KickStarter Black Book - RPG adventure based on Slavic myths with card-based combat

[Lyre Mors]

Watched the trailer and got very interested until I realized it was a card game. I wish this trend would end already. Get your fucking card game combat out of my RPGs!

 

[fantadomat]

The worst part is the shitty puzzle fights,if they cut them out the game will be better for it.

What?! I strongly disagree - that's the best part, card game aspect speaking. Otherwise I'm rollling over everything (minus that cuck-imp fiasco) even on max level so far (pretty sure blessings are kinda busted although I didn't properly tried other "archetypes" yet) but with puzzles you have to actually stop and think, try stuff. And remember: you can simply skip fights on easy via menu so it can be hardly called as shortcoming anyway.

I am in the third chapter and had one really hard fight because the enemy was immune to damage. Would recommend you to buy a bunch of waste cards and the key card where dispel enemy's buffs. It was really tricky fight,was good fun. They should have went for more than 3max enemy. I dislike the puzzles because they fill weird in the game,poor fit. I like to have a glass of something and have chill game in glorious rus,and then some retarded puzzle pops up and makes me try hard,it kills the pace and the mood.

 

[fantadomat]

Watched the trailer and got very interested until I realized it was a card game. I wish this trend would end already. Get your fucking card game combat out of my RPGs!

Hmmm generally i do agree with you,but the game is good,you should try it out mate.


jackofshadows did you find any way of getting rid of the devils ? I am just getting some random retards at places. Any way to get rid of them,they are annoying?

 

[jackofshadows]

did you find any way of getting rid of the devils ?

Nope, that's their purpose. You should either endure them or spend a few skill points and send them at useless jobs constantly if you're trying to stay at the "good" path. I'm not exactly trying:

Spoiler

 

[fantadomat]

did you find any way of getting rid of the devils ?

Nope, that's their purpose. You should either endure them or spend a few skill points and send them at useless jobs constantly if you're trying to stay at the "good" path. I'm not exactly trying:

Spoiler

LoL you are filled with useless scum. I have like 10 sin points and wonder how to drop them,while you just accumulate them lol. It is pretty bad system tho,you just get them without any reason. The first one was ok because he asked you and you had a choice. But the rest pust pop up out of nothing and you can't do anything about them. Also there is no fucking way to lose sin points,i run in to like 10ish in the whole three chapters. While getting sin points is very easy. For example if you kill a mass murderer,you get 50 points,but if you save some poor girl's life you lose 1 point lol.

 

[jackofshadows]

Yeah, it's really hard but I think with meta and shit it is possible to finish "clean". That's why I left pure path for later if I got to play it the second time. The game is great but really long so I'm not sure about that yet.

 

[Shadenuat]

gib me all the chort!

Spoiler

 

[Lyre Mors]

Hmmm generally i do agree with you,but the game is good,you should try it out mate.

Well, if you share my general distaste for card mechanics in RPGs and are still enjoying it that much, maybe I'll have to give it a try anyway.

 

[Shadenuat]

- oi vei BESilisa my wife beats me can u curse her?
1) curse
2) not curse
3) curse the goddamn idiot instead

first time I feel like I am playing a proper witch-simulator. needs more nudity tho and flying around on backs of chorts.

 

[Fluent]

Well, if you share my general distaste for card mechanics in RPGs and are still enjoying it that much, maybe I'll have to give it a try anyway.

This is totally off-topic (sorry!), but I was hesitant to accept card mechanics in RPGs, too, until I played Thea: The Awakening. It's also a very good RPG and I came to really appreciate and enjoy the card system for combat they used there. The rest of the game is mostly traditional CRPG/Survival, only combat is card-based, and Black Book does sort of remind me of Thea. Anyway, what I'm saying is you should really try Thea sometime, it's a very good RPG! Cheers Jinn (and others).

 

[Lyre Mors]

This is totally off-topic (sorry!), but I was hesitant to accept card mechanics in RPGs, too, until I played Thea: The Awakening. It's also a very good RPG and I came to really appreciate and enjoy the card system for combat they used there. The rest of the game is mostly traditional CRPG/Survival, only combat is card-based, and Black Book does sort of remind me of Thea. Anyway, what I'm saying is you should really try Thea sometime, it's a very good RPG! Cheers Jinn (and others).

Thea is one of the few games I decided to get despite the card combat, and it really is a great game. That being said, I only tolerated the card mechanics and they definitely detracted from the experience for me. Again, I hate this trend and am very reluctant to support any game that is feeding into it. It's a crutch and easy answer for devs, and I get that it cuts down on development costs quite a bit, but I still stand firm that cards don't belong in videogames.

 

[Shadenuat]

they make sense though, because they represent spells witch says: curses, orisons and "keys" that finish "sentences".
obviously combat is simplistic and game is not about it but it makes sense.

 

[jerfdr]

Watched the trailer and got very interested until I realized it was a card game. I wish this trend would end already. Get your fucking card game combat out of my RPGs!

I'm personally not a fan (mildly speaking) of card combat as well, but I found it to be quite interesting in this case. Loving the game so far.

Infinitron Why isn't the news piece about this game's release on the front page, by the way?

 

[just]

slav mythology won me over and i ended up buying it
cool game
not a fan of card games but like already said, it makes sense here

 

[Nifft Batuff]

Card game: check. But it is also a roguelike/metroidvania/soulslike? And the crafting? It is important too, we need more crafting.

 

[fantadomat]

Finished the game,fuck it was great experience. Great writing,great story. The only bad thing about it was the hook for the whole thing. I really didn't care about her lover,it would have been a better one without him and just about some girl doing witch things.

I managed to finish it with zero sins Would recommend buying the artifices that give you bless and the one that lowers the negative effects of the devil without work from the first merchant/the priest in the first chapter. Also would recommend buying the expensive herbs,later on there is some hard battles,especially on harder difficulty. In the second half,maybe a third,the difficulty really ramps up. Also lol at jackofshadows ,he is fucked in the last fight lol.

Speaking of bosses,near the end there is a few really annoying places,especially a spider one,because of the retarded sneak mechanic. Wasted like 40 minutes because of the buggy movements lol. Also there is pretty fun mage vs mage combat mechanics,it would have been fun for a multi game.

The card part feels pretty solid and makes sense,spend a lot of time building decks,would have been nice if there was a save deck options. Some enemy need a very different deck builds and you need to remove/add a lot of cards. Also the card menu should have been more practical,like having smaller cards and easy to pick. Would recommend buying four cards of the most basic strategies. For example buying all four offensive,waste and defence cards and changing the build when the need arise. You can change cards in mid adventure but you can't buy new one during,only at camp,thus you need them in your backpack and swapping them .

Oh and due watch out for the sin items,they give you sin even when you are losing sin trough actions. For example you do something good and lose 1 sin,but you have an item that gives you 3 sin on when there is a change to the sin,thus you end up with net positive of 2 sin. Just remove it when doing the action and then put it on again. You could change items all the time,except when fighting.

Combat is pretty good,except puzzles,that shit terrible lol,hope they remove them. Also fuck ghosts ,those fucks take damage only from waste and curse and such,you can't do any damage to them with just attacks. That death battle near the end was pretty hard,got me arse handed a few times .

Oh also i enjoyed the levelling,there was always that sweat feel of indecision about which thing to get because there were many things that were useful. Shame that i reached max level20 pretty early because of those exp boost items . Would have been better with 5 more levels. Would recommend getting the skill that gives you more money from visits from peasants,i took it first. Also the one that opens meaningless tasks is pretty good for sinless run.

 

[fantadomat]

Card game: check. But it is also a roguelike/metroidvania/soulslike? And the crafting? It is important too, we need more crafting.

No there is no roguelike,you move on the map,but you are free to visit anything on it unless you finish the mainquest place. There is plenty of side things and exploration that way. Also no crafting,but you have useable herbs that you need to gather or buy. The good ones are pretty rare and useful later on.

 

[jackofshadows]

Also lol at jackofshadows ,he is fucked in the last fight lol.

Nah, I've steamrolled everything on max difficulty. It was hard only in the very beginning. I don't know what is your CCG background but probably far more humble than mine (played competitively some of those in the past). In the late game you can boost your card slots via item (the combat status indicate that they stack but bonus slots are remain +1/+1 so I don't know which is the intended way, shoudln't stack I beleive), spells and then use cards from the 1st circle to fill the hand on the next turn (later on there's much stronger option to insta fill even on current turn). Then you basically do whatever you want, I usually just ramped up blessings and wipe everything on 3 turn max. To illustrate:

(trash fight, second or third round)
Blessing is busted in general since it goes -1 every turn while it should just be gone at the end of turn like shields w/o special item. You just boost them generally and it makes any basic +damage/black sinergies obsolete since you can have 20/40/100 bonus damage to any card instead, especially it's cool for few cards which deal x3 attacks.

look at the overall dmg

The only bad thing about it was the hook for the whole thing. I really didn't care about her lover,it would have been a better one without him and just about some girl doing witch things.

Why did you choose to be a good girl then? That's the whole point of the story and its reactivity. Well, even on the darkest path her motivation remains the same the whole time but then you

Spoiler

send Old Egor to hell, go through it yourself and become the Satan's wife no less

Overall I must say I had a GREAT time with this game. And I'm really, really proud for the devs who were able to successfully present a huge slice of Russian culture in this medium at last (seriously, I don't remember any RPGish games injected with Russian folklore since Konung i.e. 20 years ago).

I wouldn't mind the game to be more mature in terms of erotica though, it feels like well, fairy tale for children but it could have been more than that. Still, absolute gem "for what it is".

titles screen

 

[fantadomat]

Why did you choose to be a good girl then? That's the whole point of the story and its reactivity. Well, even on the darkest path her motivation remains the same the whole time but then you

Didn't try anything,all i had to do is not being an edgly teen loser with bad taste in music in outdated metal clothes lol. You have to go out of your way to get sin lol. Only sick people play as edgy evil shits in game. Maybe you should go an get checked.

And yeah item stacking is kind of a broken thing. I went for a lot of bless items,got like 20 bless on the start,put that on attack that does a few attacks at once you have very potent shit.

 

[jackofshadows]

Didn't try anything,all i had to do is not being an edgly teen loser with bad taste in music in outdated metal clothes lol. You have to go out of your way to get sin lol. Only sick people play as edgy evil shits in game. Maybe you should go an get checked.

I was being ironic: play as you fucking want - that's the point of games. Nice psychoanalysis right there mate by the way lol but I don't need to be checked in order to learn that I'm not a very good person. And yet I can enjoy playing true paladins and shit, just not that often. Exploring dark paths is more interesting to me but usually they written quite poorly in RPGs which is understandable.

In reference to this game though - the dark path is quite legit and well written: you're playing as a fucking witch after all on the clock (40 days) and you've been raised by Old Egor who "taught you well" while being one bad motherfucker. His justifications of some nasty shit that I've done were again, very well written and reasoned.

As a matter of fact, I will probably do the pure, proper path on easy skipping every fight just to check out the story and C&C more. Which are impressive either way for indie game of this unexpectedly huge scale.

 

[Shadenuat]

Spending some days in local MTG dumbclub when i was 13 made me ttg master too then since I figured out items are broken and stack and buffs and more cards stack and one shot everything since the start.
generally cardgaem just doesn't hold up more than 3 chapters because it's just damage of different flavours. allow me to summon some chort dammit.

DEbil path sadly sucks - you miss cool boss fights and ton of content. for example I had a choice to get 50 sin and fat, or fight an ancient Egyptian. or a pig from Mononoke. there are others, and all locked behind pursuing the path.

And seriously half of pagan and slavic lore is about eblya, yet game seem to be written by some sort of puritan.

They also should have left voice actors unpaid (game shows a tree: YOU SEE A TREE ffs), and paid random portrait artist from artstation 100$ per character. They raised more than 150k in kickstarter and all characters look like they're from Innsmouth (children are especially bad, just look at Akulina face).

Aside from that,

still good fun. The setting carries.

 

[jackofshadows]

Also lol at jackofshadows ,he is fucked in the last fight lol.

Yeah now I see what you mean since I skipped that yesterday and checked out the two other availlable to me endings. But it doesn't matter, especially his attack since you can entirely negate it or ignore via herb. And even thousands of shields doesn't matter since you can deal thousands of damage per turn. The interface had even bugged once coz of too many spells per turn, apparently

Spoiler

It's gone after this full turn, had to re-start the damn game :D

for example I had a choice to get 50 sin and fat, or fight an ancient Egyptian. or a pig from Mononoke.

Yeah, it sucks. I checked out the Egyptian though, cool boss. They didn't bother provide exlusive content for pathetic edge teen gaemers, for some time I thought the entire last chapter is exclusive though... but then it became clear that it's not.

And +1 for summons, like you even have full pester of imps and yet cannot summon anything in combat? That's bullshit.

 

[Shadenuat]

what are nonDebevil endings btw? for me there were 3 sin ones:

Spoiler

1) marry satan
2) kick satan in the nuts and leave hell
3) "he stared in the picture and... Satan is actually a Woman!" (the most realistic ending)

Spoiler

in some way I find it positively ridiculous that for all the LORE TM, game allows you a traditional power fantasy and beating Diablo lol.

 

[fantadomat]

The game should be played on harder difficulty for sure. The pig boss was hardish. Also repeat combat button is needed.

 

[jackofshadows]

for me there were 3 sin ones:

Yeah, same for me, some dude on riots tells that he had

Spoiler

- burn the book along with hell and go to heaven (probably with getting the Righteous achivement and meeting the bf), he had 65 sins btw so perhaps it's enough to keep <100 or something
- getting out of hell and breaking the last seal (unfortunately he does not clarify what that also means, I suspect it's similiar to leaving hell from bad girl path i.e. postscript doesn't even tell what happens to Vasyan ergo 4 endings in total

And yes! I was also surprised the next day that you can actually beat Satan and even escape hell like wtf? I was pretty sure that she will be enslaved in hell forever or something with that sins count. There was also nice optional fortune-telling before where my wreath had predictably sunk (means death). I wonder whether the writer(s) were really aiming for that or it came out as some sort of pandering.