A horror game with a card battle in which the aspiring witch Vasilisa nightmares the undead on the night roads of the Perm province.
Similar in spirit
Black Book – a card game in the fantasy horror genre from the Perm studio Morteshka – just about that. In her lore, the beliefs of the Finno-Ugric peoples are intertwined with Russian folk myths, so you will probably recognize many of the monsters. We are all familiar with devils and goblin from childhood thanks to fairy tales – only in the “Black Book” all this evil is not fabulous at all and is capable of scaring even an adult.
Paranormal Russia
The wind is probably the closest, most understandable for many Slavic and northern peoples means of conveying melancholy. You don’t need to be zealous with the picture – you just need the rustle of the wind disturbing the dried foliage, and now you feel this unlikely autumn melancholy, so cozy and chilly at the same time. When it is calm and warm only at home, but outside, where sooner or later you will have to go out to set off on a long journey, it is chilly and anxious.
Vasilisa begins her journey precisely to these sounds, to the sad whisper of the wind over the lonely grave: she says goodbye to the guy who is buried far from the cemetery. Suicides have no place on the holy land, and their souls have only one road to hell. But Vasilisa does not believe that her lover killed himself. Believes that unknown and terrible evil is to blame for his death. And in order to find that evil and save the soul of a loved one, you need to break the seven seals on the black book, and only a vekshitsa, possessing witchcraft knowledge, can do this. And if so, then Vasilisa should be a witch. Ahead is a long way: you will have to go around the entire Cherdyn district in order to learn as much as possible about evil spirits and comprehend the black mind.
Events that take place with Vasilisa at points of interest are presented mainly through text. At such moments, the game becomes like a graphic novel.
Having stumbled upon another devilry, we are free to decide what to do: get around it away from sin or take the risk, step closer and say hello to that evil creature there. Guessing the right one can be tricky. In one case, you can run into a difficult battle with some mighty goblin; in another – to get out of the water, and not even empty-handed. Intuition does not work here: the logic of the world of the “Black Book” goes against the rules of quests, which everyone has learned long ago. This motivates to spit on caution and trial and error to get acquainted with the habits of the paranormal natives.
The witch Vasilisa has her own devils in her servants. Every day they can be assigned tasks, the completion of which will bring money and points of sins. The ending depends on the latter
The unpredictability of what is happening will accompany Vasilisa throughout the campaign. Each separate chapter of the seven is a full-fledged mini-story with its own characters, conflicts and plot, all the twists and turns of which can never be predicted for sure. Not all evil spirits here are unequivocal evil, not every peasant sufferer is an innocent victim. There is only one thing you can be 100% sure of: no matter how you shy away from every suspicious figure, you will not be able to walk along the dark paths of Perm province without fights. Sooner or later, you will have to use battle magic.
Deck of cards on a horned muzzle
Fragile Vasilisa is unlikely to raise a silver sword, and therefore her main weapon in the fight against evil spirits is witchcraft. The card combat system here is stylized like the words of conspiracies: each card is a spell. White words – defensive, black – attacking and cursing. And although the basic principle of battles is elementary (we are trying to bring the enemy’s health to zero step by step and keep our own), the language cannot be called primitive. In the Black Book you will find a huge arsenal of cards with unique properties that can be combined in countless ways – I don’t want to experiment.
Card attacks are animated for casting spells
Each open seal on the Black Book adds completely new spells to the deck with unusual effects. Even the starter pack boasts at least three special types of cards. Poisoning corruption, cards that hit harder and harder with each subsequent use, spells with synergistic collapsible damage (the more cards of the same color you use during one attack, the higher the damage of each of them) … The further we move along the plot, the more the arsenal of attacking and defensive capabilities becomes: double damage from debuffs on the enemy, vampirism, attacks on all opponents at once, and so on. In the “Black Book” there are practically no boring cards with basic damage without unique properties.
Thanks to this, you can pick up new builds throughout the game. Moreover, game design is constantly pushing for this: each boss we meet has its own strengths and weaknesses, which we have to adapt to. For example, one of the devils will constantly apply a buff that increases damage in proportion to the lost health. You can’t do without cards that remove positive effects. Another cursed one dodges physical attacks, but succumbs to poisons. The third one kills with almost one blow, but can not oppose anything to cards that completely block one powerful attack … Experimenting with the tactics and methods of killing enemies is a pleasure.
The game has a pumping system, but it cannot boast of a variety. There are classic perks to develop: damage, defense, the number of slots for items with effects, etc.
Well, for those who want the most hellish complexity, the “Black Book” has prepared the mechanics of puzzle battles, which are sometimes found in side quests. Here you need to defeat a very strong opponent in a limited number of moves. This is one of the most memorable elements of the game: you try, go over cards with different properties, find out how they interact with each other, make mistakes and try again … And when, after the twentieth attempt, the damage from the next combination is literally enough for the mega-devil to die on the last move, emotions are off the charts, and the delight is as if, on his own, without instructions, he assembled a viable android from an old metal construction set.
Here is the Russian spirit, here it smells of Russia
However, hardcore card battles are not at all a mandatory option. Those who do not want to delve into the local system of rules can choose the “student” difficulty level, and all opponents will be weakened by half. And if this is not enough, then you can skip the battle altogether. Fortunately, the “Black Book” is really capable of captivating not only the card gameplay.
The game has its own, unlike anything else aesthetics. Russian folk music, which you seem to be accustomed not to take seriously and associate with cartoons and fairs, blows through here no worse than gusts of wind. There is so much melancholy, so much sadness and anxiety in her. The soundtrack draws on itself the atmosphere during battles or exploring locations, when the ascetic picture, as if drawn in Paint, hurts the eye. But this does not happen often: even with the help of minimalistic drawing, artists manage to sketch out the outlines of hostile demons, which are enough to spur the imagination. And as fantasy will certainly finish painting creepy details, especially if you periodically look into the namebook – a local encyclopedia full of dark stories.
But it is impossible to find fault with drawing during static cutscenes and dialogues – it is creepy in the best sense of the word. Here, the artists were not stingy with details: the characters are depicted in a cartoon, colorfully, but something strange and amiss always slips in their features. Take a closer look at Vasilisa herself and you will understand what I mean. Her face is barely perceptible uneven, her gaze is defocused – she seems to be constantly looking somewhere outside, and even her eyes are of different colors. Perhaps, in the 19th century, such a girl would really be mistaken for a witch.
Almost every element of the game is based on these little things. For example, the language and speech of the characters is deliberately outdated. The text is stylized as old Russian, and almost in every line you stumble over incomprehensible authentic words. But this is great: you immediately feel that the heroes are not modern people in historical clothes, but that they are inhabitants of the pre-revolutionary world, which none of us has ever seen. “Tempted”, “shishiga”, “bisi” – under each such unknown word there is an interpretation. In the local encyclopedia every now and then there are new sections with information that helps to understand what is happening. Moreover, the articles in the game guide are competently woven into the gameplay. Almost every quest contains an element of a quiz: you are expected to make decisions or asked questions, hints for which are in the bestiary. You have to read and analyze – but this is not annoying, because the facts are presented in the format of a small fascinating story, a fairy tale or a scary story. Article after article, you delve into superstitions and already automatically calculate the drowned mermaid among ordinary peasants, distinguish the children, replaced by the devil, from the blood ones, and, finally, you yourself, no worse than a reference book, can tell you who the bullshit is.
Periodically, Vasilisa will be given direct control from a fixed camera in the style of the first parts of Resident Evil and Silent Hill
The Black Book can replace an entire museum of local lore. The game managed to charmingly and unobtrusively tell the things that make you just yawn on a regular excursion. Careful work with a cultural source, charismatic characters, elaborate storylines and side mini-stories … Even now, write down the formula of the game and send it to the Ministry of Culture to finance a full-fledged franchise. Jokes as a joke, but thanks to the “Black Book” you delve into old Russian folklore because it is interesting and you want, and not because you need to.
Pleased
- thick atmosphere of the old Russian hinterland;
- varied and elaborate plots and mini-stories;
- an encyclopedia that you want to read;
- a large number of cards with combinable effects;
- Puzzle battles are mind-boggling.
Upset
- modest graphics during direct control of the character;
- bloated pumping with a minimum of unusual perks;
- a small amount of decorations for text quests.
How we played
What: key provided by the publisher.
On what: PC.
How many: 20 hours
Achievement of the editorial office
“Where is my fitness bracelet ?!”
Become a witch in Cherdynsky district to walk 15 thousand steps every night.
About localization
The game from Russian developers is completely in Russian. The dialogues are adapted to the old Slavic folk style, the young peasant woman authentically “clinks” and “claps”. It cuts ears only at first, but immediately plunges into the era.
Verdict
A wonderful experiment in which it turned out to combine seemingly mutually exclusive things: Slavic mythology, horror and card battle. Thoughtful and worked out with great attention to detail, “Black Book” demonstrates that with a competent approach, Russian folk tales can be no less exciting than classic fantasy.
