Recent reviews by Manslapper

It is still very much a work in progress, but the game is fantastic so far. The gameplay combines deckbuilding and combat strategy in a way that I have never seen before. The difficulty can be brutal at times, but with proper unit placement and appropriate card draws no encounter feels "unfair".
The real highlight for me is the story, art, music, and atmosphere. The combination of dogmatic fervor and science fiction feels very WH40K but without being quite as grimdark; there is hope and optimism present here. Protecting the City from the oppressive miasma and monsters surrounding it adds some pretty serious stakes that I have rarely seen in roguelike games. Give the demo a try!

I'll preface this by saying what follows is not a joke. The game literally sent me spiraling through an 8 month long existential crisis full of hopelessness, anxiety, and despair. Everything felt so pointless and I questioned the very purpose of living.
But because the game tore down everything I had, I was able to rebuild myself into something significantly stronger and full of hope. So uh...yeah! I recommend it as a psychological trial by fire. A potent enema for the psyche.
And I also recommend it for Egghead and his Scooter quotes.
"SKIBADEE, SKIBADANGER! I AM THE REARRANGER!"

An unexpectedly interesting and memorable game. While the gameplay can be janky at times, it can also be very charming and engaging. (Mostly due to the insane weapons.) The story is the main highlight, though. It's an engaging occult mystery through several characters' perspectives that all culminates in a fantastic climax.

Cultist Simulator was a frantic and stressful chase through the Invisible Arts. Grasping at shadows and trying to comprehend mysteries while staving off game-ending madness and despair at every turn. You were even HUNTED by authorities and rivals alike once you thought yourself comfortable. There was never any rest until you reached your goal.
By monumental contrast, Book of Hours is a leisurely stroll near the shores of the Invisible Arts. The game is relaxed and merciful, allowing you to explore and restore an occult library at your own pace while gathering knowledge from its cache of forbidden books. The game even has a tutorial for gods sake! That should tell you everything you need to know.

However, note my use of the term "near the shores". Compared to CS, Book of Hours' story is much smaller in scale and the stakes are very low (until the very, VERY end). This does lend credence to the more relaxed atmosphere and gameplay, but the absence of rites and rituals feels odd to me after everything that was established in the game's predecessor. Even the Mansus is off limits to The Librarian, who seems to collect occult knowledge just for knowledge's sake (unless it can be used to further explore the library or brew ink).
I have one other minor nitpick in a game I otherwise deem fantastic. While Hush House is filled with fantastic locations, it feels very empty. This is likely also on purpose to help with the intended atmosphere; you are restoring a library long in disrepair. But there are multiple large dining rooms, gardens, kitchens, bedrooms; and here is only the Librarian making use of them, alone. Once you restore enough of Hush House, it dawns on you how lonely it feels. There are occasional visitors, but they only want a single book before they skedaddle. It would be nice if visitors spent a day or two in Hush House, resting from their journey to remote Brancrug Village and making use of various rooms depending on their interests. Or perhaps you could invite the villagers of Brancrug to a dinner party. I have absolutely no idea how this would work or what benefit on gameplay it could have, but it would be a nice feature to be able to actually use the rooms you have thus-far restored in the sprawling House.

Though it has a few small issues, many of which are actively being addressed and worked on by Weather Factory, Book of Hours is an absolutely remarkable game. I can recommend it wholeheartedly to friends whom I thought might be intimidated or confused by Cultist Simulator's obtuse and often frustrating early game, making it a perfect introduction into this beguiling world of multiple histories and invisible arts.

Edit:
House of Light has solved literally every single issue I had with this game. While it is still a lonely experience most of the time, the inclusion of cooking, dinner parties, and lengthy conversations has brought much welcome new life into Hush House. The game is now a relaxing masterpiece.
(Also, joining the Discord to discuss lore was one of the best decisions I've made.)
READ EVERYTHING. Everything. Read everything.

One of those rare life-altering games; it has literally changed how I view the world. Extremely creative and extensive in its storytelling and worldbuilding, and learning exactly how it works is half the fun. It is a card game, but not in the traditional "drawing from a deck" sense. The cards are a means to tell the story, a representation of everything the player has access to at any given time. The cards represent nouns, things such as objects, places, people, or even feelings. The cards are combined with verb blocks to insight an action by the player. It is a fresh and brilliant way to tell a story.

That being said, it is difficult to recommend for some people because the gameplay itself is a puzzle that must be solved by the player. There is no tutorial, just as there is no all-encompassing guidebook to the occult. It must be pieced together by the individual through trial and error, and later through study. But if one sticks with it and solves the puzzle, an entire fantastical macabre world awaits them. As far as that part goes, it is best to go in blind.

Much more interactive, intuitive, and beginner-friendly than its soggier older brother. Skies is packed with just as much style and soul as Sea, though the atmosphere is noticeably different. Pun completely intended.

The single best mystery game I've ever played. Nearly all other mystery games have you finding clues and then the narrative puts them together for you in various ways. This innovative gameplay style puts absolutely all detective work and mystery solving squarely on your shoulders; though that very style by nature makes this game virtually impossible to play through more than once. The mystery is the game itself, and once it is solved it can't just be squeezed out of your brain.

That being said, it is still a gorgeous game and an absolute joy of a unique experience the first time through.

To use terrible similes, this game is basically Vaporwave Danganronpa with Suda 51 characters.
While also being so unique that it is like none of those things.
And unlike virtually all detective games, there is actual investigating to do. It's not just a checklist that you have to finish in order to progress to the trial stage. You will very likely not find everything in your first run, and the facts are yours to manipulate in order to shape the truth how you see fit. All while you get engrossed in a bizarre virtual world full of weirdos and intrigue.
I can honestly say it's unlike anything I've ever played and is instantly one of my favorite games of all time.

I kept my eye on this game for years, watching and waiting to see if it ever fulfilled its potential. After all, a naval Warhammer video game could be beautiful. There's so much you could do with the setting. You could tell several wonderful stories with overarching plots and characters, all while trading, fighting orc pirates and chaos cannibals, and listening to your crew sing sea shanties unique to their world, location, and race.

Instead, the game breaks the cardinal rule of gaming: It is boring. Literally the only good thing about the game is the ship designs. Everything else, /everything/ else, is terrible or boring. The naval combat is serviceable at best, and, as every other review has stated, the melee combat is laughably horrendous. The game is full of silent trips through a visually lackluster sea occasionally punctuated by fights with a faceless enemy. They couldn't even make the water physics work correctly. In a navy game!

The game may be off Steam now, but just in case it ever comes back, I don't want anyone else to make my mistake. Don't buy it. You will just end up bored and disappointed. And the disappointment is immense.

I wish I hadn't judged this book by its cover. Every aspect of the game feels so shallow. The minimalist animations and rail movement didn't bother me so much because it fit with the papercraft theme, but absolutely everything else was created with the same bare minimum effort. The combat, the characters, the story, the base mechanics, every part of it is a shallow boring mess.
If you want to participate in combat, you must hold your mouse over any enemies in the vicinity as your character automatically attacks them from an insane distance away. The only real danger is if there are large groups of enemies and you can't hold down your mouse on each of them long enough. I say "if you want to participate" because the game literally autoattacks enemies for you if your mouse is not on them; putting the mouse on enemies just makes you attack faster.
The characters are nameless and cliche in the worst ways, lacking any personality short of which other character they like or dislike.
The story might as well be nonexistent. It's the same nonstory that nearly every dungeon crawler uses; a village has been infested and downtrodden by a nearby dungeon and it's up to you to save the town. That's it. No twists or variations. I feel childish for pointing out flaws in the story of all things, but it just left such a disappointing taste in my mouth. I was expecting a game like this to be creative with its stories because it's supposed to be, y'know, a book. But no, the bare minimum has been written to accommodate the boring combat and the bland characters.
The game uses cards in place of items, weapons, armor, and attacks. I was willing to forgive this at first, but the characters will literally talk about using literal cards and how much better it is now compared to the ancient and archaic ways of blacksmiths. The game breaks the fourth wall to pat itself on the back for using the laziest means of combat mechanics imaginable and the whole thing was so insufferable.

Each time you launch the game it takes you to a separate "launcher" library area, where you must choose the game among several other empty pedestals representing separate buyable games published by the same company. It wasn't until later that I realized how large of a red flag this was. But now I know and I must warn you. This game is a shallow scam. It is a single creative idea among a vast shallow sea of boring mediocrity packaged inside of an advertisement.