I've had my eye firmly on this game for a couple of years now, and finally I can say I've played it. Tiny Bookshop truly lives up to my expectations - and its name, because your bookshop really is tiny. Don't let the size fool you, though, as there's a lot to love and plenty of whimsy in Neoludic's indie gem.
As the age-old story goes, you get bored with the rat race and buy a tiny trailer, which you turn into a bookshop. Then, you pull up in a quaint seaside town to start selling tomes. From here, you can buy boxes of used books in the local newspaper, along with some decorations for your trailershop, and figure out where you want to park up each day.
You can set up shop at the waterfront, where sailors like travel books, or by the supermarket - crime and drama go down really well here - or outside the local café. Each area has a different clientele that prefers a different combination of the seven available genres of books. You need to make sure your stock matches this, or you won't shift many in a day.
Some customers need specific help, so get ready to recommend books that fit their request. That said, they can be a little vague - someone asked for an animal-filled, historic book… but didn't like the dinosaur dictionary I suggested. Fine, I'll take it back and I'll read about dinos!
There's a kindly cast of NPCs that frequent the store, too, and while chatting to you about their woes and wants, they also ask for recommendations. I feel worse when I get these wrong, as I know them by name. Though I always nail local metalhead Klaus's inquiries because we're totally on the same wavelength.
Once you've made a few sales and have some spare cash, you can look at buying decor and furniture at the weekly market or from the paper. It can be slow to unlock new racks to put stock on, but the laid-back vibe is all part of the Tiny Bookshop experience. As anyone who enjoys book shopping knows, it's not to be rushed. Each item you equip to the inside or outside of your teeny store can provide boosts to certain things, both positive and negative. While bumping up the chance of fact book sales, some items may add a percentage of danger.
I really liked seeing which books made it into the game. There's everything from Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility to graphic novels of The Last Airbender, with a sprinkling of fictional titles set in the game's own town of Bookston Bay.
There are a few locations to unlock as you go along, and mini quests to complete for your regular customers. There's also a stray dog you can adopt! I called him Behemoth, and now he's the mascot of my shop. I've just been having a really wonderful time touting tomes around Bookston.
I played the game on Steam Deck and found it works perfectly in a handheld sense. Usually, my Steam game choices rely on keyboard and mouse, but a controller (or Deck) works absolutely fine for stacking shelves and decorating a tiny store.
As I expected, Tiny Bookshop got an announcement that it is coming to Switch during the Indie World presentation on August 7. I, for one, am super glad, as it fits the cozy vibe of other indie games on the platform.
Tiny Bookshop is absolutely delightful for book lovers and gamers alike. It may be my favorite cozy game of this year, in fact. The art style is whimsical and adds to the pleasant and relaxed feeling with smooth, colorful drawings. There's not a single issue with the game at all, and it truly lived up to all my expectations of a wholesome bookselling adventure.