BOOK OF HOURS

Weather Factory built Cultist Simulator on a specific, uncompromising philosophy: the game will not explain itself, and understanding its systems is meant to feel like uncovering a secret rather than reading a tutorial. BOOK OF HOURS carries that same philosophy into a new premise — restoring a crumbling occult library by a winter sea, cataloguing grimoires and hidden knowledge in a 1930s world of secret gods — and it inherits both the previous game's singular appeal and its most polarising limitation in roughly equal measure.

Writing and atmosphere that earn genuine devotion

Where BOOK OF HOURS draws its most consistent, near-universal praise is atmosphere and writing. Its take on hidden gods, secret history and the specific texture of occult scholarship is described by fans as completely absorbing, with several long-time Cultist Simulator players calling this a direct evolution and improvement on that earlier game's world-building. Deep, interlocking crafting and cataloguing systems reward the kind of sustained attention the genre's best entries ask for, and the hand-drawn art and audio design give the whole experience a distinctive identity that's hard to compare to anything else on the market.

A learning curve reviewers describe almost identically

What's remarkable is how consistently reviewers, across a wide range of otherwise differing opinions, describe the same specific experience getting into the game. The opening five to seven hours are widely characterised as genuinely confusing, with core systems going essentially unexplained and no in-game tools — not even a basic notepad — for tracking the information the game expects you to manage yourself. A striking number of reviewers describe resorting to external spreadsheets or constantly alt-tabbing to keep notes, a workaround so commonly mentioned that it reads less like an individual coping strategy and more like a real, structural gap in the design. Interface friction compounds this, with several reviewers describing the UI itself as something they had to fight rather than use naturally.

A deliberate choice, not an oversight

It's worth being fair to what Weather Factory is actually doing here: this opacity is a design philosophy, not an accident, carried over directly from Cultist Simulator and clearly intentional. Players who specifically want that kind of self-directed discovery, piecing together how a system works without being told, describe the resulting sense of mastery as genuinely rewarding in a way a more conventional tutorial-driven game couldn't replicate. The honest question for a prospective buyer isn't whether the confusion is a flaw exactly — it's whether that specific kind of challenge sounds appealing or simply frustrating to you.

Final verdict

BOOK OF HOURS is a genuinely singular narrative crafting game, carrying Weather Factory's distinctive, uncompromising design philosophy into a beautifully realised new setting. It settles at 7 rather than higher because the accessibility gap is real, widely and consistently reported, and substantial enough that a meaningful share of buyers will bounce off the opening hours before the game's genuine rewards become apparent. For fans of Cultist Simulator or deliberately obscure systems-driven design, it's an easy recommendation; for anyone who wants a game to teach itself, go in with a guide ready or temper expectations accordingly.

Price and review data checked 5 August 2026.

If you'd rather your progression systems were transparent from the start rather than something you have to painstakingly decode, Wanderer keeps its own systems considerably more approachable.