Rolling into an unknown town with the purpose of starting a used book-selling business sets the perfect theme for a cozy game. Tiny Bookshop’s strong gameplay loop blends perfectly with its visual aesthetic and music ambience. The visual reminds me of an animated show one accidentally stumbles on TV late afternoon.
Sell Me This Book
The strength of Tiny Bookshop lies in its core gameplay. The game only cares about focusing on a small number of gameplay elements without extending to wider areas. All these revolve around selling books.
Before you set up your shop, you will get to analyze the people in the location to know more about their interests. When I set up the bookshop at the lighthouse, I had to deal with people asking for crime and drama-focused books. But the same can’t be said when I opened the bookshop at the college campus, where the students in the area were more gravitated to the Facts and Classics genres. Here, very few people showed any interest in crime-related books.
When you are selling the book to consumers, some of them will ask for a specific type of book. You will often encounter people asking for plays, novels, fiction, or Sci-Fi. The game hides the genre of every book and forces the player to read the summary of the book to learn its genre. It’s a very cool idea to inform the player about the book without giving it away in the description. The game also gives rewards with a higher book-selling bonus when you make a proper book suggestion.
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Sit Back and Enjoy the Ride
The atmosphere in Tiny Bookshop is perfectly molded to create a cozy gameplay experience. The visual aesthetic of the game oozes a friendly personality, an afternoon feeling. The music also flows perfectly with the theme of the game without creating any sort of intrusion. I had an experience like this. I unlocked the Lighthouse section of the map, and felt it when I saw seagulls flying at a distance to the ocean tidal waves reaching the shores. The game created a perfect ambience that covers you with its blanket each time you step into a new territory.
The game is fully aware of the tone and plays accordingly without breaking it. At times, the locations in the game do feel like a memory of a place rather than being grounded in reality. As these areas have little to no noise to them, they create a dream-like memory. The animation style has a laid-back vibe perfect for anyone who just wants to play a relaxing game in their personal space.
Making the Bookshop Your Own
The bookshop is tiny, and the small space fits perfectly into the cozy theme of the game. The game gives you a lot of options to make the bookshop appear and feel more homey, even in the limited space of the store. Each customizable accessory adds new passives and adds a new aesthetic to the Tiny Bookshop. Most of the money I made from selling books went towards customizing the bookshop, adding more accessories to create a warmer experience for the customers, and gaining more passive income.
Every piece of accessory has its fair share of consequences as well, while some items might increase the sales of books in the specific category, simultaneously lessening the chance in others. Since most locations favor specific types of books, adding specific accessories that complement the location becomes a focal point of selling the largest amount of books at a location. Knowing about the consumers and locations and setting up accessories adds a deep, engaging layer to the overall gameplay.
To Each Their Own
The NPCs in the game may look alike, but their interest in books makes them different than others. Almost all the people you will meet in the game love nothing but reading books. And you will see the same set of interesting characters buying books in bulk and coming back the next day to buy another set of books in bulk. Either they are reading six to seven books per day or burying them in the bushes at the beach.
The game has a few interactable characters, and almost all of them have something interesting to say. Each suffers in life with their own set of struggles and problems that they will share with you. Listening to the problem makes them appear more human, even if they share the same face with different sets of clothes. There are only a few interactable characters, but by the time I was done with the game, I remembered almost every one of them because each had their own ambition and would make you part of their lives.
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A Blessing and a Curse
Since the book-selling procedure happens automatically behind the scenes, fulfilling the NPC’s book request becomes the only engaging part of the core gameplay. Delivering the specific book to NPC will unlock a bonus of 15% more book sales for around three to four seconds. The reward feels worthless compared to the time and work invested in looking for the specific book. It also breaks the smooth flow of the automatic gameplay. Luckily, you can ignore people’s requests without facing any severe consequences.
Tiny Bookshop has you open the shop every single day, selling the same books to different people. The core gameplay also stays the same, right from the first moment when you boot up the game for the first time to the end game. Initially, it might feel good to see the NPCs slowly walking into the shop to buy the books, staying inside for a few seconds, and then leaving the shop.
Still, it gets frustrating to see the same action every day in the game. The game doesn’t provide any sort of Time Forward mechanics, like in RTS games, to fast-forward to the day’s end. Instead, you are forced to watch the same people walking into the shop, very slowly picking up the same book. Towards the end of the game, when you just want to make money and nothing else, the game keeps the same pace as the start of the game without providing any sort of skipping mechanics.
| What Works | What Don’t |
| Engaging Gameplay | Lack of good Rewards |
| Rewarding Game Mechanics | Slow Pace at the End Game |
| Customization with Consequences | |
| Interesting Cast of Characters | |
| Relaxing visuals with Audio | |
| Comfy Experience |
Tiny Bookshop has every ingredient to create the best cozy game, and it manages to keep the overall recipe simple enough to make the core gameplay addictive and engaging. But at the same time, it managed to fumble on some. When I look back at my 13 hours of gameplay, I can recall so many things that stood out and a few minor problems that did become frustrating later on in the game.
We will give Tiny Bookshop a solid 8.5/10. If you like the flavor of cozy games, you will feel right at home. Make sure to check out their game on Steam to support the devs for their incredible job.
