Black Book

This game is interesting, with good storyline and deep slavic folklore background. Card fight mechanics is similar with other card games like Slay the Spyre, but has its unique features. There are two types and two classes of cards - black (mostly used for attack) and white (mostly used for defence), words (main action cards) and keys (additional action cards). You can build your deck and develop your own fight strategy, also you can have 3 different saved presets of deck and switch between them. Also game allows you to skip the fight if you loose more than 2 times, so it prevent you from really frustraiting dead end situations. Game has different endings which rely on your choices. Also your choices can change fate of other characters in the end. Graphics is stylish low-poligon animation. I liked it, but for somebody it will not be pleasant, I guess. The only thing I dislike in this game is its duration. It is too long for such game type, in my opinion. Game creates artificial walls to prevent you from progressing fast. To achieve goal X, you must first do A, B, C, and every A, B, C mission has a lot of sidequest fights. So with high speed of fight animation I finished the game only after almost 35 hours. Controls of character movement also not ideal, but they are not so bad either.

A gothic adventure set in the early industrial Russian country side. Immerse yourself in the culture witches and sin. Narrative: Your beloved is dead. To bring him back you must unseal the Black Book to grant your wish. To do so you must find the proper chorts (demons) with the power to break the various seals. Travel the countryside seaking those that can help. There's a 'twist' in the story, but it's sort out of nowhere and not really interesting. Mechanics: I don't usually like card based combat, but BB manages to make it interesting. You get two types of pages; black to mainly attack and white to mainly defend/heal. You chain the pages together to deal tons of damage, debuff/buff or heal. The trick is BB manages to make the cards mostly all good. I seldom found a card I wasn't able to make work. Despite this I still found the game challenging. The other part of the game is how you choose to help or curse the various villagers you encounter. Cursing increases your sins, but gets you robust rewards. Helping can get you some rewards, but not nearly as many. Sins can have an effect later on. Visuals: The graphics are a combination of basic 3d modelling a cell shading, to an extent. This basic art style works well for the chorts as it gives them a more alien appearance, but it results in the humans, and the protag, looking a little dopey. The spell visual effects are also lack luster and don't really convey 'power'. The environments benefit in the same way as the chorts. The simplistic style makes the whole work a bit more mysterious and ephemeral. Presentation: Good music, but somewhat forgettable (except the collected songs). Although you can have 3 sets of pages for your combat you can't choose which set to use when battle begins. If you die, you can change later, but it would have been nice to pick before the battle. It would also be nice to have a 'test' battle as an option to play around with page sets. As it stands you can only test in production.

There are very few games I enjoyed that much before. Setting is great, gameplay is good to. I really liked the art and effort creators put into this game.

This is an enchanting adventure/card game brimming with folklore. I learned more about the beliefs and customs of the inhabitants of the Ural region in Russia from this game than ever before in my life. One can feel the designers' love for ethnography. The story is great, the game mechanics is solid and I love the voice acting. The visuals are simple but atmospheric. I cannot complain. This game is a gem.

+ Stylish visuals in both 2D and 3D sections + Fun card battle system + Captivating story with moral ambiguity + Choices that matter + Overall good voice acting (Russian) - Optimisation can be improved - Often akward pathfinding and sometimes problematic camera angles