Where can I read BOOK OF HOURS patch notes?

This page lists official Steam announcements for BOOK OF HOURS, including the latest post "Deal Deals, demos and MORE". Each entry links to the full changelog on Steam.

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BOOK OF HOURS Patch Notes & News

Deal Deals, demos and MORE

Arabella Dusksteam_community_announcementsworkshop

17d ago

Happy Thursday, everyone! BOOK OF HOURS and all DLC have all just been set to 60% off, their lowest discount ever. So if you've been meaning to host a salon for your occult friends, now's a good time to try HOUSE OF LIGHT. If you'd like some esoteric, melancholy ambience in real life, perhaps you fancy the OST. Or if you know someone who you think needs a strange, lonely strategy RPG about slowly restoring an arcane library - you know what to do!

We're running this mega discount because we've just announced our follow-up game set in the same world, Travelling At Night, is launching its first ever public demo on Monday 10th August. We're excited about it! Travelling involves a number of people and places you'll recognise from BOOK OF HOURS:

the game's protagonist is Spencer Hobson, whom you know from 'The Affair of the Endless Guest'
you'll (re)visit Brancrug Village and Hush House twenty years later, after the Second World War and its knock-on effects on the Mansus have changed the world forever

there is the TRIUMPHAL RETURN of the WEARY DETECTIVE, aka DI Douglas Moore, aka my favourite (also starring: Lalla Chaima; Corso Reverte; Fraser Strathcoyne; Arun Peel; Dagmar; Hokobald; and MORE)
you cannot escape The Cat

Anyway, if you fancy a choices-matter isometric CRPG set in the Secret Histories, you may be interested in wishlisting Travelling At Night, and / or playing the demo when it comes out next month. That's all - enjoy the discount, and the sound of the rain rattling on the roof...

Deal Deals, demos and MORE

Arabella Dusksteam_community_announcementsworkshop

17d ago

the game's protagonist is Spencer Hobson, whom you know from 'The Affair of the Endless Guest'
you'll (re)visit Brancrug Village and Hush House twenty years later, after the Second World War and its knock-on effects on the Mansus have changed the world forever

there is the TRIUMPHAL RETURN of the WEARY DETECTIVE, aka DI Douglas Moore, aka my favourite (also starring: Lalla Chaima; Corso Reverte; Fraser Strathcoyne; Arun Peel; Dagmar; Hokobald; and MORE)
you cannot escape The Cat

Hush House, isometrified

Arabella Dusksteam_community_announcementsworkshop

107d ago

Hey Librarians! I'm just posting a quick cross-post of some new isometric Hush House art from our upcoming game, Travelling At Night. I thought you'd enjoy it, so here it is in all its glory!

Travelling is set in the same Secret Histories universe as BOOK OF HOURS. You'll be able to travel to Brancrug, explore the village and unearth some of Hush House's secrets (though not all of them, because turning Hush House's 108 rooms into isometric, navigable spaces would be a WHOLE GAME in its own right - and Travelling has you exploring Europe in the wake of the Second World War...).

I hope seeing an old friend in this new perspective excites you like it does us! Now, back to your library - those books ain't gonna catalogue themselves...

2026.1.f.3 FEATHER: Modding now available to everyone

AKsteam_community_announcements

145d ago

Full modding support is now live. Many thanks to our curator-freelancer Chelnoque for making this happen. The Workshop is live here:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1028310/workshop/
DLL mods - that is mods which alter the base compiled code of the game - require you to subscribe to Ghirbi, the Gatekeeper. Ghirbi does nothing except indicate 'I have given permission for a mod to mess with the base game, not the content files'.
Honestly, malware mods are rarer than green swans, especially on a small-audience game like this. I think I've heard of two cases on Steam ever. But it was pointed out to us that we'd feel bad if someone got got through our games. So, Ghirbi.
Those of you familiar with The Lore will be aware that Ghirbi is a vast brass riddling head of uncertain origins who guards the Stag Door, aka the Gate of Horn. If you'd like to know more about Ghirbi, you should probably wishlist our next game:
Hey wow when I pasted the link, Steam put a whole widget in there. Thanks Valve. Anyway there it is.
The rest of this post is a near copy-paste of the patch post about the beta with a single very minor additional bug fix down the bottom. But it looked passive-aggressive to link to that again, so you get the whole thing. And a database somewhere has accrued a few more kb of data, infinitesimally hastening the heat death of all things. Thanks Valve.

As a side effect of the modding introduction, Travelling at Night books in the lodge are now placed on the left side of the bookshelf instead of the right side
Weird, yet true.

Further Affairs windows are now draggable and properly react to an ESC key press
I just never got around to implementing this, back in 2024, and then forgot. Eventually a user politely asked for it. So we put it in. True story, no twist.

Incorrect plants occasionally bloomed in garden spots right after a garden was unlocked - but no longer
'Go home Nature, you are drunk'

Changed the Russian title of the Locksmith's Dream's fifth volume
If you're not interested in linguistic trivia, stop reading here. In English, books III and V are 'LD: Trespasses' and 'LD: Incursus'. ''Trespasses' and 'Incursus' have a similar meaning, and they'd been translated with the same word in Russian. 'Incursus' is a Latin loan word that doesn't really exist in English anyway. So we just transliterated into Cyrillic as Инкурсус for volume V.

Bonus fix!
A user pointed out that Щ Ъ Ю were displaying weirdly in title text in Cyrillic. I added these to our sprite atlas and also took the opportunity to add the Ukrainian-specific characters ґ є і ї - which I believe is all we need for Ukrainian-language modding.
As ever, if you'd like to do a translation or standard mod in a particular language and our existing character sets don't support it, do email us and ask. We usually get around to adding it.
Unseen cards no longer scramble the radial display of Verbs' contents (specifically during salons)
I warned you it was boring. Except for the single user who reported it.

If you've read this far, here's a bonus link to our podcast

https://weatherfactory.biz/make-a-crpg-with-us/

and a prophecy: there will be a Cultist Simulator patch this week. Less exciting than this one, but yes, we are a microstudio who still supports a game eight years after we released it. No it's not 'because we have nothing better to do with our lives'. No, you're breathtaking. Does anyone read this far? I could say anything.

2026.1.f.3 FEATHER

AKsteam_community_announcementspatchnotes

145d ago

Modding beta->live

BETA: 2026.1.f.1 'FEATHER'

AKsteam_community_announcements

200d ago

Welcome to 2026, everyone, The sum of the digits in this year is 10. The sum of digits in 10 is 1. There's probably something in that.

New update (on the beta branch) for the new year. There's one big feature that I've already given away in the post headline, and a number of little ones.

Full modding support. Find mods at
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1028310/workshop/
We had limited modding support - just locmods for community translations. Our answer to 'full modding pls?' was always 'maybe, some day'. I'm happy to announce that thanks to the typically tireless efforts of our curator-freelancer Chelnoque, tthe answer is now 'yes, today'. This is a beta release! If there are no bugs, it will be a pleasant surprise to us all! [email protected] awaits your bug reports!

As a side effect of the modding introduction, Travelling at Night books in the lodge are now placed on the left side of the bookshelf instead of the right side
Weird, yet true.

Further Affairs windows are now draggable and properly react to an ESC key press
I just never got around to implementing this, back in 2024, and then forgot. Eventually a user politely asked for it. So we put it in. True story, no twist.

Incorrect plants occasionally bloomed in garden spots right after a garden was unlocked - but no longer
'Go home Nature, you are drunk'

Changed the Russian title of the Locksmith's Dream's fifth volume
If you're not interested in linguistic trivia, stop reading here. In English, books III and V are 'LD: Trespasses' and 'LD: Incursus'. ''Trespasses' and 'Incursus' have a similar meaning, and they'd been translated with the same word in Russian. 'Incursus' is a Latin loan word that doesn't really exist in English anyway. So we just transliterated into Cyrillic as Инкурсус for volume V.

Bonus fix!
A user pointed out that Щ Ъ Ю were displaying weirdly in title text in Cyrillic. I added these to our sprite atlas and also took the opportunity to add the Ukrainian-specific characters ґ є і ї - which I believe is all we need for Ukrainian-language modding.
As ever, if you'd like to do a translation or standard mod in a particular language and our existing character sets don't support it, do email us and ask. We usually get around to adding it.

That's it, except for a reminder that we're making a third game in the series, and we're doing a regular podcast about it as the third season of Skeleton Songs: https://weatherfactory.biz/make-a-crpg-with-us/ Making games is fun. Releasing them is more stressful, but I've learnt that if we don't release them, nobody gives us goods and/or services in exchange, which in turn makes it more difficult to release games because we are forced to sip dew and live in a shed. Business, we say, knowingly tapping our temples.

The advent calendar is live!

Arabella Dusksteam_community_announcementsworkshop

244d ago

Starting today, BOOK OF HOURS' in-game advent calendar is LIVE. 🎄

From 1st - 25th December, presents will appear periodically on Reverend Timothy’s Christmas tree next to the Rectory in Brancrug Village. When in-game winter rolls around, you’ll see Christmas decorations appear throughout Hush House and Brancrug Village and you’ll be able to open your presents at the Rectory.

(Please note that you can’t get advent calendar gifts during in-game spring, summer or autumn, and won’t see the Christmas tree or decorations during those seasons either. Playing at 6x speed, you'll only need to wait around six minutes for winter to roll around again.)

All items remain on the tree for you to collect any time this month, so don't worry about missing anything. The advent calendar ends on Christmas Day, but all presents will remain in-game until midnight on New Year’s Eve just in case you were doing something shocking like spending time in the real world with friends and family rather than playing our game.

Merry Christmas, every one of you! Thank you so much for curating books, cultivating histories and preserving the melancholy peace of Hush House. 💖

Full Japanese localisation OUT NOW!

Arabella Dusksteam_community_announcementsworkshop

262d ago

“Language is the key. It was language that opened the doors of the Mansus; without language, we could have had no peace; without language, we would still be beasts, worms, mud.”

At long last, we’re delighted to launch full Japanese translation for BOOK OF HOURS and HOUSE OF LIGHT! Everything is now fully playable in beautiful Japanese, and we hope any Japanese speakers diving into the melancholy beauty of Brancrug for the first time enjoy it.

Please note: we recommend starting a new game after you switch languages. Switching mid-game can cause issues with the display of some text.

If you don’t speak Japanese, fear not. We’re also running a 45% discount (our deepest ever!) on BOOK OF HOURS, the soundtrack and the HOUSE OF LIGHT expansion, and a deep sale on all items in the merch shop (Christmas is coming, after all).

Get everything BOOK OF HOURS for 45% off, below!

Enjoy! ♥

2025.8.e.3: "EAGLES"

AKsteam_community_announcements

297d ago

2025.8.e.3: "EAGLES"

A number of tiny ameliorations from the redoubtable Chelnoque

Perfected skills stop displaying upgrade slots
Films and phonograph records can no longer be contaminated
The cursor is anchored more thoroughly when trying to zoom right after moving the camera with keys
Verb windows now (again) resize correctly on slots removal
Better hitbox for a craftable recipe selection
Better support of ultrawide resolutions
Edge scrolling now retains consistent speed regardless of the zoom level
Fixed an assortment of bugs that occured during the key rebinding
In Severn Chamber, a certain comfort slot placement area was too short
In terrain unlock preview window, the period image was placed incorrectly when the preview description was only a single line
Various Japanese localisation fixes
Unity security update

Actually the Severn Chamber one was me, thanks to the player who wrote in to ask why they couldn't put their arthropod friend back where they found him. I don't know how we missed this for two years.

I'll talk briefly about the Unity security update, because you've probably seen, like me, a steady flow of updates in your Steam library, and most people are a bit vague about what it entails. (If you've read our Cultist Simulator update post, you already know these details, this post is almost identical.)

The short version: it's a vulnerability that seems to have been in Unity since 2017, but no one seems to have noticed or used it because it's pretty niche. So you probably dont have much to worry about even in unpatched games.

The long version: I'm not a cybersecurity bloke, but broadly as I understand it, there were command line flags in any game built with Unity that could be used to tell your game to load arbitrary code. Like this one:

bh.exe -overrideMonoSearchPath "C:\\somefolder\\ransomware.dll"

Importantly, they couldn't make the game load code from a remote location. So someone has to (a) get the code on to your machine or a local network path, then (b) convince you to run the relevant command line, which isn't straightforward. But on Windows, it's quite easy to register an application to open any URL in a specified format, like this

steam://getSteamToDoSomeConfigAction

So attacker tricks you into (a) registering "bookofhours://" as a schema and then (b) gets you to click a link like this

bookofhours:// -overrideMonoSearchPath "aSimpleHttpURLWouldntWorkButAttackerCouldPotentiallyGetCreativeAndMakeYouDownloadAFIle"

Windows tells Book to start running and supplies the -overrideMonoSearchPath as a launch parameter. Poor Book obediently tries to load the file supplied in the malicious link, maybe it works, and if it does, you're now running their code.

So again, someone still needs to convince you to run an app in the first place to register Book as a schema handler, maybe your AV software will flag the download, idk, but the Internet is rife with clever cyber bastards. And it's a bigger deal for a game that actually is registered as a schema handler for genuine reasons.

Either way, it's fixed now, for Book and a lot of other games! But there will be unmaintained games out there with the vulnerability forever, so maybe if someone's read this far, I've saved them a visit to the Misery Palace ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

https://unity.com/security/sept-2025-01/remediation

https://www.kaspersky.com/blog/update-unity-games-cve-2025-59489/54542/

d.2 'DOVE'

AKsteam_community_announcementspatchnotes

369d ago

- ACCESSIBILITY: Edge scroll (moves the camera when the cursor is near the edge of the screen) - off by default, can be toggled in the settings - Custom window size persists after closing the game - Certain impossible save names are now properly impossible - Input fields on Steam Deck now correctly react to letters that aren't a part of a standard Latin alphabet

The Skeleton Light

Arabella Dusksteam_community_announcementsworkshop

429d ago

This is a new blog post from AK, almost entirely about Cultist Simulator (whose SEVENTH BIRTHDAY it is tomorrow). But there's a lot that's directly relevant to the design of BOOK OF HOURS, so I thought you BoH players might find it interesting, too. -- LB **** "It's not a loop - it's a spiral!" That's Alan Wake, in Alan Wake 2. If you try to attribute the quote in the normal way, you get this: "It's not a loop - it's a spiral!" - Alan Wake, Alan Wake 2 which looks ineluctably like a typo. Anyway, spirals. Tomorrow is the seventh anniversary of the release of Cultist Simulator. A couple of thoughts about how we got here from there, and how we got there from somewhere else. When I started making Cultist, I'd never coded anything in Unity at all. hadn't done any actual coding since I built the Fallen London CMS (once nicknamed 'Jonathan' and later rechristened StoryNexus). Once that was up and running, I focused on writing interactive narrative inside that CMS. Which did have loops, ifs, variables, a lot like a programming language - but a very soft-cornered, simple, limited one. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/31397842/7332344dc49616e9c7e256ed4722a517e823c513.jpg It occurs to me that it might seem odd for a programmer to go from using a versatile and powerful programming language to using a soft-cornered, simple one. One reason is that I wanted, from the start, to build a system that let a team work on expanding a big organic narrative - hence 'storylets' - and I knew that most people who wrote for Fallen London wouldn't be programmers. But there are two other reasons I want to talk about. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/31397842/8f55699b63712060abe064c11f6c79dffefa359b.jpg The first is that I like the player to be able to build a mental model of what's going on inside the game. Game mechanics can be poetic, in the way a skeleton watch is poetic. If the framework is simple, or even elegant, you can make that poetry visible by making it visible through an interface that works like clear glass - or at least a translucency through which you can see the glow of differently coloured lights. The second is that the constant shift back and forth, between the writer-designer's stance and the coder's stance, makes one's brain ache. Ambiguity, surprises, the unconventional - they're not things you seek out when you're coding. Meanwhile all the deadly enemies of reasonable, readable, maintainable code are the friends and familiars of vivid writing. Interactive narrative lives in the lightning-riven hinterland between those two stances. If you just surprise your players, you get frustrating dream-nonsense. I went to Chris Avellone (still, for my money, the single most accomplished writer-designer walking the earth) for advice on Travelling, and one of the things he told me was "Treat your dialogue options like an interface selection screen." When you're trying to build consistent, stable, and bug-free mechanics on the one hand, and trying to make 'every word do as much as possible' on the other... you can't do both things at once. It's like getting out of a bus and on to a bicycle, but behind your eyes. Hence the brain ache. So you minimise the ache by sketching out the mechanics first. You put placeholder text like GIRL SAY NO EAT PIG that you replace in a writing pass later. 99.99% of the time you replace it, anyway. Using a stable searchable phrase to mean 'UNFINISHED!!' is a showsaver. I favour 'fnord', a habit I picked up in my salad days from a gentleman named Towlson. But still the brain, she ache. Coffee help, but coffee no cure. In a microstudio you can't throw the final product over the wall and forget about it. You have to keep going back and forth between text and mechanics, talking to localisers, fixing bugs. And the real problem isn't the brain ache, it's the mistakes. If you're driving a bus and still thinking like a cyclist, it's easy to miss things. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/31397842/96c2f72f1129845d2b1eaa97e8981eab49520fd7.jpg That's why I described the CMS as 'soft-cornered' above. It limits the harm you can do and it allows you to make small, intuitively accessible changes, without changing the fundamental framework. When I started making Cultist, my first goal was to set up a framework that I could change when I was thinking like a writer-designer, without having to shapeshift into a coder and back again every time. (Expecially since, as I said above, I'd never coded in Unity! I needed help with the UI part of Cultist, and I didn't want to have to go back into the non-framework code and change things that at the time I only half-understood). In Fallen London, storylets are unlocked when your character has (or lacks) qualities at a particular level. Choices in storylets can then increase (or reduce) some qualities. Which in turn unlock new storylets. Round and round we go, a spiral not a loop. In Cultist Simulator - and later Book of Hours - recipes are storylets, aspects are qualities. There are two big differences: aspects are local, and choices are implicit. 'Aspects are local' - a Fallen London storylet can always see whether you've got Shadowy 50, but a CS/BH recipe will only know you have Forge 10 if you can fit it, via element cards, into the slots. 'Choices are implicit' - you never get a numbered list of choices on a Cultist verb window. It'll show you the result you get from one particular combination of aspects, and you can (only) change the choices by changing the combination. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/31397842/491291f017a0b9e045b4a15fbae487d213990d5b.png And these two differences are closely intertwined. Local aspects allow the player to experiment, implicit choices mean the results aren't visible before you find a solution. There are exceptions and refinements to everything I just said! but that's the principle of the thing. Neither approach is better than the other - they're different designs for different games (although I wish I'd hit on the elements-have-aspects relationship in Cultist back in the Fallen London days - it would have saved a lot of duplication). On to Travelling at Night. Our very early sketches had it using something like the aspects-and-recipes system (for reasons lost to time this is known as the 'Castle of Ghost Kittens' phase). But when we decided it was going to be, formally speaking, a CRPG, that fell away. The CRPG form expects dialogue trees. Dialogue trees mean explicit choices. Explicit choices meant we would need to take something more like the FL than the CS/BH approach. I'll be honest, I wasn't thrilled about writing yet a third framework before I could get started on the content. Fortunately, as we've mentioned elsewhere, we could use a very well-regarded piece of middleware: PixelCrushers' Dialogue System. The heart of PDS is this kind of thing, which will look comfortingly familiar to anyone who's used any of these kind of toolsets: {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/31397842/09474dd4e3fb12ac48cb18fee461ba67e0425a8a.png But where are the qualities and/or aspects in this? Well out of the box, PDS gives you Lua scripting, an absolutely standard, versatile, powerful way to check and set variables, or add your own custom functions, like this: {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/31397842/bd581b3199e035a294734dc886e1eafebadd21dc.png Coder or not, you can probably get a general sense of what that code checks and does. But coder or not, you would probably struggle to remember the syntax and the variable names when typing it in a text box. And coder or not, you would have to be fairly sharp-eyed to notice that there are three typos in the 'Script' box, one of which would crash the game. Lua scripting is not soft-cornered. It's not the kind of thing you can slip casually back into halfway through a writing session, without risking mistakes. This is not a flaw in PDS or in Lua. Power and versatility are edged and bladed weapons, and Lua is such an anything-goes environment that it's not straightforward to validate it. Fortunately, one of PDS' many virtues is that it's really customisable. I spent the last couple of weeks getting friendly with Unity's GUI system, bolting my own tooling on to the side, and can now do this inside PDS: {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/31397842/d2995db7b42c7ef1a61c366f244bfbcfb13574df.gif and this: {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/31397842/949acf64964c761f9696852bebd842b56ed39fb9.gif ...which makes writing sessions considerably less of a white-knuckle experience. It was nice going back to 'Qualities'. Aspects in Cultist Simulator were nearly called 'Qualities'. It's a usefully versatile word. I went with 'Aspects' partly because of the occult context, but partly out of an irrational desire for reinvention which I've now grown out of. I'll talk another time about how Qualities in Travelling are different beasts than the ones in Fallen London - more vertebrate, you might say. A spiral, not a loop, like the man said when OOPS NEARLY A GIANT ALAN WAKE 2 SPOILER. I have just now noticed that I made it 'cashRepublic' not 'cashState', which is serendipitous because I didn't have a good end for this blog post. As it is, I can now show you this snippet: {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/31397842/30a1cadf50ddf942f2a5a4f3a698b6bc9e217666.png and this godawful vexillological delinquency. Pétain adopted it as his personal insignia in the Vichy years, and in our divergent history, where the wars are won but France remained divided, it flies yet over Antibes. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/31397842/622517abbd289a3ad3e950685afc11b60e49ab92.png

Japanese beta now available

Arabella Dusksteam_community_announcementsworkshop

458d ago

"Language is the key. It was language that opened the doors of the Mansus; without language, we could have had no peace; without language, we would still be beasts, worms, mud." We’ve missed you, Hush House! Today we’re launching a Japanese beta for BOOK OF HOURS. From today’s update, anyone whose OS is set to use Japanese will automatically see BOOK OF HOURS in Japanese on load. You can revert to the original English at any time by using the ‘Language’ button on the main menu, and of course anyone who’s feeling really spicy can select Japanese (or any other language) from that same screen. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35142931/bd0f93358dc8fdced5e84423bc5c94ecbf002725.png Only the base game is translated right now (BOOK OF HOURS has a huge word count, and our translators are currently working on HOUSE OF LIGHT). But we’ll be updating the beta with new translations as soon as they’re completed, until all 200,000+ words are ready. If you speak fluent Japanese, we’d love you to play the game and let us know your thoughts. It will really help polish the localisation! So if you come across any bugs or typos, or if you have any other feedback on the translation, please also send them to [email protected]. We expect to release full Japanese later on this year, after gathering feedback with this beta. You can’t get a better localisation than one played and approved by people who really get the game and lore! And remember this…? “BOOKS ARE THE MEMORY WHICH DOES NOT DIE.” (inscribed in five languages over the gate of Hush House) Different languages are key to an occult library, and including Japanese, we’re now up to four languages for BOOK OF HOURS. Maybe we’ll end up doing one more… *** ON ANOTHER BUT RELATED NOTE In case you missed the patch notes earlier this week, it's also now possible to create community localisations for BOOK OF HOURS. Read how to get started here.

2025.4.c.3

AKsteam_community_announcementspatchnotes

458d ago

Japanese language beta!

2025.b.2 : LOCMODDING

AKsteam_community_announcementspatchnotes

461d ago

It's now possible to create community localisations for BOOK OF HOURS! Details here: https://weatherfactory.biz/book-of-hours-locmod-creation-reference/

A letter from the Witch of Lagash

Arabella Dusksteam_community_announcementsworkshop

475d ago

First things first: Cultist Simulator is 50-70% off as part of the Lovecraftian Days sale, so if you haven't played BOOK OF HOURS' elder brother, now's a great time to try it. (Cultist Simulator is a crueller game, but if you like BoH, you will probably enjoy CS too.) For those who are already counted among the Know, we are also running a 20%-off-almost-everything in the merch shop, so fill yer boots. Now, some LORE. Be warned: minor spoilers for Travelling at Night, and inconsequentially minor spoilers for BOOK OF HOURS. Don't read on if that concerns you! We are also now switching from Lottie writing (hello!) to Alexis, so good luck. *** Three years ago, I sat down to write an in-game letter for each Wisdom. The one below was for Hushery. We were going to release it as part of the Book of Hours marketing run-up, but it was a particularly opaque effort. Less opaque if you’re steeped in Secret Histories lore and know that Winter-long are immortal only until their specific date of expiry. Or that Winter-long who ascend under the Sun-in-Rags are sometimes dismissive of those who win their immortality from the Elegiast. Or that the actress and painter Nina Lagasse was sometimes identified with Nyn, the Witch of Lagash. Or why Julian Coseley didn’t get on with Solomon Husher. A number of these things became clear in Book of Hours, which I recommend you play, if you hain’t already. But obviously the letter proposes a couple of new opacities, in particular how Nina Lagasse is still kicking around fifty years after her holy, irrevocable, Hour-enforced time of dissolution: {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/31397842/1afd2c0d3ee720578d4ec3938378e35f6466a211.png I spose maybe we should just keep reposting this image with every blog: {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/31397842/f200cbd7b399e88046fc7b2a35f4f399540e386d.png I hoped we were going to get to go to Ortucchio in Travelling at Night, but we probably don’t have budget for DLC. We’re not going to Paris, because Nina has excellent reasons to refuse ever to return there. But our itinerary does include some time in the mountains. Anyway here’s the letter. Kerisham July 1894 Julian, dear: February the 9th, 1895. There, I have said it. I had long been certain it would be February – long, in fact, before anyone had thought of naming that angle of the year as ‘February’. But the detail of the year came late. I had hoped for another hundred. The news came from our Patron when I saw you in Paris last. You did remark that I seemed out of sorts at dinner after the recital. Yes, that was because of the news of the year. I think you had guessed as much. But I think you had not guessed that the news came during the recital. I am sorry, Julian, I have always found Satie pointlessly languid, but I had no wish to upset you; and by my age one has learnt how to nap with one’s eyes open. So I dozed through the tinkle tinkle plonkle and I found myself in the Mansus, much quicker than I might have expected. I felt our Patron’s chill, and I began at once to fear the worst. It didn’t come in person, of course – I didn’t even see its light – but its emissary was a full Name, a gratifying condescension indeed, and she left no doubt in my mind. The choice of February is an honour, if not a surprise. The choice of the year, well, I would have liked to know sooner. I hope you will excuse my irreverence if I wonder whether our Patron had forgotten the matter, or had at least not made up his mind. He is, as they say, not as he was. ‘I hope you will excuse my irreverence.’ Of course you will. Most raggies would have cast my letter into the fire when they saw me share my date – they would have found it in very poor taste – or even suspected some intrigue. But you have always been irreverent, dear Julian, and as my end grows nearer, I find that my own reverence wanes. Do not surrender yourself to excitement. I have no interest in your great project of cosmic abolition or celestial overthrow or whatever it is you are calling it now. But it is a relief to cast off the pieties. I am going back East for the end. I don’t want to spend my final days alone. Dagmar wanted to accompany me, but I know she will get emotional and I’m afraid she will do something foolish. There is a young woman of good family – I will call her Gertrude because that is her name, but I shan’t tell you her surname because I don’t want her getting mixed up in your nasty schemes. Gertrude has recent knowledge of the region, as well as an unslakable enthusiasm for alpinism. I will find both very useful. She is quite well-connected and determined enough to want to travel alone, and I think a little suspicious of me, but I have won her with secrets. Before I go, I will entrust a will to my lawyer here. You will find it aggravating when I tell you that I am going to name you in my will. You will find it more aggravating when I tell you why. I am doing it to win our argument. We have talked before about Solomon Husher, and his aesthetic ideals. You expressed a poor opinion of those ideals – very forcefully. The palest painting – you said – was an ambition for ghouls and not for raggies. You suggested Solomon was no true raggie. Very forcefully, Julian. I found it difficult to get a word in. And in any case I have always found it hard to explain in words what I find in Solomon’s work. So instead I am going to paint it. And I am going to leave you the paintings. And although you have little time for his approach, you are going to examine them carefully, and you are going to see my point. You are going to do that firstly because I am your friend and I will be dead and you will feel so obliged. And secondly because I am going to put in them all that I have left of my secrets. Now I will tell you what I mean. The first painting will be called ‘Abydos Uncrowned’. The second, ‘Nix Abolix’. The third, ‘Sunset Celia and the Unleashed Flame’. Do I perhaps now have your attention? I will paint the first at Ortucchio. I have long wanted to stop in, and now I learn – did you already know? – I learn that Duffoure has a little girl. ‘The Line of Antaios’ – you wrote in your silly Letters – ‘the Line of Antaios ends not with the Wheel’. There are two things you might have meant there, I suppose, but indeed the Line still runs, and she its newest course. Perhaps I will bless her, like a wicked fairy. Back to Abydos. I’ll climb one mountain or another with Gertrude, and conceive the ruins of Abydos at its summit. Husher wrote of the continuity of endings. You scoffed. So I will paint what happened at Abydos after the eight years of Chione’s silence – after the Shouts. Perhaps I will even paint what was woven from Chione’s hair. The second I will paint in the hills outside Heraklion where the hawthorn blooms. Gertrude will not want to go to Crete, but I will promise her a hidden mountain in the Zagros and I think she will humour me. If I bring the proper offerings, the Horned-Axe might grant me audience in the Mansus. I doubt it. But if the subject matter opens any doors that I cannot close, the Axe will be on hand to close them. She will not be pleased with me, but at this late stage there is little she can do. And if I am going to paint the Cross’ fate, it is fitting for me to do so beneath her gaze. If they were not her children, they were certainly her servants. I’ll paint all the detail I can, Julian: how the Cross passed into Nowhere, and how they did not, and how they met with Worms, and how you may discern them now. Husher argued for the journey of colours. You disagreed. Perhaps I can still change your mind. The third I will paint in the Shadowless Labyrinth. I don’t like the place, but it will be difficult to get the light right anywhere else. Gertrude will be the model for my Celia, if I can convince her. I will find a likely lad to stand in for the Sovereign of the Flame. I will paint the Sun as Celia’s shadow, and the Forge as the likely lad’s. I will paint myself as Winter, pining in the shadows or officiating at their union: Husher’s own paradox. You fancy yourself an authority on the Sun’s Division, and I happen to agree with you. But I was there in every History when it occurred, and you were not. If you think you have nothing more to learn of the Division, then you need not look at my last painting. In fact I will ensure all three are delivered to you veiled safely in black. If you’re afraid you might lose an argument with me, even after I am gone Nowhere, then you can leave them that way. Or you can be rid of them. The last three paintings of the Witch of Lagash – I can’t guess the price those might fetch at an Oriflamme’s auction. Although of course, no buyer is likely to understand the work as you might. Sell them, and my last secrets – which might have uplifted your anarchies – will go with me Nowhere. Or not; there is one last vulgar alternative to Nowhere that I will investigate on my way East. But I suspect that bird has flown. May the Patron’s ragged rays rest kindly on you, Julian. In all sincerity, when you have decided at last what it is that you want, I hope that you find it. Nin

2025.1.a.11

AKsteam_community_announcementspatchnotes

520d ago

Some people were seeing a crash on Mac. After this they shouldn't!

BOOK OF HOURS has the Green Tick

AKsteam_community_announcements

523d ago

that is, we're now Verified on Steam Deck. Thanks to Chelnoque for doggedly chiselling away at this exacting task. Valve's QA process has evidently tightened up: we've been back and forth addressing niggles with their verification arbiter since December. Deck verification is the headliner for this patch. You do also get borderless fullscreen on PC, and you can change resolution in windowed mode if you feel so inclined. I see I also put something in the patch notes that says 'Notes on Bindings gave misleading info on Wyrd-Weft creation' although it was so long ago that I can't remember exactly how it was misleading. Possibly it mixed up Heart and Winter, I think? I suppose everyone does in the end.

Talk Secret Histories with Alexis and Lottie

Arabella Dusksteam_community_announcementsworkshop

597d ago

Merry Christmas, everyone! We're rounding off the year with a live AMA on the Weather Factory subreddit, starting in about half an hour. Come talk to us about anything BOOK OF HOURS, Secret Histories, why you should never leave the Stymphling alone with small children, etc. In case you missed it, we announced our third and final entry into the Secret Histories universe yesterday: Travelling At Night, a dialogue-driven choices-matter combat-free CRPG in the tradition of isometric greats like Disco Elysium, Planescape: Torment and Fallout 1+2. So there will probably be a lot of questions about where the Histories that started in 1920s Cultist Simulator is going to end up. But we would be just as delighted to discuss subjects like our favourite Visitors, what goes on behind the scenes of game dev or why Hokobald is such a big pain in the bum. Go nuts. (We reserve the right not to answer any lore questions, but anything we can answer, we will.) The AMA starts at 6PM GMT / 10AM PDT. Hope to see you there! Bring snacks. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/31397842/a89f0317ba66b44ad695187a4cc1a77ed9694e29.png

Our next game: TRAVELLING AT NIGHT

Arabella Dusksteam_community_announcementsworkshop

598d ago

Major news! We're announcing our next game, set in - and probably our last in - the Secret Histories universe. Meet Travelling At Night, a dialogue-driven choices-matter combat-free CRPG in the tradition of isometric greats like Disco Elysium, Planescape: Torment, and Fallout 1+2. https://store.steampowered.com/app/2915730/Travelling_at_Night "Europe, 1948: myth-scarred ruins, night-sky abysses. Chitinous cities embrace the Change, or struggle against plagues of leaf and amber. The golden Incorporates of the US wage a cold war against the star-touched Ministries of the USSR. And there you are, guiding a carnival of wry, bold, complex characters through seaside sanitarium, Alpine castle, grave, hive, lignified cityscape." It stars the ex-Suppression Bureau investigator Spencer Hobson, whom you first tried to kill in Cultist Simulator and then fed sandwiches to in BOOK OF HOURS. Spencer has, as you know, been recently hollowed out by the Worms from under the world, and in Travelling he's found himself with an unusual role to play in the reweaving of the Histories after the catastrophe of the Second World War. (There is, as ever, more to it. You could call him Spencer+.) Expect forty-plus hours of notably replayable noir-myth narrative while you guide an occult carnival on a pilgrimage to locate buried power that could alter the balance of the Cold War. Assign that power as you see fit. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35142931/d72a6f48149a47ac606b3895e947b6c23584856b.png Travelling At Night is *really* early in production, so everything you see on the store page may change. Anyone who saw the Steam page for BOOK OF HOURS back in 2019 knows what I mean. But we think it's indicative of where the game is going: it'll be an isometric narrative-driven Disco-like CRPG. You walk around in it. At some point Alexis makes you make a horrible decision about the true nature of Grail or the origin of the Snub-Nosed Cat or whether to wear a hat given to you by a Ligeian that has a faintly gammony smell. Fascination ensues. Wishlist the game if you'd like to follow Travelling's progress from nascent pre-alpha to swole full launch, and/or follow our developer page to keep up with all the Secret Histories at once. We're really excited about this one: we think it could be our best work yet. Join us while we attempt this grand ambition! That never went wrong in any game of ours, right? You can also read a bit more about the thought behind it in a blog post Alexis has just published, and we'd love to see you to talk Travelling - or anything else - at our live AMA tomorrow on the Weather Factory subreddit. See you at 6PM GMT if you're free. ♥

The Christmas Market (or, the Advent Calendar 2024)

Arabella Dusksteam_community_announcementsworkshop

609d ago

"Reverend Timothy, having secured the attention of an attractive woman prepared to listen to his sermons, is now elucidating his previous *and* his next intended Christmas sermon. Coquille fastens her smile more charmingly on her face. Her eyes travel the room from end to end. There is no escape.” There is never any escape from Christmas. So you might as well embrace this year’s edition of the BOOK OF HOURS advent calendar! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35142931/ad9618fb05ac12f5c3dc819813e84a35ca4b2e61.png

What is this so-called advent calendar?

It’s a set of small daily Secret Histories treats, because we love Christmas. You can redeem each item every day either in BOOK OF HOURS or in the real world. The calendar runs from 1st - 25th December.

What’s in the advent calendar?

A mix of in-game items and little real-world treats. We’ll announce what’s behind every day's door at noon on our social channels (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram), and update this blog post with a megalist of everything released so far.

How do I get it?

Make sure you have the latest version (2024.12.m.3). You’ll see Christmas decorations appear throughout Hush House when in-game winter rolls around, and will be able to redeem any in-game gifts from Reverend Timothy’s Christmas tree next to his Rectory in Brancrug Village. Please note: you can’t get advent calendar gifts during spring, summer or autumn. You have to wait for in-game winter to appear (or start in winter) to receive any in-game items. When playing at x6 speed, the longest you’ll have to wait is a maximum of ~6 minutes.

What if I miss a day?

Any in-game items will remain available on Reverend Timothy’s Christmas tree until midnight on New Year’s Eve. The advent calendar ‘ends’ on Christmas Day, but you have an extra week to collect any missed items after then! Real-world gifts are either only usable on that day, or will be available in perpetuity. Check the megalist of advent gifts below to see what they are (or were).

What if I hate it?

You can turn off any and all seasonal art in the Settings menu. Sob. *** Finally, there's quite a big reveal behind one of these doors, so you may want to susbcribe to our newsletter to make sure you don't miss anything. I think you'll like it. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35142931/036448c2473d0ef0776421cee224c353351ca667.png

2024.12.m.3 'MORGEN'

AKsteam_community_announcementspatchnotes

612d ago

From beta to live! * Chel's performance improvements are in this patch * Bug fixes for things the perf improvements did that needed fixing * Russian localisation * The usual straggler round-up of typos and tweaks

BOOK OF HOURS x Smooth Jazz

Arabella Dusksteam_community_announcements

632d ago

The later stages of BOOK OF HOURS get a little stuttery, and I get a mail every couple of weeks from someone who’s dismayed that their high end rig built around a 4090 RTX isn’t running BH with the buttery smoothness that it can manage for Cyberpunk 2077. We’ve tinkered over the last year and improved it since launch, but after we’d picked all the low-hanging and indeed medium-height fruit, there were still some stubborn rendering bottlenecks that just needed someone to spend a week sitting down with the Unity profiler and do some meticulous testing. I finally asked Chelnoque, our orbiting contractor, to do that, because it’s hard to carve out a week of my time and he’s better at that stuff than me anyway (I have occasional virtues, but ‘meticulousness’ is not among them). You can see the fruits of his labours here: {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35142931/d30d65d93bedc1ff6f823cee1a66d2733f931e43.png and you can enjoy them in a passworded branch (perf_alpha) on Steam. I’ll tell you the password in a minute, but I’m making it slightly more obscure than usual, as a gentle filter, because I’m going on holiday next week and I don’t want to come back to too alarming a support queue! Chel or I might write up something in the mode of this post or this one, because people are often surprisingly invested in the details, but here’s one representative example of the Knuthian rule that optimisation is rarely about what you expect: one of the problems turned out to be a quirk of some earlier optimisation code. There’s some manual culling code that ensures the game doesn’t render objects that aren’t on screen (we needed to go further than Unity’s built-in culling, for reasons) and this used an additional probably-superfluous RectMask2D component, which was disproportionately hammering perfomance for reasons neither of us particularly understand. Anyway, none of these problems were at GPU level, which is why fancy graphics cards made no difference: this is all about Unity’s decisions about which rectangles to render, and how, before it passes draw calls up (down? off? out? in?) to the GPU, and we just have an extraordinary number of rectangles in Hush House. But there are things we’ve done about them and those things are done in the ‘perf_alpha’ branch which you can access with the password ‘thedorgeoffays’. It is considerably smoother. Your saves should pass happily between perf_alpha and either the beta or the main branch. Like swans, or the jet setters in that Mad Men episode. These things may have unexpected consequences in the UI, like sort order being a bit odd, or some things not being clickable that should be, because Chel really had to go into the walls and move some of the wiring: metaphorically speaking you may happen across a lightbulb that only glows when you open the garage door. So please let us know ([email protected]) anything you see, along with a save game so we can easily reproduce it! and I’ll take a look when I’m back from Norway on the 18th. If you’re not reckless enough to try out something with ‘alpha’ in the name, and who can blame you, then you can expect the improvements to arrive on beta before Christmas if you’re lucky. In the meantime, here is some firmly pre-alpha UI and even more firmly pre-alpha writing from the Game Three prototype which has been occupying my time lately. Dream furiously, people. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35142931/650c9ee74b5dcb3be5c7f37e7e96a7337bd71deb.png

Light Is Always The Answer

Arabella Dusksteam_community_announcements

640d ago

"Chitinous cities embrace the Change, or struggle against plagues of leaf and amber..." AK here. It still tickles me how few people realise Weather Factory is literally just two people (plus, ofc, trusted freelancers). I answer support emails every week addressed to 'Dear Support Team'. We get speculative applications from people who want to intern with us and don't realise we work out of a flat. Microstudios composed of couples are more common than they used to be, but it's still mildly unusual. We like it, but it does make it harder to take holidays, and it does mean we don't hire. I mentioned recently that we've been working on BOOK OF HOURS, on and off, for five years now. Some of that was pre-production, some of that was the HOUSE OF LIGHT expansion, but it's a long old time. A undergraduate degree and a master's degree. A newborn infant grown enough to go to school. If you planted an apple pip five years ago, you could be eating its fruit today. Or to put it another way, I was 47 when we started making BH and I'm 52 now. And it occurred to me that I've made about four games over fifteen years, and in another fifteen years I'll be 67. So Lottie and I had a chat about whether and how we want to spend the next fifteen years doing this - both making games, and making games as a microstudio with just the two of us. If you like our games, you'll be glad to hear that the answer is, broadly speaking, yes. Maybe we'll do more physical goods, maybe I'll take a couple of years out for that MA I keep threatening, but we like working together and we like the artisanal nature of the whole thing. I don't actually get up on a Monday and think, yay, support mails, Lottie doesn't get excited about answering Etsy merch queries, but we do like handling this stuff personally: the people who own the company and make the games are the same people you're talking to, and it also stops us from getting too up ourselves. We've talked about Weather Factory being a bit like a band or an artistic partnership but most days it feels more like a family-run cafe that happens to sell coffee through Steam. And we like making things for you lot - for our audience, I mean. I said as long ago as Fallen London that there is something to be said for making games that work like reading comprehension tests. It brings in a calmer class of customer. We've got ideas, then, for at least another couple of games before we turn in our Dev Guild hat feathers and go off to roast coffee in the hills. Over to Lottie to talk about the next one.

What now?

We're still working on BOOK OF HOURS localisation (in case you missed it, HOUSE OF LIGHT's now fully playable in Simplified Chinese) and various important but not terribly scintillating tech and bug support issues. But as AK says above, we took some time to take stock of where the studio is and what we want to do next. We've decided that, while we might come back to BOOK OF HOURS later, we've said what we wanted to say with it through HOUSE OF LIGHT. We'd like to leave it there - for now. Currently, we're Fascinated by an idea for Game Three. We've spent some of the past couple of months prototyping the underlying tech system and art direction so we can share something that's reasonably likely to look like the final game. We need to do a bit more work before we can announce, but here are some tidbits we can share:

The game is set in the Secret Histories... but another decade on. The world has changed and keeps on changing.
It may appeal to AK's older audiences - from Fallen London and Sunless Sea - as well as Weather Factory fans.
It's a new genre we haven't developed before. It's a natural fit for the kind of stuff we do, though.
It's ambitious. And...
...who's this?

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35142931/1ea1b02035fc8a4e074816a36d3ae7a841a9e6c8.png We don't have a Steam page we can send you to (YET), but if you like what you see, follow our developer page on Steam and you'll be pinged when we announce it!

The Lucid Tarot

In other Secret-Histories-but-not-video-games news, our long awaited Lucid Tarot is finally out now on the Etsy shop. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35142931/12a82504bdb14ccb74975ee33589a249e064fdd2.png Check out the store page, or read more about the intent behind the deck - and see a derpy Elegiast sketch - over on the blog.

Simplified Chinese out now for HOUSE OF LIGHT

Arabella Dusksteam_community_announcementsworkshop

649d ago

An update for all our Chinese players: HOUSE OF LIGHT is now fully playable in Simplified Chinese! This means all 270,000 words of BOOK OF HOURS + HOUSE OF LIGHT are translated in beautiful Simplified Chinese, and you can play the whole game including the expansion from start to finish. If you find any bugs with the Chinese translation, please email them to [email protected]. Otherwise, enjoy! We think we'll be releasing a Russian beta for HOUSE OF LIGHT some time next month, and Japanese beta for BOOK OF HOURS by the end of the year. More info on that when we have confirmed dates. For now, thanks for being patient. Stay classy, Brancrug! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2834350/BOOK_OF_HOURS_HOUSE_OF_LIGHT/ In other news, a reminder that we're launching our long-awaited Lucid Tarot on the shop next Thursday (31st October) at 6PM GMT, should you wish to see the Secret Histories gods represented in new and interesting ways, and that our next big announcement will be what AK and I are moving onto now HOUSE OF LIGHT is complete (apart from localisation, of course). Fans of Cultist Simulator or BOOK OF HOURS will, I think, be pleased...

2024.10.j.3: 'JANUS'

AKsteam_community_announcementspatchnotes

668d ago

- The Wonderful Shape is now a Dawn book - Rest at Sweet Bones: Winter message now only displays in Winter - Tooltip on first-day ticker no longer flickers - Tuned some of the sounds in the Wisdom Tree - If you've completed a standard ending more than once, it will no longer display twice in the endings screen. (If you've created a complex Lighthouse ending, with different values, more than once, it'll still display multiple times.) - Chinese and Russian versions of the *closed* village buildings now display correct highlight images. - Added some guard/logging code that might help with that bloody High Contrast Settings crash. - HOUSE OF LIGHT: Fixed an issue with the Unfettered Eye where Hokobald would sometimes be Inspired under the wrong circumstances. - HOUSE OF LIGHT: Olympe's Heist option is available even without a fiddly Memory trick - HOUSE OF LIGHT: The beehive won't offer the upgraded beehive recipes by default any more. - HOUSE OF LIGHT: St Tentreto's Altar is consistent about its requirements after a change. - HOUSE OF LIGHT: Spencer no longer confuses Down for Out - HOUSE OF LIGHT: Mushroom Meringue now correctly causes Regret - HOUSE OF LIGHT: Avenues of Enquiry have a less misleading 'no Incident just now' message (and in new games that message will occur only when there are no Incidents at all) - HOUSE OF LIGHT: The endless struggle against typos remains endless, but it proceeds - HOUSE OF LIGHT: A slight tweak to Arthur's request for one of the De Horis versions to make it clearer which version he wants. - HOUSE OF LIGHT: Rowena's Burden will no longer cause the Convene action to loop frighteningly. - HOUSE OF LIGHT: Some work to make founder names localisable in complex ending screens, which happily also put a correct hyphen in al-Adim. - HOUSE OF LIGHT: Echidna is now blocked from attending Salons in both of her modes.

BETA BRANCH: Simplified Chinese localisation of HOUSE OF LIGHT preview

Arabella Dusksteam_community_announcementsworkshop

670d ago

Thanks to the hard work of the Chinese localisation team, there's a preview version of the Chinese localisation of HOUSE OF LIGHT available now. There may be missing texts or oddities - please let us know about these at [email protected]. To see the preview, switch to the beta_loc branch (Properties | Betas | beta_loc). Thank you! ♥

HOUSE OF LIGHT Day 1 Update on beta branch

AKsteam_community_announcementspatchnotes

674d ago

The headline feature here is a patch to address the problem some people saw with blank Further Stories events in legacy saves. There are also a bunch of typos and story logic oddity fixes, and a tiny additional feature that will become apparent after completing a couple of Further Stories. to repeat: this is on the beta branch! Properties | Betas ->dropdown | Beta if you want to give it a spin.

HOUSE OF LIGHT out now!

Arabella Dusksteam_community_announcementsworkshop

675d ago

"Mrs Kille respectfully addresses Morgen as 'Chaculette'- a title that Morgen seems to recognise - and bows her head. Morgen touches a finger to her lips, and then to Mrs Kille's forehead - perhaps a blessing, perhaps something else." It's finally here! HOUSE OF LIGHT is now available on Steam. Don't keep reading this! Go play it! That honey-haunted pumpkin pie ain't gonna bake itself! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2834350/BOOK_OF_HOURS_HOUSE_OF_LIGHT/ HOUSE OF LIGHT adds a novel's worth of new content to BOOK OF HOURS. It's free to anyone with Perpetual Edition and 10% off for everyone in the first week of sale. It's also purchasable as a new Anthology Edition bundle (including BOOK OF HOURS, HOUSE OF LIGHT and the soundtrack) all with an extra 15% off everything - just like the Anthology Edition of Cultist Simulator. This is the best value and most definitive version of the game you can buy. Once purchased (or if you're a PE owner, once you update to the latest version of the game), you should see a new HOUSE OF LIGHT button on the bottom left-hand corner of the main menu screen. Clicking it will open a 'spoiler-light' introduction to the new content (and how to get it in-game), but I'll share it here too to whet your appetite:

FOOD

Combine Ingredients, Sustenance, and Kitchenware items at the three Kitchen workstations to create nearly a hundred new dishes. TIP: The Spice Scales, and the Spices & Savours skill, will substitute for each other. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35142931/2fc3403010bb58e18cdd5b25bafd43dccd2d46b8.png

A WRITING-CASE

Once you've received this gift, you can record addresses from the calling-cards left by satisfied visitors; and write to these visitors to invite them back to the House. TIP: Visitors don't arrive instantly; visitors don't leave calling cards until you've helped them; and some visitors are easier to summon than others. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35142931/6909b67b57c45b51c7d63887cb4af9936a2c73f7.png

SALONS

Place food and drink in one of the six Salon rooms, and then use the bell to begin a Salon. Do it right and you'll be rewarded with sparkling conversation... and Lessons. TIP: Visitors usually prefer food and drink which matches their primary Interest, but some have additional requirements. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35142931/deb595b1cb308f7c0f309d30a9736030ead210f0.png

MANUSCRIPTS

Use Paper, Ink, and a Skill to write a Manuscript based on that skill. These Manuscripts may be necessary to satisfy thirsts for specific knowledge in FURTHER STORIES. Lessons from Salons will help you improve those Skills and write more useful Manuscripts. TIP: You can't reliably control what Visitors will discuss - it's a party, not an interrogation - but they'll usually provide lessons related to their shared Interests. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35142931/2cc27505f4b2f46e931c3162e81505cfb894f846.png

FURTHER STORIES

Once you've completed an Incident, follow it up in the Tree of Wisdoms. Visitors will need more specific help here - perhaps a book on a specific topic, or a specific book. TIP: An Affair opens to Further Stories once all interested Visitors have had the opportunity to ask you for help with it. Be aware in some Further Stories, it can make a difference who you originally helped. Be careful. This is the one part of the game where choices can sometimes have permanent consequences. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35142931/1d02868099399e127dd815a5b5cab8143982b2f1.png

THE INSTITUTE

Look for the lighthouse, out at sea. When your Visitors are ready, use it to establish the true heirs to the Curia of the Isle. TIP: Further Stories outcomes can inspire your Visitors to support the Institute - for their own reasons. Their nature is constant, but some story outcomes can make them decide to emphasise one agenda over another. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35142931/9ac18ea44b3e3d698047447202cc5cfbb42a07fc.png

Please leave a review if you like it

If you like HOUSE OF LIGHT, please leave it a positive review! People tend not to leave reviews for expansions / DLC, but it would be extremely helpful if you do for this expansion. So if you can, please give us a nice blue thumbs up! ✨👍✨

Excuse me this expansion appears to be only in English

HOUSE OF LIGHT is currently being translated into Russian and Simplified Chinese, to match the tip-top localisations of the base game. Please be patient with us while our wonderful localisers complete their work. We're actually planning to launch Simplified Chinese beta for HOUSE OF LIGHT next week! Japanese is coming for the full game and the beta ASAP. More news on that when we have confirmed dates. We're still considering translating BOOK OF HOURS into other languages. We'll let everyone know if we decide to go ahead with any additional localisations, just as soon as they're confirmed in studio.

Anything else?

Everyone's favourite Canadian (OK, after Benton Fraser from Due South), Systemchalk, is livestreaming BOOK OF HOURS on the store page right now. If you'd like to experience the sensation of pouring warm maple syrup into your ear while you drowse by a library fireplace, tune in. Also, all merch is currently 25% off in the shop to celebrate HOUSE OF LIGHT's launch, so go nuts with all the things you've had your eyes on but wanted to wait for a good deal (here's looking at you, Lady Afterwards). Fingers crossed you enjoy all the love we put into HOUSE OF LIGHT. Thanks so much for playing, and happy hosting in Hush House!

Russian and Simplified Chinese now available!

Arabella Dusksteam_community_announcementsworkshop

703d ago

"Before gods arose from blood, before ever ape stood upright, this was the language heard in the House of the Sun...” All 200,000 words of BOOK OF HOURS are now available in Simplified Chinese and Russian! (Japanese language is coming a little later.) We’ve tried to capture the poetry of the original English as much as possible, so whatever language you choose, we hope it’s a joy to play. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35142931/81ab5dc9a50dd8c0437021bf7c0d5a4b92da7a11.png {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35142931/876ebba367f39185565df7df22bc09b14aac4fb8.png Firstly, make sure you’ve updated the game to the latest version. BOOK OF HOURS should then automatically load in your default language (so if you browse Steam in Simplified Chinese, the game should automatically display in Simplified Chinese). If it doesn’t, just select the language you want from the ‘Languages’ drop-down menu on the title screen. We strongly recommend - we urge you with a desperate passion - to start a new game after switching languages. It might bork your game if you don’t! If you encounter any bugs (particularly language bugs, like typos or translations that don’t make sense) please email [email protected] and let us know. Some things might be a stylistic choice on behalf of our excellent localisers, but we want to make these the best they can be. All feedback is welcome. Please note that our major expansion, HOUSE OF LIGHT, launches next month on Thursday 26th September. It’s huge - including hundreds of new recipes, Visitor interactions, and more - so it will not be playable in Russian or Simplified Chinese on launch day. We’ll release Russian and Simplified Chinese for HOUSE OF LIGHT as soon as it’s humanly possible to translate it. Thank you for being patient with us while we make it happen! If you like BOOK OF HOURS, please leave us a nice review and tell your friends about it. It’s really hard getting the word out to people we can’t speak to directly, so help us spread the melancholy joy of Brancrug by using the enviable language skills we don’t have. Thank you! ♥

The Secret Colours of the Sun

Arabella Dusksteam_community_announcements

709d ago

"Facts are like cows. If you stare them in the face hard enough, they generally run away." — Mervyn Bunter, Clouds of Witness (1926) Facts are the bricks of life, but they need a few licks of paint before you want to look at them. Mr Gradgrind of Hard Times said: "Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else." And he turned out to be the villain of the piece! So today I am giving you facts, but coated in glorious technicolour.

HOUSE OF LIGHT

You all know that HOUSE OF LIGHT is launching on Thursday 26th September at 6PM BST. I can now confirm that it will cost $14.99 / £12.99 / €13.99 with a 10% launch discount in the first week of sale (except if you're a Perpetual Edition owner, in which case it's free). We'll also be adding a new BOOK OF HOURS: Anthology Edition bundle, just like Cultist Simulator, which includes the base game, the soundtrack and HOUSE OF LIGHT with a 15%-off-everything discount (making it about $43.32 / £35.67 / €41.21 in total). This should make it easy for first-time buyers to get the definitive edition of the game with one click, and for existing fans to force gentle occult librarianship on all their friends by buying it as a gift for someone else. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35142931/3d71969112bbbf51ad809c943b6579986e9553c4.png AK has already mentioned this in a few places, but it's worth reiterating that HOUSE OF LIGHT is roughly comparable in size to all Cultist's DLCs wrapped up in one. Cultist had lots of smaller expansions, but we tried something different with BOOK OF HOURS and spent much longer making one really chunky expansion rather than lots of little pieces. So just in case anyone was worried about the value of Perpetual Edition dropping, it hasn't! It's all just coming at once this time. Depending on how HOUSE OF LIGHT goes, and how pre-production on our Mysterious Game Three goes, we'll make a decision in the first half of 2025 about whether we come back to BOOK OF HOURS and release additional expansions like HOUSE OF HUES. More on that as/when we have updates. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35142931/7def08a782d6d0f76d0f451376750bf45580f8e3.png Now, for some long-awaited news...

The Lucid Tarot

It finally has a release date! That release date is:

🎴🎃🦇 HALLOWEEN 🦇🎃🎴 (Thursday 31st October 2024)

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35142931/bf7c86205815ae8d230939cabea17193af69d5a0.png We'll be releasing it on our Etsy shop at 6PM GMT, it'll cost £70 + shipping, and we'll be starting with 500 signed, limited edition copies. Every deck comes with a velvet tarot bag and quick start guide, but the first 500 decks will also contain a certificate of authenticity, signed and numbered by 'the artist'. Once these are gone, they're gone - so if the Tarot of the Hours and the Lady Afterwards launches are anything to go by, I'd suggest camping out on the Etsy shop at this time on Halloween and grabbing a copy while they're still there. If you miss out on the first 500, don't worry. Like we did with the Tarot of the Hours - to make sure everyone in all time zones had a fair chance of getting a deck - we'll release another 500 Lucid Tarots over November / December. If we sell out, we'll restock for 2025. So everyone who wants a deck will be able to get one - we just have to take it slow so I (and my mum and dad, who have been unceremoniously roped in for packing duty) can manage demand. Right. See you on the other side of Simplified Chinese and Russian release, which is happening next week on Thursday 29th August. Wish us luck!

mfw. fml. etc.

AKsteam_community_announcementspatchnotes

710d ago

* A fix specifically for the logo not changing when you switched specifically from Chinese to Russian in the menu. * Another fix for the bug the logo fix caused, where all buildings in Brancrug looked like the Sweet Bones.

BOOK OF HOURS news & patch notes

BOOK OF HOURS news & patch notes

2025.8.e.3: "EAGLES"

What is this so-called advent calendar?

What’s in the advent calendar?

How do I get it?

What if I miss a day?

What if I hate it?

What now?

The Lucid Tarot

FOOD

A WRITING-CASE

SALONS

MANUSCRIPTS

FURTHER STORIES

THE INSTITUTE

Please leave a review if you like it

Excuse me this expansion appears to be only in English

Anything else?

HOUSE OF LIGHT

The Lucid Tarot

🎴🎃🦇 HALLOWEEN 🦇🎃🎴 (Thursday 31st October 2024)

Steam news for BOOK OF HOURS

Frequently asked questions

Explore SteamScope

BOOK OF HOURS

Discovery

Deals & Pricing

Game Rankings

Browse by Genre

Browse by Studio

Tools & Database

BOOK OF HOURS news & patch notes

BOOK OF HOURS news & patch notes

2025.8.e.3: "EAGLES"

What is this so-called advent calendar?

What’s *in* the advent calendar?

How do I get it?

What if I miss a day?

What if I *hate* it?

What now?

The Lucid Tarot

FOOD

A WRITING-CASE

SALONS

MANUSCRIPTS

FURTHER STORIES

THE INSTITUTE

Please leave a review if you like it

Excuse me this expansion appears to be only in English

Anything else?

HOUSE OF LIGHT

The Lucid Tarot

🎴🎃🦇 HALLOWEEN 🦇🎃🎴 (Thursday 31st October 2024)

Steam news for BOOK OF HOURS

Frequently asked questions

Explore SteamScope

BOOK OF HOURS

Discovery

Deals & Pricing

Game Rankings

Browse by Genre

Browse by Studio

Tools & Database

What’s in the advent calendar?

What if I hate it?