There is never any escape from Christmas. So you might as well embrace this year’s edition of the BOOK OF HOURS advent calendar!

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 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) on Steam and/or GOG. 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.

The advent calendar megalist

• Sunday 1st — [IN-GAME] Christmas decorations! These appear in several places in Hush House, as well as across Brancrug Village. Also, Reverend Timothy’s Christmas tree appears. 🎄
  
  
• Monday 2nd — [IN-GAME] Something smooth as an egg and frosted like a winter window. Collect it from Reverend Timothy’s Christmas tree.
  
  
• Tuesday 3rd — [REAL WORLD] 50% off the Notebook of the Hours, in single and bundle form. For 24hrs only!
  
  
• Wednesday 4th — [IN-GAME] Something fiendishly simple and wretchedly fragile. Collect it from Reverend Timothy’s Christmas tree.
  
  
• Thursday 5th — [REAL WORLD] Announcing a live AMA with Alexis and Lottie on Friday 13th December on the Weather Factory subreddit. Something may arrive.
  
  
• Friday 6th — [IN-GAME] Something hard for mortal men to dig. Collect it from Reverend Timothy’s Christmas tree.
  
  
• Saturday 7th — [REAL WORLD] 50% off The Lady Afterwards, the luxury Cultist Simulator TRPG. For 24hrs only!
  
  
• Sunday 8th — [IN-GAME] Something salty and savoury. Collect it from Reverend Timothy’s Christmas tree.
  
  
• Monday 9th — [REAL WORLD] New Lucid Tarot in the shop! It’s the last batch before Christmas, and ships worldwide.
  
  
• Tuesday 10th — [IN-GAME] Something healthful and slippery. Collect it from Reverend Timothy’s Christmas tree.
  
  
• Wednesday 11th — ???
  
  
• Thursday 12th — ???
  
  
• Friday 13th — ???
  
  
• Saturday 14th — ???
  
  
• Sunday 15th — ???
  
  
• Monday 16th — ???
  
  
• Tuesday 17th — ???
  
  
• Wednesday 18th — ???
  
  
• Thursday 19th — ???
  
  
• Friday 20th — ???
  
  
• Saturday 21st — ???
  
  
• Sunday 22nd — ???
  
  
• Monday 23rd — ???
  
  
• Tuesday 24th — ???
  
  
• Wednesday 25th — ???

🎁🎄 …a 25-day advent calendar of Hush House! 🎄🎁

Each day we’ll open a door containing treats in BOOK OF HOURS or the ‘real’ world (you’ll see it on all of our socials [ Twitter / Facebook / Instagram ], and we’ll update this blog daily with What’s Behind Today’s Door).

Most are tasty amuses-bouches. Some are pretty major reveals. A few real world treats will only last for 24hrs, but you’ll never miss anything in-game. Playing BOOK OF HOURS any time in December will give you everything the calendar’s revealed to date whenever in-game winter rolls around. So there’s no stress if you’re ‘out’ having ‘fun’ with ‘friends’. Except, you know. Have a think about your life choices there.

Door 1: Seasonal art in BOOK OF HOURS

The next time you’re playing BOOK OF HOURS and winter comes around, you’ll notice some festive cheer sprinkled throughout Brancrug Village and Hush House. For anyone who wants to be left alone like the Weary Detective and his Illustrated London News, there’s an option to turn off seasonal art in the Settings menu. For everyone else, take careful note of Reverend Timothy’s Christmas tree next to the Rectory…

Door 2: something smooth as an egg and frosted like a winter window

Collect today’s gift in-game from Reverend Timothy’s Christmas tree.

Door 3: 24% off The Lady Afterwards for 24hrs

Both the boxed and digital version of The Lady Afterwards are 24% off for 24hrs. Seek the occult in 1920s Alexandria, in a luxury Call of Cthulhu-esque TRPG based in the world of Cultist Simulator!

Door 4: something fiendishly simple and wretchedly fragile

Collect today’s gift in-game from Reverend Timothy’s Christmas tree.

Door 5: new Reddit user flairs

By popular demand, we’ve added BOOK OF HOURS-specific user flairs to the subreddit. Mark yourself as your favourite starting character, from the Archaeologist to the Twice-Born!

Door 6: something hard for mortal men to dig

Collect today’s gift in-game from Reverend Timothy’s Christmas tree.

Door 7: new colouring book

This is another item people have been asking about for a while. We’re launching a tarot-based adult colouring book in 2024, featuring the stained glass tarot art from the Lucid Tarot!

Door 8: something salty and savoury

Collect today’s gift in-game from Reverend Timothy’s Christmas tree.

Door 9: 24% off the Tarot of the Hours for 24hrs

Our best-selling item, the Tarot of the Hours, is 24% off for 24hrs.

Door 10: something healthful and slippery

Collect today’s gift in-game from Reverend Timothy’s Christmas tree.

Door 11: “Only twins drown twice.”

Europe, 1937. The War in the World is coming, and worse yet, the War in the Sun. In this gathering gloom, the notables of the occult underworld consider new weapons; new alliances; new paths. Who can they turn to for help, if not the Librarian of Hush House?

Explore visitors and their stories in much greater depth. Host exotic feasts and sophisticated soirées. And in your own quiet way, shape the genesis of the controversial Lighthouse Institute. The HOUSE OF LIGHT content expansion comes to BOOK OF HOURS next year!

Door 12: something ‘musky’

Collect today’s gift in-game from Reverend Timothy’s Christmas tree.

Door 13: 24% off the Mansus for 24hrs

Our fine art Mansus poster is 24% off for 24hrs. Decorate your walls with the House Without Walls!

Door 14: something from the shores of Brancrug

Collect today’s gift in-game from Reverend Timothy’s Christmas tree.

Door 15: BOOK OF HOURS soundtrack out now!

At long last, the BOOK OF HOURS soundtrack is now available on Steam, GOG, Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube and many other places! Featuring remastered versions of music from the game, customised and ordered by Maribeth Solomon and Mickymar Productions. Sublime.

Door 16: new Wisdom Tree necklace

This is something we’ve never made before! Look out for our new gold and enamel Wisdom Tree pendant necklace, coming to the merch shop in 2024.

Door 17: something alive to every draught and spark

Collect today’s gift in-game from Reverend Timothy’s Christmas tree.

Door 18: The Wood Between the Worlds

Lord of the Rings + Narnia + Jane Austen = ? Listen to a brand new episode of Skeleton Songs, all about the beautiful world of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, Piranesi, and a very ‘English’ magic system.

Door 19: something not alive (or not very)

Collect today’s gift in-game from Reverend Timothy’s Christmas tree.

Door 20: new notebooks

We retired our Cultist Simulator journal a few years ago, and are finally back with revamped notebooks inspired by BOOK OF HOURS. Coming 2024!

Door 21: something that can only strike Now

Collect today’s gift in-game from Reverend Timothy’s Christmas tree.

Door 22: Cultist Simulator on Steam Deck

Cultist Simulator’s Verified on Steam Deck! The new version’s available on beta and should work smooth as butter. (But please send bug reports to support@weatherfactory.biz, if you find any.)

Door 23: something that will not, will not, will not stop dancing

Collect today’s gift in-game from Reverend Timothy’s Christmas tree.

Door 24: HD Christmas wallpapers

Two new HD wallpapers for desktop and mobile to download On the House. Featuring Hush House in the snow and the Wisdom Tree.

Door 25: something whose brightness lingers for a little while, even in the dark

Merry Christmas! Collect today’s gift in-game from Reverend Timothy’s Christmas tree.

And that’s it! Warmth, good cheer and a glass of Chateau Raveline to you and yours. Merry Christmas, friend.

;

I can’t believe I’m writing this, but: BOOK OF HOURS is OUT NOW on Steam and GOG! 😱😱😱😱

If you like what you see, leave us a review. Our games tend towards the weird and inexplicable, and it’s incredibly helpful to let other gamers know that we’ve not just, like, knitted a sock and drawn a face on it or something. Help unweird and explicate us! As much as is possible. ♥

After Cultist Simulator, we wanted to set our next game in the same universe – but AK felt bad that he’d made another game about eating people and bringing the apocalypse, and he wanted to write something kinder. Fast forward four years and here we are, in the soft golden glow of a deep auburn game about managing an occult library, of organising things carefully and thoughtfully, of being left alone in a beautiful Gormenghastian abbey to light candles and read books and walk the parapets, where every so often someone drops by to ask you something or give you a book – and then they go away again. BOOK OF HOURS: the introvert’s dream!

I thought you might be interested in some fragments of development history. You might recognise some things that evolved into the game we’ve just released, and others that (rightly) were left by the wayside because for the love of god how was that UI ever going to work? Here’s a little sample:

Early sketches for our hero art:

Some of the earliest design notes:

The first draft layout of Hush House:

Early Hush House design:

Some early prototypes of what BoH‘s art might look like:

Our ‘porthole’ phase:

We wanted to build something that had the crunchy recipe-based mechanics of Cultist Sim but was a welcoming place, somewhere you could go just to be on your own even if you weren’t working to achieve anything: a sun-dappled hammock; a candle-lit nook; a secret walled garden whose only key is yours. BOOK OF HOURS will not be for everyone, but I hope everyone can feel the love we poured in radiating from the worn stones of Hush House, the wave-weathered rocks around Crowcross Sands, the lamp-lit leaded-glass windows of the Sweet Bones, and the purr of the well-fed cat you brought in from the cold.

The mellifluous Systemchalk is broadcasting BOOK OF HOURS live on the Steam page, if you’d like to see the game in action. Alternatively, join us at 8PM BST / 12PM PDT for an AMA on r/Gaming (live here!), or in a live interview on GOG’s Twitch stream tomorrow at 7PM BST / 11AM PDT. Thank you so much for reading, and if you decide to pick up BOOK OF HOURS this week, may the Hours look kindly on your deeds.

Love, Lottie & Alexis

Click for larger images!

In case you thought I forged the above, beta attendees wrote some lovely things that they were not in any way forced to say. I swear on the Weather Factory cats’ lives that people actually said this:

There are still a few tickets left for the Locksmith’s Dream in December, so if the above snags your interest, check out available dates here.

The Locksmith’s Dream isn’t a Weather Factory-run project – it’s being run and managed by Ivan, with our input and writing / art direction – so we’re not sure what comes next for the project in 2023. But the beta showed the event has real promise, there’s nothing else like it out there, and nobody got drunk and fell down the stairs. So well done to everyone who attended and didn’t get drunk and fall down the stairs! Well done to Ivan, and all involved staff for doing such a fantastic job! And cheers to the Caer Adars of the future – whatever and wherever they may be. ♥

Oriflamme’s is one of several sponsors who might take an interest in your attendance at the Locksmith’s Dream – others are the Endeavour Club, Kerisham Review, Lighthouse Institute and those ‘creepy Peruvian fungus wizards’ from the Haustorium. Choose your starter Pokemon, please.

The beta’s sold out but there are still tickets available in December if you’d like to join. If you’re coming, good luck! Wear your mask at night.

Our recent newsletter survey showed us that we should totally share more detail about what you actually do in this upcoming Cultist-adjacent real-world weekend break full of puzzles, lore and cocktails (no idea why some of you don’t know what happens in it, how could we be more coherent). Here is a moodboard to show you very clearly just exactly what this impossible to describe new event-experience is:

Here is another mood board of what the Locksmith’s Dream isn’t.

My work here is done.

…….OKAY okay okay okay. More usefully, I’ve been working with Ivan (the guy in charge of the Locksmith’s Dream) to design enamel pin badges for each of the ‘sponsors’ of the event. So what exactly are sponsors, why should you care about them, and how come they get jazzy lil pins? All these questions answered below, and then you get a cat.

The premise of the Locksmith’s Dream is that five Hours meet each year to ‘exchange secrets and agree particular notes of history’. After their meeting, snippets of their highly occult and super rare conversations are left in their wake, in what we’re calling snippets of ‘Birdsong’. As you might expect, there are numerous insitutions interested in what any Hour might have to say about anything, particularly at an annual meeting of great renown. Some of those institutions care enough to sponsor people to pick over the location of those meetings once the Hours have departed – these after-events are called a ‘counterparty’, among other things – and that’s what YOU’RE doing at the Locksmith’s Dream: a sponsored attendee of an occult counterparty, tasked with gathering as many snippets of lore as you can for your sponsor.

Your sponsor is decided by which room you’re staying in, and your corresponding ‘character’ for the duration of your stay – you’ll get a badge to wear to notify others of your affiliation. As noted in Scientific Fig. 2 above, you don’t have to act or pretend to be that character – it’s just the role you take on when you enter this demi-real counterparty in the Bounds. And because this is all rich Secret Histories lore, things are never as simple as they appear. You might discover things about your sponsor that make you switch sides to their enemy. Or you might find out they intend to do something totally excellent with the lore you bring back for them, and work extra hard to gather as much Birdsong for them as possible.

All of which leads us smoothly to the question of who the sponsors actually are. WELL HERE YOU GO:

The Lighthouse Institute

Preserving the order of things, with current Hours at the top and humanity safely at the bottom. Not quite an esoteric order, not quite a think-tank, Lighthouse was established after World War 2 by the notorious Arun Peel to ‘keep humankind from the rocks of endless night’: that is, to ensure the invisible world stays in balance, and that people don’t get inhabited by Worms, eaten by fallen immortals, cursed by curses, etc. Lighthouse is the most benign but arguably the least effective of the Sponsors. They’re better at policy documents than they are at exorcisms. Solid research and safety protocols, though.

Haustorium

What do you get if you cross an excommunicated Catholic friar with a renegade Incan magician? A religious foundation with a mission is to ‘preserve that which would not otherwise be preserved’, and a commitment to ‘interfaith symbiosis’. Or, if you listen to Church authorities, ‘a depository of blasphemies’ committed to ‘mongrel heresies’. Haustorium provides a welcome home to renegade clergy from Christian and other backgrounds who’ve developed too keen an interest in dangerous knowledge. To their credit, very little of that knowledge ever leaves the Haustorium archives.

The Kerisham Review

Kerisham is a British coastal town whose physical reality is occasionally disputed. In the 1920s, the Review could reasonably be described as a literary magazine for those with specialised tastes. The world moved on, the Review moved on with it, and it is sometimes now described as ‘an occult tabloid’. This is wildly unfair, if only because it can boast nothing like the circulation of even the feeblest actual tabloid. It also, now and then, publishes real investigative journalism, from reckless contributors willing to risk being arrested or devoured.

Oriflamme’s

An auction house specialising in curios, perfumes, taxidermies, rare texts… and secrets. Oriflamme’s may be the last auction house in the world with no online presence at all. Don’t talk to them about NFTs.

The Endeavour Club

Smiths, technologists, alchemists, patriots. The Endeavour Club has a reputation for snobbery, largely because so many of their members are snobs. Of all the Sponsors, they’re the oldest and most traditional – ironic, really, that they’ve changed so over the centuries. From their birth as a martial order in the fires of the War of the Roads; to their time as a gentleman’s occult lodge; to their conspiracies of Empire; to their current, laudable, funding for education and research initiatives… their only constants are their bravery, their determination and their ingenuity. And their snobbery.

Please note for the sake of my artistic pride that all of these are mock-ups of the final badges, which will all be perfect and trim. They’re in production as I write, so we’ll share finished photos when we have them! But hopefully the above makes it slightly clearer what sort of stories you can write for yourselves in the Locksmith’s Dream. More info, photos and lore as the project comes together! Or you can rifle the official Locksmith’s Dream website for further info and images. In the meantime, as promised –

Have a spooky day. ♥

“Secret gods live beneath the skin of the world. Five of them meet every year to exchange secrets and agree particular notes of history. Their conversations aren’t for our ears, but even after they’ve gone, their gossip still troubles the earth; the air still prickles with doors…”

🎉🐦 The Locksmith’s Dream tickets are AVAILABLE NOW! 🐦🎉

Each year the Avian Hours – that’s the Beach-Crow, the Witch-and-Sister, the Elegiast, the Vagabond and the little-known Name of the Moth, Ferezeref – meet to discuss the topics of the gods. Afterwards, mortals attend the Roosinghall to pick through abandoned tidbits of secret knowledge. This is what we’re calling the Locksmith’s Dream, and invite you to pick through the snippets of the gods this October and December with us.

Ivan has done a wonderful job of setting up the official site, where there’s bagloads of photos, info and you can see all the properly beautiful rooms you can stay in. It’s also where you can actually book tickets, so go forth and enjoy! If you can make it, see you there…

Secret Historian boxes: The Grove of Green Immortals

As you know from my blog last week, our first Secret Historian boxes are also now available on the merch shop! There are only 25 of them available, though, so nab yours quick – or wait until next month’s box comes out, which will be all about Crossrow. Your only two options! 😎

BOOK OF HOURS updates

We’re not ready to share a vertical slice of the game yet, but here’re some updates!

We’ve finalised the design of the Wisdom Page, the occult sort-of skill tree where you can choose which forbidden knowledge to specialise in, and which affects what you can do elsewhere in the game based on your choices. We’ve hidden the full size of the chart, but you can see the first four levels here:

Players choose cards or objects to commit to each slot up the chain, pledging allegiance – for example – to Birdsong by committing a skill card for Ramsund, the language of secrets. This will enhance the player’s Birdsong affinity and ability, opening up new opportunities elsewhere and unlocking the next tier of the branch.

We hope it’s also a nice roleplaying opportunity, as you can see that each of the nine Wisdoms is variously associated with several Principles from [i]Cultist Simulator[/i]. People have strong feelings about whether they’re a Winter-y sort who wants a beautiful end or a Lantern-type who’s brilliant but a bit caustic or a Forge-person who really loves hitting things with hammers. The Wisdoms are deliberately broader, drawing from multiple Principles at once, so they should open up new avenues of characterisation. Which is useful in, er, an RPG!

Speaking of the Wisdoms, we’ve uncovered a new letter from a mysterious ‘Arthur’ to his nephew, discussing the Illumination-affiliated events that took place in a Pyrhhic battle against the Khusgai of Persia, and the bravery – and unmasking of Lieutenant Malcolmson. Most importantly, though, weep for Menander, the bravest steed that ever was!

“Nephew, make a fist of your hand. Muscles move beneath the skin. So powers move beneath the skin of the world, at impulses equally invisible, but greater.”

Click here for alternative read-friendly text.

And finally, we also have a mock-up of Hush House’s layout to share. Please note that this is not what the game will actually look like (though mmmm isn’t it all nice and neat in a grid), but it is likely to represent the layout of rooms in the final game. We’ve censored some of the more deep-lore rooms, and you can’t see all of it – but here’s a first glimpse at the library at the centre of it all!

If you like what you see, please wishlist BOOK OF HOURS to keep updated with our progress! More on that in the next few months.

Cultist Simulator’s birthday

It’s Cultist’s anniversary, so we’re running a Midweek Madness sale on Steam throughout this week. You can get everything [i]Cultist Sim[/i]-y for basically dust and a broken ha’penny (50-66% off everything, to be exact). So that’s

• Cultist Simulator (66% off)
• The Dancer, Priest, Ghoul and Exile DLC (50% off)
• Cultist Simulator’s OST (50% off)
• Anthology Edition bundle, which includes all of the above @ 65% off-ish (bundle maths is hard)
• The Lady Afterwards: Digital Edition (50% off)

Enjoy!

The indomitable Canadian sensation that is Systemchalk – probably a Long by now, at least – is broadcasting Cultist on the Steam store page, for anyone who’d like to see the game being wrestled to its knees while a soothing voiceover describes the inevitable descent into penury, madness and occult calamity.

AND FINALLY we’re restocking The Lady Afterwards: Boxed Edition on the Etsy shop tomorrow at noon BST. We’ll restock the boxes every Tuesday, alternating between noon BST and 6PM BST to facilitate different international buyers. Be there! The box is really great! I promise!

Happy birthday to Iris, the Mansus, all the Histories and most importantly to Cultist Sim, the little game that could. Celebrate in your favourite way for us, Believers! We couldn’t have done it without you. We’re off to desperately refresh the Locksmith’s Dream back-end and see how many people are buying tickets, and then play a bunch of V Rising to chill out. TOODLE PIP ♥

Cultist Simulator

TLDR: it bork, we soz

As you may have seen, AK revamped the entire Cultist Simulator code base (to make it more stable, and to prep for BOOK OF HOURS), nearly had a nervous breakdown because coding is not what he likes best, released what we professionals call a ‘buggy AF’ update in March, and has since pushed a patch a week to put the fires out. [Now I’m doing a patch a week. In the first two weeks I pushed a patch a day. – AK] All while also developing a second game on top and agonising which doublet to wear in Witcher 3.

His latest update was Tuesday: read for experimental multi-select and snippet-saving! He’s now working on improvements to the new card placement system, which has a few weirdnesses and bugs, and is by far the most annoying thing still going wrong in the live game. We’ll update ASAP when that’s ready to go out.

Maybe we should implement a ‘Chaos’ slider that places cards ANYWHERE THE GAME GODDAMN WANTS

BOOK OF HOURS

TLDR: prototype in May!

To be totally honest – we usually pride ourselves on being good at production and hitting deadlines – our plans went rather sideways on this one. We’ve had some problems as a studio over the last few years, and dealing with them meant AK almost burned out, couldn’t work as usual, and I had to come up with projects I could do primarily on my own in lieu of making our lovely library game about peace, melancholy and satisfaction on the top of a rock in pseudo-Wales. But we really are still making this game (!) and by the end of May we expect to hit prototype, showcasing the central game loop. Huzzah!

We’ll be inviting a small number of people to test the game then, so make sure you’re signed up to the mailing list if you’d like to see an early first pass of the game.

In the meantime, have a look at what we’ve been up to! Starting with UI, which we’re trying to base as much on Cultist Sim as possible but updated with hard-won experience and, frankly, a leather grimoire-y vibe. Here’s what we’re working with so far in your main Librarian window:

Familiar but different, right? But unlike Cultist’s approach – where the UI is the same whether you’re taking a tincture of opium with the Dream verb or sending a Hint to murder Connie Lee – BOOK OF HOURS needs a bunch of complementary but different UI for different moments in the game. Cultist’s square verb tiles, for example, will be replaced in favour of real-world interactable locations like desks, gardens and ovens. Clicking on these open different recipe windows where your items and intangibles can be used, and where you can (possibly? probably?) store items. So you’ll click on your librarian’s desk to open the ‘Library Desk’ window, for example, and it’ll reflect that it’s a different interactive point in the game with slightly different UI. Here’s what we’re trying right now:

You might remember that BOOK OF HOURS is a melancholy, lonely game about managing a crumbling antique library of esoteric books and we want it to feel like a hygge, isolated escape from the world, where you can curl up with your cat and some marginalia while the rain gently patters the lead-glass of your study window. One of the best ways to evince a feeling like this is to occasionally – OCCASIONALLY – have someone visit you to pierce that loneliness, and make you feel it all the more when they depart. Sometimes they’ll be friendly. Sometimes they might not. And those pesky Suppression Bureau agents have frankly nothing better to do, and like the way you make tea. So we need a basic UI dedicated to talking to these visitors, every now and then.

Overall, we’re working on the assumption that the zoomed-out view of BOOK OF HOURS will look something like the below. NOT the art, which is a super super early mock-up I made in 2019, but a pulled-back simulator view of the whole of Hush House that lets you see an overview of everything going on in your game, and a vaguely mechanically appropriate UI, essentially giving you a quickbar for commonly-used cards and access to a much larger menu of items, skills, attributes, etc. You’ll be able to zoom in to see detail and do small, specific tasks like personally ordering your books on your bookshelf. (Please note, if AK sees anyone ordering their books by colour he is likely to cry EHEU and delete all the code).

To make the prototype look even slightly like the final game, I’ve been mocking up some very basic assets to indicate relative sizes so we can answer questions like how high the ceilings shoul dbe, how many books you can put in a bookshelf, and whether we want a cosy librarian’s nook or an intimidating Smaug’s lair of occult grimoires. This is all TBD, and the art style will almost certainly change. But for now pls enjoy tiny Fuchsia’s head on a 1930s outfit inspired by President Zelensky’s war-jumper. Because why not.

I’m very keen on being able to customise characters, and have plans – but AK is sensibly undecided on this for now and gets the final say. MORE ON THIS LATER WHEN WE KNOW OURSELVES.

Secret Historian Boxes

TLDR: monthly release of limited edition box, £100 + shipping, coming in May

Speaking of letters… I’m back on my boxy bullshit!  I’m releasing 25 special, limited edition library-focused boxes each month from May to August to mark That Damned Library Game’s prototype, sold via our Etsy shop. You might have seen this photo from our last newsletter:

This is the prototype for May’s box, from the desk of the librarian of the Grove of Green Immortals, the mountain-monastery of renegade Taoists specialising in horticulture and medicine, in Moth and Heart lore, under the hand of the Applebright. We’re working with a totally brilliant artisan who’s hand-carving each box, which will then contain something like the following:

There are inks in which histories are written, and inks which protect against untruth. There are inks which can only be read by night, and inks binding the author to the one whose name is written. And then there are inks of which the Hours take note – and inks that are forbidden. So every box will contain a highly restricted sample of six: uzult, porphyrine, nillycant, perinculate, marakat and the Orpiment Exultant (mixed by the fair hand of your resident apothecary, me).  [As WFCAT aficionados will know, one of these things is not like the others. – AK] They’ll look a bit like the Cultist Simulator launch present I made AK, which lots of people kindly asked if they could buy but I can’t make it work as a product:

Each box will also contain a unique collection of visitors, calling cards from notable guardians of the library, a library membership card, genuine 1900s-1930s sealing wax and ephemera and a couple of letters, among other things. Each box has a particular affiliation with a guest, who’ll appear in every copy of that box. In the Grove’s case, it’s Zulfiya the Barber. You might be able to guess the two of the three other libraries from their main guest, perhaps…?

And some of these guardians you’ve heard of. Any idea who these cards are from? (In reality, each of these will be gold-foiled – so imagine them being shiny and impressive.)

We’ll announce each box at the end of the month when it goes on sale on Etsy, along with a design update on BOOK OF HOURS from AK.

I can already hear some of you thinking: twenty-five? Only twenty-five boxes? These people are MORONS they will CLEARLY SELL OUT IMMEDIATELY! And you’re sort of not wrong. AK and I are a two-person team doing almost everything ourselves, and I nearly lost my marbles assembling, packing and sending 500 Lady Afterwards boxes earlier this year. So I’m trying to balance making fun, unique real-life items you can’t get anywhere else (like these Secret Historian boxes) with not going totally batshit managing a production line I can’t sustain. 25 boxes a month won’t make me want to throw myself into the Thames. This is good.

Against that, I do appreciate our volume limitations make it annoying for someone who logs in five minutes later than planned and finds all the boxes they’d been excited to buy have been bought. So if that’s you, fear not. Once we’ve released all four limited edition Secret Historian boxes – which we’ll advertise ahead of time, so you know exactly when they’re coming – we’ll then sell an unlimited Hush House edition, sold in batches so I don’t go nuts. This’ll make sure everyone who wants a box gets one.

Anyway, back to the fun stuff. Here’s the first batch of letters I received from our printer this morning:

You’ve seen these letters before, though not with their nice updated designs. But there’s one that’s totally new… What do you lore-hounds make of this?

Read-friendly text version here.

The Lady Afterwards

TLDR: boxed edition for sale from 31st May

As I mention above, I took on too much assembling and shipping 500 Lady Afterwards boxes on my own. But lots of people still want one, I’m delighted to say. How to square this circle? BY MAKING YER MUM DO IT FOR YOU! (But, paying her a decent wage to do so, so she can buy tulip bulbs and wine, her two major expenses.)

So we’re releasing another 1,000 Lady Afterwards: Boxed Edition boxes for sale on Tuesday 31st May 2022 on our Etsy shop. Like we did with the original runs of the Tarot of the Hours, we’ll release these boxes in tranches of 50-100 so my mother doesn’t totally lose the plot. This means if you go to our shop and don’t see any boxes available, don’t worry! We’ll restock every week – if you miss out one time, there’ll be another batch of boxes available very soon. Hopefully this’ll allow our teeny studio to provide boxes for everyone who wants one, without us having to stop doing all the other work we’re doing on actual games and becoming a physical-first TRPG store. Woot.

The Locksmith’s Dream

TLDR: prices + dedicated website coming soon

This post has gotten waaaay too long, so I’ll just say that there’ll be a separate website coming soon, with photos of all the different rooms, more info on what goes on during a weekend event, and allowing ticket purchases. We’ll announce ticket prices next week, most probably – keep an eye out! They’re pricey, because you’re buying a luxury weekend holiday in the Secret Histories, with posh nosh and Bureau agents and everything. And with everything we’re planning for Treowen they’re worth every English penny…

This post APPEARS to be posted by Lottie, but it ISN’T. We just can’t put the man’s actual name without revealing him. AND HE’S NOT READY TO COME OUT YET.

So, who on earth are you?

I’m an old friend of Alex, from the times before. I live in the UK and I’m the person who is fortunate to be making The Locksmith’s Dream happen, and making sure that everyone who comes along has an amazing time, as well as having some great stories to tell the friends and families.

If for some inexplicable reason you haven’t heard of The Locksmith’s Dream yet and don’t know what I’m talking about, read about it here!

What do we know so far?

We announced the beta of The Locksmith’s Dream is running in Monmouthshire, UK, in October 2022, followed by the first full event in December. We talked about its location, ancient country seat Treowen, in our last newsletter:

“Only a few places have the same name in every History. The house called Treowen is one, and in every history, the Wheelocks have found their way there. One history has them born from it, another says they shaped it, but they always return…”

Treowen, the faded Monmouthshire seat of the Wheelock family, on the Welsh Marches at England’s edge: the border between myth and legend.

Explore an untouched corner of the invisible world in this Suppression-Bureau-sponsored foray into the Bounds of the Mansus. Assume an identity of the House. Seek snippets of the Secret Histories. Trade Birdsong with the Curator, relax before an open fire in the Flint & Wheel Pub, and decide whether or not to believe everything the Inspector says…

Think occult Downton Abbey. Or a weekend invitation to your long-lost aristocratic aunt’s stately home, when your aunt is also a witch. Or the sort of stop-over the Vagabond might book on her way to the Fourth History, Atlas of Dreams and a bottle of sherry in tow.

We’re running a beta event in October, and our first full event in December 2022. Save the dates in your calendar! We’ll announce ticket prices and more details soon.

What have you been doing, then?

I’ve been scouting for suitable venues, found a few likely candidates, but when we came across Treowen, which has such a magical, otherworldly quality, we all realised that it was the perfect place to run The Locksmith’s Dream.

Then, having to decide the date of the first event. It was only after this, that I genuinely felt, right then this is actually happening, I’d better get on with it!

The Beta event will be running on October the 15th, which gives us a good seven weeks  to tweak and refine The Locksmith’s Dream before December the 7th, which will be the first of four events in December.

The other big thing I’ve been doing is getting a team together to create a wonderful experience for our guests. So, that means looking for actors that can help bring the experience to life, as well as a chef with an interest in the obscure and the mundane, who can help conjure up wonderful comforting dishes, as well as things that will surprise and delight.

Excitingly, I’ve just hired my first performer (hello Jade), who is brimming with enthusiasm and ideas, and I’m so looking forward to the next few months, once we start fleshing out the experience.

Where exactly is this going on?

Well, I’m usually sitting in my fancy shed in the garden. Occasionally a squirrel comes and gives me the eye whilst digging up the lawn outside my window, or the dog makes a huffing noise in his sleep.

I’m surrounded by beautiful (often tentacled) framed horrors that keep appearing on my walls as gifts. In front of my keyboard, I’ve got two reminders of what I’m up to: a proto/pre-memento of The Locksmith’s Dream (or whatever the word is for a reminder of something that hasn’t happened yet), and the other speaks for itself – an anti-inspirational card, which sometimes cheers me up and is, as Alex once told me, words to live by.

Behind me, I can feel Iris staring at me, approvingly or not I can’t tell, but I’m certain she’s conspiring with her tentacled neighbour on the wall.

So, what are you doing next?

Apart from staring at the inspirational words, and trying to avoid Iris’s gaze, 

• My main priority is getting the website up and running, so people can actually book tickets.
• Flesh out the team, hire a chef and more actors.
• Trying to get a model of the Treowen manor house. As many ideas that lead to sleepless nights often start, someone says Wouldn’t it be cool if ….  (insert slightly mad thing. In this case, it was a scale replica of Treowen that the guests can peer into, and see hints and clues).  I am spending far too much time looking into how and who can build this thing!

Make sure you’re signed up to the mailing list to hear more about The Locksmith’s Dream as soon as we announce things!

 

The Lady Afterwards is a non-linear, combat-light, story-centric tabletop RPG for 2 – 8 players set in the Secret Histories – the world of Cultist Simulator – where hidden gods watch over a Lovecraftian world of apocalypse and yearning. It’s been designed to offer an accessible experience to people who’ve hesitated to played TRPGs before, but to offer plenty of meat to tabletop aficionados too.

Track down Audrey Leigh Howard, a woman of high standing and dubious morals. Investigate a suspicious gentlemen’s club. Abort a plan. Avert a crisis. Or – depending on your choices – let the blow fall.

Each box includes:

★ The Lady Afterwards Game Runner’s Guide, a ~50 page TRPG scenario set in 1920s Alexandria
★ The Secret Histories Rulebook, a ~30 page primer explaining the mechanics and perils of the game
★ 18 hand-stamped clues, including telegrams, lovers’ notes, photographs and more
★ “The Essential Hours” pocket tarot deck of 23 Major Arcana cards
★ Eight customisable double-sided character sheets, each with personalised questionnaires and connections
★ Eight art deco character pins in silver and gold with backing cards and helpful quotations
★ A double-sided Game Runner’s Journal, to keep track of players, game-states and evidence uncovered
★ A beautifully-scented black opium candle to evoke the Invisible Serapeum, a mythic library
★ A full-colour A3 map of contemporary Alexandria, with real 1920s photographs
★ Two sets of antique TRPG dice in a velvet dice bag
★ A Steam key for Cultist Simulator, for the unspeakable instance where someone hasn’t played it yet
★ A year-long 10% discount token for our merch shop
★ Access to a custom-built mood-music playlist of 1920s songs
★ A full digital edition of the whole game, so you can play with people online as well as in the real world

It all comes in a custom-made 1920s recyclable box, padded with black paper. Watch AK and myself doing a chill candle-lit unboxing and talking design here.

For anyone who misses out on the boxed edition – or for those of you who prefer digital TRPGs only – we’re releasing a digital version of The Lady Afterwards next month, on Thursday 18th November, on our shop, Steam, and various digital RPG shops like DriveThruRPG.

Tabletop Fest

We’re releasing The Lady Afterwards in line with Steam’s Tabletop Fest, where Cultist Simulator and all DLC is 40% off. Beloved CS-master Systemchalk is doing one of his epic broadcasts on our store page right now, we released some free Lady Afterwards-style Call of Cthulhu and Dungeons & Dragons character sheets, and Steam invited us to make one of their new-fangled animated Game Profiles too. Check it out in the Steam Points Shop!

We’re also running a weekend-long developer AMA on the subreddit, live now until 6PM BST on Monday 25th October. AK and I will be there at the start and the end in person, but will answer whatever questions we can in between as well. Hope to see you there!

It’s Cultist Simulator’s anniversary weekend, so we have some big things to announce. We’re running a mega Daily Deal on Steam (50-66% off everything!) with the honey-voiced Systemchalk broadcasting the game on our Steam page for the uninitiated. Go watch him try not to die!

We’re also running a half-price sale on the Nintendo Switch port, and have a new game, a new book and updates on our stained-glass tarot deck to share. Read on…

THE LADY AFTERWARDS: A CULTIST SIMULATOR TRPG

You’ve been summoned to Alexandria, a city of coloured lights and curious histories. An old friend needs you to track down a woman. She’s probably in trouble. Probably trouble herself. Plus ça change. 

Mirrors glitter at the Cecil, Berbers whisper in the El Bab Cafe, and statues keep their secrets in the cold depths of the bay. Something’s in motion, from the Arab Quarter to the Rue des Soeurs. Somewhere, the Serapeum stirs. The Hours have taken an interest.

Cherchez la femme, the saying goes. But what does the lady look for?

The Lady Afterwards is a limited edition Cultist Simulator TRPG, based on Chaosium’s Basic Role-Playing system – think Call of Cthulhu or story-driven DnD, without us getting sued. We’ve streamlined the experience so you don’t have to be a TRPG aficionado to play, and we’ve filled it with Dread, Fascination and the invisible arts.

Track down Audrey Leigh Howard, a woman of high standing and dubious morals. Seek the Serapeum. Investigate the Society of the Noble Endeavour. Abort a plan. Avert a crisis. Protect the heart of the House Without Walls – or let the blow fall.

The Lady Afterwards is a boxed physical edition, containing everything you need for several evenings’ occult entertainment with friends (and/or cultists). Each edition includes:

• The Lady Afterwards, a Cultist Simulator TRPG scenario set in 1920s Alexandria
• A game-runner’s handbook, incorporating all story, locations, lore and mechanics
• An exultation* of clues, curiosities, clippings and collectibles
• “The Essential Hours”, 23-card pocket tarot
• Eight customisable character sheets, complete with secret agendas
• Eight art deco character pins in silver, brass, copper and gold
• A scented Serapeum candle, to evoke that which cannot be seen
• Three Mansus candles, for important plot points
• A full-colour map of contemporary Alexandria
• A set of seven antique TRPG dice in a velvet dice bag
• A Steam key for Cultist Simulator, in the unspeakable instance where someone hasn’t played it yet
• A 50% discount token for the Church o’ Merch
• Access to a custom-built mood-music playlist, to further SET THE TONE!

All together, it’ll look *something* like the image at the top of this section. Though please note that this is all mocked-up right now – as you can, er, probably tell. It’ll likely look a smidge different in the flesh.

The Lady Afterwards comes in a custom-built 1920s-styled recyclable box mailed directly to your door. We’re making just a hundred copies to start with, though we’ll expand the limited run if we see enough interest. We expect to release the game in October, in time for Halloween – we’ll confirm a release date later down the line. Sign up to the mailing list to keep up to date. Now we can talk about this, we’ll have a lot more to share in future updates.

*Yes, this does mean I haven’t finalised the actual final number of findables in-game. BUT IT WILL BE A NICE SATISFYING NUMBER OKAY.

AGAINST WORLDBUILDING, AND OTHER PROVOCATIONS: ALEXIS’S BRAIN IN A JAR BOOK

Alexis has spent over a decade making games, from Fallen London to Sunless Sea to Cultist Simulator, with a lot of other work in between. He’s finally releasing a book on it all, compiling 200+ pages of the best of his pieces on narrative, design, development and why ‘worldbuilding’ busts his nut.

“There are sentences in Fallen London and Cultist Simulator that make me freeze in my seat. This collection of essays is generally not Alexis in freeze mode… It’s Alexis being funny, pragmatic, charitable and humane. It’s like getting to sit down over a plate of enigmatically-sourced goat goujons and a cup of Thracian wine, and be told a bunch of good stories.”

– Introduction, Matt Hosty

Against Worldbuilding is available now in Kindle and paperback format, costing £5.65 and £7.77 respectively. Enjoy!

THE LUCID TAROT: STAINED-GLASS SOOTHSAYING

We announced we’re making a second tarot deck, after The Tarot of the Hours proved so popular. This time it’s a world-first: we’re making a stained-glass-window-inspired deck, opaquely printed on transparent PVC. This means light (candlelight; moonlight; King Crucible) shines through some parts of each card, but they have an opaque back so you can’t see the image on the other side.

The deck features new, custom-made art of the Hours and Cultist Simulator cards that draws on existing lore but follows traditional systems like the Rider-Waite much more closely than the Hours deck did.

We’re calling it The Lucid Tarot. People seemed to get excited about it when we teased it last time, so the cards above are all never-before-seen, to whet your appetite!

The Hours have been around for centuries in every History. They’re a syncretic pantheon, like the loa of Haitian Vodou or the weirder Greco-Roman deities, and they change over time to reflect the current world. You’ll notice that the art style as well as the depiction of the Hours in The Lucid Tarot is sometimes quite different from their original depictions. For example, here’s Justice / The Meniscate from both decks:

These differences are deliberate, and we hope it’ll shed some more lore-y light on things. The new images also suit the abbey-like stained-glass aesthetic, which you’ll see more of in BOOK OF HOURS…

We can’t specify a release date yet, because it turns out making a tarot deck from scratch is a lot of work. 😅 But it’ll be sometime this year! Keep your culty eyes peeled here for news.

Right! That wraps up our squirming bundle of news. Happy birthday to Cultist Sim, and have a lovely weekend! ♥

We haven’t posted for a bit, and I don’t think Lottie is going to manage a sprint update this week unless she works over the weekend which she definitely ain’t doing, so I wanted to talk about what’s been happening. It’s a lot.

MONDAY was when the London Games Festival began, and Claire and Lottie started doing the four? five? panels they’re on over the course of the week.

TUESDAY we launched Cultist Simulator on iOS and Android, in partnership with Playdigious. Normally, doing a launch in the same week as anything else would be flat insane, but ‘in partnership with Playdigious’ means they handled the port to mobile and are doing all the technical support – plus a bunch of vital marketing and logistical support – so we had, relatively speaking, a back seat.

So far, it’s gone very well AS FAR AS I CAN TELL. We’re currently a 4.8/4.9 stars on 500+ reviews on both iOS and Android, which is a hell of a relief given how hard I thought people might bounce off it (and a big vote of confidence in Playdigious, who reworked and polished the UI wonderfully for phones). The sales numbers are still coming in but we’re #2 top paid app on Google Play in 78 countries, Apple gave us a Game of the Day feature (thank you!) and Playdigious, who have a much better sense of the mobile market, say it’s looking good. We’ll do a retrospective as usual with as much info as we can share.

WEDNESDAY Claire and I went off to the Games Finance Market to talk to more moneyed folk about funding for our new projects. (Why are we looking for finance? We’re doing well, aren’t we, and we just had a successful mobile launch? We are, and we did, but one of the two projects we have in mind is quite ambitious and not Kickstarter-friendly, and we’re thinking three to five years ahead.)

Then I met Lottie to do a panel with some other devs at the Apple Store, and then we all went off to the BAFTAs pre-party in the Science Museum. I shook Lucas Pope’s hand and told him his work was an inspiration and he looked embarrassed and sipped water. I learnt from Matt Davis of Subset that he and Justin Ma made FTL – FTL! – in eighteen months and got very cross because come on guys stop making the rest of us look incompetent. And I finally got to meet the irrepressible Adele Cutting, who did the audio for Cultist.

THURSDAY Claire and I went to the Games Finance Market again and then all three of us went to the BAFTA ceremony in the evening, cos we had nominations for Debut Game and for Innovation. Did we win? OF COURSE WE DIDN’T WIN ARE YOU KIDDING ME DID YOU SEE THE COMPETITION WE WERE UP AGAINST AT LEAST THREE ACTUAL GENIUSES AND ALSO LITERALLY NINTENDO. But we got our impenetrable niche game up on the big screen next to all those other big games and I think it was probably the most professionally validating five minutes of our existence. And Claire wore a top hat.

FRIDAY is Rezzed. Lottie and Claire both have more panels, I really need to catch up with folk I haven’t seen yet, and then I have to go be Lottie’s arm-candy at another party cos she’s just been named as one of the Most Influential 100 Women in Games in the UK because, and let me drop the jocular tone now, she has spent years deploying her formidable abilities in the service of being kind and helping people. I’m savagely proud to see this recognised.

OH and we hired two new folk, who’ll be starting in May and June respectively. We’re still going through the process for the writing role, but we have our engineers. Thank you to everyone who replied!

That’s it, but it’s a lot, and it was only a week on from GDC. If you’ve sent us an email, we’re likely to be catching up with all that next week. Thank you for your patience: I’m looking the hell forward to the weekend.

“There is a line among the fragments of the Greek poet Archilochus which says: ‘The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.’”

Narrative game development is a foxy discipline, not a hedgehoggy discipline. But it’s so foxy – there are so many disparate strands – that game designers and critics alike have often been tempted to hedgehoggy behaviour about it.

Traditional point-and-click adventure games, parser games, visual novels, choice-based branching narrative, AAA stealth games, writerly games, gamish stories, strongly scripted games, utterly procgen games – they all have their own quirks and requirements, and consequently every time I’ve played any of these things I’ve learnt something that I can apply to my own work. Honestly, nothing narks me off like an industry figure saying, e.g., that there is One Right Way to do narrative, or that we have nothing to learn from the Witcher that 90s parser games haven’t already done to death, or that Dear Esther (or whatever the walking simulator du jour might be) isn’t really a game.

So I’m really glad to see AdventureX re brand itself as a friendly umbrella for anything that chooses to describe itself as a narrative game. I don’t really know of any other events like it. There are so many angles you can come at narrative in games from. It’s a Cambrian explosion of ideas and principles. I want to get my head in the middle of it and my hair full of shale and trilobites, and I enjoin you, if you’re interested in narrative games, to do the same.

In short, back the AdventureX Kickstarter (with which I have 0 connection, btw) because something something foxes hedgehogs trilobite. Also, Archilochus wrote terribly sexy poetry.

Here’s the link:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/adventurex/adventurex-2016-the-narrative-games-convention.