Outside of video games, books are one of my biggest passions. I have been an avid reader for as long as I can remember, have had a library membership near enough my entire life, studied literature at university, and I have an ever growing collection of books at home. Ideally, I would like to have my own small bookstore but alas, some things are out of reach. Tiny Bookshop is a cosy book selling game that lets me live my dream, and it could be one of the best games to relax with.
In Tiny Bookshop you have moved to the small town of Bookstonbury with all your belongings in you car, and a shed hitched to the back of it. This is not any old shed, but the base of your travelling book selling business, where all sorts of people will come to get some page turners. The game starts small with your constrained collection of books, one shelving unit, and one location in which to sell, and you grow from there.
You have different genres including crime, drama, classics, fact, fantasy, travel, and kids books which means there’s a wide variety for customers to choose from, but it is not as simple as putting every genre out on display. As you come to know the people and the town, you will come to realise that each place has its own type of clientele that like certain genres. At the Waterfront, the sailors primarily like the travel books and fact books, while kids books are unlikely to sell so there is little point having them on display.
You have a limited stock of books that depletes each day as you sell them, so you need to spend money on acquiring more stock to sell. That is not the only thing you can spend your hard-earned money on though. Various characters have their own stores you can buy goods from, as does the local newspaper, and these items can provide bonuses. Certain objects will boost the sale chance of specific genres, while others may bring you in more money. However, it is not as simple as picking the items and activating them. You have to have the space in and around your little bookstore and also be aware of the negative traits some items have. For example, some scarier items will lower the chances of selling kids books as fewer kids may visit the shop. Once you open up the shop for the day, you cannot just sit back and let the customers peruse the shelves.
Occasionally, customers will ask you for a recommendation, giving you specific criteria. This is perhaps the most challenging part of the game, because when you stock your shelves before opening you have no idea what titles are going to be there. Each recommendation challenge has its own difficulty rating, with this affected by the types of books you have on your shelf and the number of books left in stock. Someone coming in early when the shelves are full are more likely to get what they are looking for, compared to someone coming in near closing time with shelves almost bare. The majority of the books are real books, so if you have some literary knowledge that can make it easier to recommend a title, and it feels good to get a match, but when you get it wrong it does feel annoying. Most of the time it will be down to you just getting it wrong, but there were a few instances where a books description and what someone was looking for seemed to match up, but the game did not like it so it was a failed recommendation.
In your life as a bookseller, you will get encouragement and tips from those that have made Bookstonbury their home. There are some regulars that come to visit who will have their specific tastes, like Tilde and her crime books, and as time passes you will learn more about each of these characters. As you get to know them, the different characters will make requests to help them, such as helping to put on a play, or set you a challenge like selling out all of your books in a specific location. There is no time limit or fail state with these requests or challenges so you can relax and get to them when you are ready to do them.
Tiny Bookshop has a calendar of events to look to as well, allowing you to maximise your book selling as you set up at these locations with higher footfall. The game also goes through the different seasons, and in each season some locations may be off limits or have minimal footfall so it is not worth the cost of setting up in those places. The artstyle throughout the game is easy on the eye, colourful, and adds to the chilled vibe of Tiny Bookshop. The music is also very good at setting the cosy atmosphere in a very lo-fi style. The characters are all decently written, but as time goes on you do start seeing repeated lines by each one. They also do not keep track of what they buy so sometimes you can just recommend them the same book they bought before.