First impressions of the Black Book. Evenings on a Farm near Perm – review

And now, almost a year later, in Steam a free demo version of the game has been released, Black Book: Prologue, timed to launch the campaign on Kickstarter. And I must say, she teases even worse than a teaser. Both in a good and a bad sense.

Night on Ivan Kupala

In the courtyard of 1879. A girl named Vasilisa lives in the wilderness somewhere in Cherdynsky Uyezd, near Perm, together with her grandfather Yegor, a sorcerer who takes care of an orphaned girl from childhood. The old man raised her as a future witch, but Vasya had completely different plans for life. Growing up, she met her lover and abandoned her studies to get married, but her betrothed committed suicide.

Despair also forces the inconsolable Vasilisa to return to the witch’s path. Legends about the mysterious Black Book, fulfilling wishes, are true – with its help you can bring the chosen one back to life. It is only necessary to open all the seals of the book, but there is only one problem: this task is obviously too tough for a beginning expert. Vasilisa has just passed the initiation rite, and she still has a lot to learn before the Black Book reveals its secrets.

The cutscene in the prologue once or twice was miscalculated, but each one is happy with the production: the authors are well aware that some things are better to show than to tell

Black Book: Prologue can be slowly walked in forty minutes, but the studio Morteshka Don’t waste a second of this time in vain. Perhaps the fact is that this is a demo, but it’s still nice to see a simple, sincere story that touches from the first scenes. It is difficult not to feel Vasilisa’s sadness when she is standing at the grave of her beloved and promises to return to him. Saying goodbye, she runs out of the forest into an endless rye field, in the distance you can see the dome of the church – because there is no place for suicides in cemeteries. And after a moment, the heroine, under the strict guidance of Grandfather Egor, draws a circle at the intersection with chalk in order to perform her first ritual. The events of the prologue create a good groundwork for the adventure – it already causes a desire to find out where else difficult Vasilisa will bring.

The groom does not even have a name, but he is still humanly sorry. Although it will be funny if he remains anonymous in the release version

This sense of adventure is largely due to the universe of the game. Developers, as with their first project, The Mooseman, took folklore as a basis: then the basis was the tradition of the Finno-Ugric tribes, and in the Black Book – the legends of the Komi-Permyaks. However, this time they got not just an interactive encyclopedia of oral folk art, but a real world. Russia at the junction of Christianity, paganism and all kinds of superstitions, where the grayness of the provincial everyday life is generously diluted with all devilry. Here the monsters work in the mills, rotating millstones, a brownie lives under each furnace, and the devil can settle in the neighboring samovar – if you do not christen the dishes before tea drinking.

You can control Vasilisa only in locations important for the plot: where you can find objects or solve some simple puzzle. It is sparse, but one can only hope that there will be more such places in the final version

The contrast of realism and science fiction, coupled with similar details and small stories, makes the Russian outback (one of the most dull places on earth) look magical. The prologue presents only a small piece of Cherdynsky Uyezd, and even that one cannot be properly explored – but it still feels immense and full of secrets. Of course, not only scriptwriters, but also artists tried to do this. True, everything is not so clear here. On the one hand, a modest low-poly design is quite aesthetically pleasing and does not spoil anything. From some landscapes resembling Shishkin’s paintings, it is simply breathtaking. On the other hand, in some places, developers should think about composition and colors. There is often enough “empty” space on the screen, and the gamma turned out to be too dark – sometimes there is literally nothing to see. Although, perhaps, the designers simply masked the low detailing of the interiors: they would also not be bothered by the texture.

All sorcerers receive their power in one place, from one patron. But Vasilisa, this news, it seems, has not yet reached

With the dialogues, and with the rest of the literary texts, the situation is approximately the same. The developers, obviously, did a study: the characters’ speech is full of historicisms and archaic terms, and the name-book (local “code”) is rather amusingly written. Most texts are stylized as “old” Russian, but sometimes it’s too strained. They are not difficult to read, no – they just sound unnatural, almost like a parody. It is clear that the authors wanted to do it authentically, but sometimes the characters talk so flowery that they simply can not be taken seriously. Especially when every second peasant expresses himself as a seasoned fabulist.

Mushi Master

As for the gameplay, here the Black Book: Prologue is not just losing ground, but … It doesn’t look as curious as you might think from the video. If you are waiting for a great open-world RPG in the spirit of The Witcher, then immediately upset – there is nothing like this here. The structure and scale of the Black Book is much closer to the roguelike genre. More precisely, to Slay the spire, which the studio honestly calls one of the main sources of inspiration – and it is noticeable.

In practice, it looks like this. Witchcraft is exactly the same profession as a miller or a plowman, so Vasilisa earns a living by helping the locals. Guests regularly come to her hut: someone can be helped out by advice, while others are asked to deal with the problem personally. Then the game throws you onto the global map, where you simply click on the locations to get from point A to point B. As if you were climbing the floors of Spire in Slay the Spire, only here you can not choose a path – it is set in advance. The maximum freedom of action is to decide whether to turn into an optional location or not.

Again, this can be attributed to the fact that Black Book: Prologue is still a demo, but the journey does not offer any interesting solutions. No need to engage in resource management, think through the route, weigh risks … There is not even a good reason to be distracted by side tasks. For each attraction, whether it is a village or a grove, strictly one screen with a dialog box is reserved. The screen is certainly beautiful, but I constantly want to break out of it. Take a walk, chat with the villagers, weave a wreath of meadow flowers, hug a birch – well, you know. Alas, all that awaits you in most cases is some kind of text event. Whether to give alms to a beggar, whether to curse a random grandmother at the request of an unfamiliar peasant … Nice, but pretty pointless. At least for now.

Sometimes in wanderings you can stumble upon hostile devils – you will have to drive out the unclean in turn-based combat. Here, the Black Book almost does not depart from the formula of Slay the Spire and similar roguelike with elements of de-building. Significant differences lie in the details. So, in his turn, Vasilisa immediately selects several words from the witching book and puts them into a conspiracy – that is, a combo. Everything is simple and without frills. Beat enemies, “poison” them with curses, impose shields and useful effects on yourself. There is only one really interesting idea in combat: some cards after the rally remain “in the game” and automatically move on to the next plot. Therefore, with each new move you can weave more and more powerful combos – however, in the demo there was no particular need for this.

Now, of course, it is difficult to say how well the combat mechanics will work in the release version of the Black Book. But one problem can be noted now – battles are desperately lacking in dynamics. I don’t give a damn that it is step-by-step: it’s just boring to follow what is happening on the screen. The actions of Vasilisa and the monsters do not have “bestowal”, they are animated like wooden dolls. Music and sound effects are extremely faded, and the building itself is not developed enough to enjoy the ornate combinations. The mechanics seem to be there, but they do not add up as one. It’s a shame after all: because of this, even fights with really good staging are not fully disclosed.

Naturally, according to the Black Book: Prologue it is too early to draw final conclusions. It does not have a bunch of chips promised by Morteshka Studio for release: an ensemble of colorful satellites, packs of hand demons, a karma system … And what is now, clearly does not reach the potential that the setting promises. But, in fact, that’s why it’s even more curious how to get a full-fledged Black Book, since the game has already raised enough funds on Kickstarter.

Indeed, despite all the shortcomings, after forty minutes of the prologue in Cherdynsky Uyezd, I want to stay at least a couple of days longer. As a maximum – for all summer holidays.