I enjoy a lot of different kinds of games from all sorts of studios, targeted towards all sorts of demographics. Sometimes I want to play a gigantic, sprawling RPG like Baldur's Gate 3. Sometimes I want to survive in the hostile Amazon with Green Hell. Sometimes I want to immerse myself in a melancholy world and absurd character with Disco Elysium. I like sneaking around in the OG Thief games and in their spiritual successor, the Dishonored series. I've been known to blow some people up in an FPS or two, but it's not my favorite kind of game. Heck, I still even love The Sims.

You get it. I enjoy a lot of games, even those made by guys and tailored towards other guys (aka most games), as long as they're tasteful enough about it.

But I am aware that most games don't speak to what I might reservedly or even hesitantly call my "feminine" side, so to speak, and those which do tend to kind of infantilize it. Not that I don't also love playing cozy games with cartoonish elements that awaken my inner child, but until I found this game, I didn't know how hungry I was for a gentle but deeply rich and intellectual game, with a mature aesthetic.

Book of Hours is not a game for everyone. Many will find its mechanics too obscure. It does very little hand-holding. And many of those who enjoy it will nonetheless give up on it simply because precious few people have time to immerse themselves in a game like this. 100% understandable. But for the few who can spare the space for it, it is totally unique.

The game is produced by Weather Factory, and was written by Lottie Bevan (a woman) and Alexis Kennedy (a man). It is a relaxed standalone companion to a much more frenetic game known as Cultist Simulator, and my understanding is that they exist in the same universe.

The premise of Book of Hours is that you are the Librarian of a sprawling estate in the English countryside--an estate known as Hush House. You start out understanding very little of what is going on. It is quite possible that you will end understanding very little of what is going on, but along the way you will be receiving tidbits of lore that you can piece together into a strange but consistent picture if you pay close attention.

Other than the Library itself and its contents, the game is chiefly card-based. There are Memory cards, which can represent concepts like the current weather, ephemeral or lasting insights, and lessons you've gained from, among other things, reading the many books in Hush House.

Then you have your Elements of the Soul cards. In this lore, the human soul has nine parts: Health, Chor, Ereb, Mettle, Phost, Wist, Fet, and Trist.

Next are your skill cards. Naming a few just to give a taste: Insects & Nectars, Disciplines of the Hammer, Sky Stories, Serpents & Venoms, Ragged Crossroads, Sacra Limiae, Watchman's Paradoxes. There are dozens of these.

The last panel of cards represents a sort of card inventory. They include currency (both the standard English tender of the early 20th century, when the game takes place, and the occult coinage known as spintriae), assistance that you can hire or have hired for the day, Incident cards that represent esoteric events going on in the world, and whatever unusual visitors have arrived either by invitation or to consult the Library about an Incident, among other miscellania.

Pretty much everything in the game has one or more Aspects. These Aspects are: Nectar, Heart, Grail, Edge, Sky, Lantern, Forge, Moth, Rose, Knock, Moon, Winter, and Scale.

Every single room of the colossal estate must be deliberately unlocked room by room with the assistance of villagers and other hirelings, raising their Aspects to the point that they are capable of cleaning up rubble or removing curses or whatever is keeping you from the room.

Books (and phonograph/film recordings, which behave mostly similarly) have a Mystery level corresponding to one of the Aspects, and the goal is to gather enough of those Aspects using an Element of the Soul, a Skill, a Memory, and if applicable, a Language (also considered a kind of Skill). As your skills increase via lessons from the books you read, and your Elements of the Soul become more powerful as you combine them, it will become feasible to read more difficult and powerful books. Each book you read gives you snippets of the text and/or musings on the content. Lore in this game is its own reward, and it is incredibly complex and interwoven.

Crafting is also a huge thing. Using specific Skills, Aspects, and components on certain crafting stations (like a giant telescope, a strange altar, or a workbench, to name a few), you can produce both items and Memories, which can be used for their Aspects or sometimes for more specific purposes in more crafting.

The pause button is vital, but the seasons pass. Gardening allows for harvesting of different flowers, fruits, and vegetables depending on the season. Most Memories are lost with each new dawn, with a couple of ways to potentially preserve one through the night, and with others that are powerful enough to persist.

But even those are lost after the mystical, single-day season of Numa passes, when the plants in the garden transform into strange and rare blossoms and fruits. Numa comes once every nine seasons, but one is never sure when. When it arrives, you must rush to do everything you can.

Numa is the only true time constraint in the game, discouraging you from hoarding all your persistent memories and lessons indefinitely. After all, there are better and more interesting things to do in Numa than frantically attempt to use up everything you've been holding onto, so it's best not to let things lie for too long, lest the labyrinth season take you by surprise.

The ostensible goal of the game is to write a new History in your Journal with an Ink of Power. I won't get into what that means too much; as I mentioned before, the lore is the main reward in this game, and the way it's dispensed in these little tidbits is masterful.

And what lore it is. The world-building is--and I mean this sincerely--the best I have ever seen. This is not just a game written by a writer. This is a game written by an author. It has a beautifully distinctive literary tone throughout. There are plenty of clever and humorous bits, while many other passages still give me chills even now. An incredible amount of research must have been done into occultism, as well as the time period and region. Both the similarities to our world (our History?) and the differences are equally compelling. I cannot be effusive enough about the writing.

Meanwhile, you can organize the Library however you wish. You can take the busts of the previous Librarians found throughout the House, learn who they are from various lore-scraps, and place them in their labeled niches, or you can ignore everything and leave it as disorganized as I am in real life.

There are things I haven't mentioned, some of which because this already is becoming a novella, and others because I have barely discovered them myself. Resolving Incidents, finding Treasures of the House...I've finished this game (no small feat in and of itself) a few times already, and I'm still experimenting and learning.

There is a DLC, House of Light. Much of this DLC is devoted to inviting guests over and having "Salons" aka a meal and a discussion. You can cook different courses for them via the oven. Certain courses are required for salons at different tables and times of day (elevenses, afternoon tea, dinner). I love it. Highly recommended. It's basically just integrated into the game.

Anyway, I felt that you could tell that a woman's voice was extremely strong in this game, without it being sanitized or idealized or dumbed down or "cute." Of course all women are different, and what it means to be "feminine" is broad and contentious, I felt that it was a game that many mature female gamers would appreciate.

Thanks for reading!