you. Love the art. Love the music. Hate interface choices that get in the way of playing the game. At it's best, the writing is mid and the experience of the story is highly RNG dependent. Got halfway through unlocking the House and I've lost faith that there's actually an end mystery worth discovering that I couldn't get with opening a random fortune cookie. I really wanted to like this game but this combo of timers, spreadsheets, and RNG is more annoying than fun. As others have said, Book of Hours does not respect player time.

Endless frustration Zero fun Nothing makes any sense...spend all day throwing random stuff into this book just to kick out a memory that vanishes at the end of the day before you have time to do anything with it. I don't know about you, but that just screams fun. I go online to find help figuring this game out, and all I get is explanations of mid and late game strats, and how wonderously fun the whole thing is. Fun? Where's the fun? Zero explanation of anything. Zero directions as to what you should do next. It's not even a decent sandbox, since you can't just do what you want, you have only so many things you can interact with, most of which don't do anything with what you have in your inventory, so after testing every last one of them, you finally find the ONE thing you CAN interact with, so you throw everything you have into the little slots hoping the fun starts soon, just for the thing to kick out another random thing you have no idea what its purpose is, so you just randomly jam it into another slot and start the whole process over again. Again...WHEN DOES THE FUN START? It just seems like a random mess. Other than vague poetry trying to guide you, there's no in-game help, and if anything, the help from the community is even less helpful. I know there's a good game in here somewhere, but I'm never going to find it, because the frustration level far exceeds the enjoyment I get from playing it. I'm a gamer...this isn't a game, it's some kind of study formula masked in a riddle all based around abstract definitions and psycho babble. But if that's your idea of a good time...have at it.

I don't know, man. Maybe it's because I was the kid who took a volunteer summer job at a tiny library with a jumbled card catalogue and no other filing system and LOVED IT. I had no idea what I was doing then and I have only the tiniest inkling of what I'm doing now, but I find that super engaging. There is no tutorial, which will be off-putting for a lot of people. But just read and eventually things will come together. Everyone saying they were just "randomly dropping cards" into slots, missed the point entirely. If you want something intuitive, this is not for you. Another reviewer said that if you like to stare at spreadsheets, you'll like this game. That was the review that sold me on it and it was very accurate so far.