Weather Factory

BOOK OF HOURS launches in…

It’s exactly one week until BOOK OF HOURS launches on Steam and GOG. Our social countdown has begun, there’s that terrifying clock ticking down above this paragraph, and AK and I are finally releasing our most ambitious game ever, the culmination of years of effort.

I thought it’d be useful to collect all the most important release info in one place. Let me know if I’ve missed anything, and feel free to ask questions in the comments!

The main points

• Launching: Thursday 17th August 2023 @ 6PM BST / 10AM PDT
• Platforms: Steam + GOG (on Windows, Mac and Linux)
• Price: £19.99 / $24.99
• Launch deal: 10% launch discount + Perpetual Edition for anyone buying in Week 1

‘Perpetual Edition’ means you get all future paid expansions for FREE for EVER, just like people who bought Cultist Sim in its first week of sale. Every copy of the game sold in Week 1 is automatically Perpetual Edition (you don’t have to do anything special to unlock it), it costs the same as the normal version of the game, and it’s available on both Steam and GOG. You can check if you have Perpetual Edition by looking for this badge of honour on the title screen:

How YOU can help

Now I will let you into one of the deepest and most guarded secrets of professional game development. Knowledge that is passed down in hushed tones from elders to their apprentices and jealously guarded from public view by archons of our industry, lest such power fry your tiny minds. This is how PC games succeed:

Steam is a slumbering god. Steam does not give a pair of foetid dingo’s kidneys about an indie game until something pokes it to say there’s something worth waking up for. And it is only with YOUR help that we can be the twitching and irresistible mouse in this totally viable metaphor that will make the algorithm perk up, dilate its pupils to the sizes of twin moons and bless us with its attention – thus making BOOK OF HOURS a success.

Here are the best things you can do to poke the god:

• Buy BOOK OF HOURS at launch. Lots of people buying very shortly after launch tells Steam: this game is beloved by its people. Perhaps I should attend.
• Leave a positive Steam review. Positive Steam reviews are one off the biggest factors in people’s decision to buy a game (as far as I can tell, it’s screenshots + Steam reviews) AND ALSO they tell Steam: this game is good. It can make money. Promote it!
• Tell all your friends. The more traffic our Steam page gets, the more enticing the game looks to the algorithm (‘If I promote it more, even more mice will come’). So if you enthuse to your friends, suggest BOOK OF HOURS to streamers, talk about it on social media, share screenshots or do anything that might encourage more people to check out the game, that makes the algorithm think: this is the most popular game in the world. It will bring Valve 8 trillion delicious English mice pounds. I shall put it on the front page.

TLDR: help us twitch enticingly at launch, like a doomed mouse. I am available to explain further hidden mysteries of game dev for a shockingly high day rate, please see my agent (AK) for further details.

What’s coming next

Apart from this damn library game actually, finally, genuinely launching, here’s what to expect over the next week and a bit:

• 17th August – AK and I are running an AMA on launch day at 8PM BST / 12PM PDT on r/Gaming. We’ll crosspost to the WF subreddit for ease of access, so come say hi and chat with us!
• 18th August – AK and I join Cultist Sim super-streamer Systemchalk for a BOOK OF HOURS dev stream at 7PM BST / 11AM PDT on GOG’s Twitch. Try explaining that sentence to someone from the 1930s.

We have lots of post-launch plans – additional features, QoL updates, big content drops and later paid DLC, localisation, etc – but we’re waiting to see how the game lands before confirming anything. Testers will notice a bunch of improvements since the last beta – an in-game music player, improved workstation UI, adorable pet SFX, more books, loads of art tweaks (including new places to put things down…!) and more. Wish us luck, and thank you so much for your support over the years. Get ready to library your hearts out. ♥