Though a little repetitive, Tiny Bookshop is a lovely cosy game about running a book shop. A tiny one.
Cosy games are quite the popular genre these days. Ranging from cleaning up oil spills to making tea, there’s probably a nice, relaxing theme for you to enjoy in a chilled out fashion. Tiny Bookshop certainly fits the bill, and as something of a reader myself I was more than happy to try my hand at selling novels from my trailer.
The premise is that you decide to pack up your life and drive off to the tiny coastal town of Bookstonbury, where everyone apparently really likes books. You decide to follow your dream of running a quaint travelling bookshop from the back of your cute wooden trailer and find yourself moving around the various parts of Bookstonbury. You’ll need and befriend various locals, sell mountains of books, and furnish your little library with the items you acquire along the way.
Before getting into the actual gameplay, when I say people really like books and you’ll sell mountains of them, I really mean it. You’ll see the same customers day after day and they’ll buy half a dozen books each time. I like reading, but I don’t see how some of these people could get through so many! I suppose complaining about this silly element is a bit trite, but it did catch my attention. At least people loving books this much means your dream job is actually financially viable.
Anyway, after a brief but well put together and informative tutorial, you’ll be ready to start selling. Each day you’ll choose a location, stock your shelves, and head over to make a little money from the local book lovers. Initially, you’ll only have access to a few locations, but this expands as you play the game, talk to locals, and interact with background elements. Expanding your venue options gives you access to special events that happen in certain places, increasing your clientele, and giving you more quests to complete.
You need to pay attention to what sells in each venue, as this helps you determine what to put on your limited shelf space. Kids books tend to sell better at the beach, so making sure you have plenty on hand would be smart, whilst the pier tends to have more people looking for travel books. It’s a nice little feature that gives you a little more work to do than simply turning up and selling everything. Your journal keeps track for you though, so you can shortcut things a little bit.
The money you earn is used to buy more books in randomised boxes. Reading the description gives you an idea of what you’re going to get, and the game is even kind enough to offer you occasional free ones in case you’re low on funds. You’re not going to fail in this relaxing cosy game. Alternatively, you can throw cash at decorative items that increase or decrease the probability of certain book types selling. You can somewhat manipulate things to almost be able to get away with only stocking two or three genres and making a killing if you’re smart about it, but I tended to just put up whatever stuff I had on hand.
A feature I really liked was that on occasion, customers will ask you to recommend a book to them. You’ll be given criteria, like page count and genre, and have to select an appropriate one from your shelf. Getting a good one results in higher sales for a few seconds, whilst failing means the customer leaves. What I particularly liked was that all the books were real ones, including synopsis and author. I almost squealed when The Cask of Amontillado appeared on the shelves, and I constantly saw books I recognised with very few duplicates. It’s a simple inclusion, but a nice little treat for book lovers.
The cast of characters is lovely enough, and their problems are minor things that you would expect for a cosy game. A lady that wants help moving items from her shop, a little girl that wants to be a writer and so forth. Realistically, you can completely ignore most of this and just sell books for the sake of selling them, though you do get new decorations for completing tasks.
I liked the nice, pastel art style. It certainly gives Tiny Bookshop a charming feel to it, though I wouldn’t mind the ability to highlight interactive objects in the background, as they often blend in. The inclusion of accessibility options in which you can change the colour of different book genres for colourblindness is lovely. The sound is fine and barely noticeable a lot of the time. There are some nice tinks and squarks as you click on lamps or seagulls in the background, and the music is pleasant. It felt like it wasn’t there a lot of the time, and I’d have to actively think about the soundtrack to notice it.
Tiny Bookshop is nice to play. It feels calm and cosy, as a game from this genre should, but I could see it getting a little tiresome over a longer period of time as ultimately you’re doing the same thing everyday: choose venue, choose books, click on background. This is very much the sort of game you can turn your brain off and relax to, but I don’t think it will hold your attention long term as things rarely change. It’s nice to find a new location or meet a new local, but none of that really alters what you do. For avid readers, seeing all the novels appear as you help customers is lovely, but I can see that becoming a little tiresome after a while too, as people tend to ask for fairly similar things.
Tiny Book Shop isn’t bad for any of this by any stretch, but if you want something a little more to it, then the likes of Coffee Talk or Sticky Business might be a better option. If you’re happy to wile away the hours in the same sort of way, then this certainly isn’t a bad choice.
Tiny Bookshop is available now on PC and Nintendo Switch.
