Black Book Demo

Black Book appears to be a deck builder primarily, and while I don’t have a lot of experience with this genre, I didn’t see anything novel in the gameplay. Some ultimately familiar mechanics were explained poorly or not at all and were only understood after experimenting--this was only a problem due to the contrast of how thoroughly other mechanics were explained. The game’s art style really worked for me in the somewhat-abstract environment art and even with the fantastical beasts I encountered, but not so much when it came to human-presenting characters. It didn’t take long to notice the reuse of art assets, i.e. - visually identical forest backdrops appearing shortly after being used in a location I had recently left--I could have probably gotten past this if the repetition hadn’t been obvious so quickly. I encountered a few bugs during the hour and a half I played. I found multiple instances of missing collisions with solid objects and there were many moments when I was exploring where I would face Vasilisa towards an object of interest and upon clicking on the object to learn more, she would run away and then suddenly stop, looking away from the object being “observed.” There are so many basic mechanics that I’ve read about in reviews of the full game that are completely unreachable in the demo, e.g. - at the end of the demo you’ve enlisted your first _chort_ (a demonic familiar) but you never get to see what it actually means to have a chort. I can’t help but wonder if my overall impression of the game would have ended up in a more positive place if I had gotten a better taste for what the gameplay is like. All of these issues would have been easy to shrug off and move past if they had happened in isolation but having them all piled together in one demo was too much. In the end, I decided that if what I played in the demo was an accurate representation of what to expect in the full version of Black Book, the game is not for me.

If you're an avid fan of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt on a search for some indie games - this is most probably the game for you! Especially if you love immersing folklore and beliefs of different cultures. IMPORTANT NOTE: I've only started playing, but I'm already in love. So far - great game. The story (at least at the beginning) I found a bit naive but the game overall has some lovable mystical aura. You get a lot of info about the folklore, I especially love the side notes in dialogues, feels like your character already knows something - you don't have this from zero to hero feel. The graphics and environments are simple, yet beautiful and tasteful. As a nature lover I found them very relaxing.

Nice atmosphere of Slavic fairytales accented by graphics, music, encyclopedic and lingvistic entries. Card deck is interesting with many mutual interactions.

But game is really good. Well, with some minor issues, like that you can run outside the camera view on some screens for some reason. And main girl actress is using wrong intonation sometimes.

super