Tiny Bookshop Review — Books by the Beach

Tiny Bookshop is the very definition of a cozy game, featuring a reliably relaxing and satisfying gameplay loop, and oozing with a cute, friendly, homely atmosphere at every opportunity. Representing what I imagine very well may be the penultimate fantasy of the game developer, as well as many of those who will give this game a chance, Tiny Bookshop represents an escape from the stress and routine of modern life, while still managing to be a pretty decent tycoon/business simulation game. While some may find the mechanics a little lacking, I think the target audience for Tiny Bookshop will love what the game has to offer and will hopefully find the title as easily as they find themselves charmed by it.

Tiny Bookshop, without bothering with too much exposition or background, opens with you arriving in a new town with nothing but your car and a small trailer. This trailer is, in actuality, your titular Tiny Bookshop. Out of the back of this hitched scholastic shed, you travel around town, meeting new and eccentric locals as you sell a variety of used books for a meager profit and an overall satisfying experience.

The gameplay loop is remarkably simple. At the start of each day, you choose a location to set up your Tiny Bookshop, which can be customized with trinkets and decorations that mostly increase the rate at which certain genres of books sell. You then line your store’s shelves with your supply of books, often purchased in bundles from the local newspaper’s secondhand postings, deciding how many of which genre you have stocked in your store for the day. The percentage chance for books to sell generally depends on how many copies of the genre you have in stock, but invisible modifiers, like which location you’re selling at, also increase the chance for different genres of books to be sold.

When customers come to actually purchase your books, it plays out in a kind of percentage-based combo system. A customer picks out a book from your shelves, based on the book’s sale chance, and if they pick out a book, they will then attempt to pick up another, until they fail a percentage-based check and decide they have all that they’re looking for. Your best sales come from customers who walk out with a hefty stack of books, and you know you’re a great salesperson when you sell out of a genre, since the chance to sell a book becomes harder when there are fewer of that genre on your shelf.

My favorite mechanic is definitely book recommendations.

Occasionally, a customer will ask you for a suggestion on a book to buy. They will tell you what they’re looking for, sometimes in more vague terms than others, and often will tell you about another book they enjoyed. Using information the customer gives you, such as an interest in historic settings, being a fan of horror, or loving Anne of Green Gables, you choose from your selection of real-life books to give them a good recommendation. If you succeed, all of your customers will get a bonus on their chance to buy more books, and you will feel the same satisfaction a friendly librarian must feel. The actual inclusion of real book titles and descriptions of those books was a little feature that I probably shouldn’t be so excited about, but here I am.

Outside of the actual bookstore mechanics, Tiny Bookshop features a sort of social story as you interact with the town’s numerous residents. Several named characters will visit you during your business hours, with unique dialogue that often points you to a new location in town to sell your goods or prompts you to do some side-questing for them.

These characters are generally written to be friendly, but if I’m being honest, there were a few I didn’t like. Perhaps by decision, certain characters struck me as pushy, overly friendly, or ignoring social boundaries. This, of course, could be me reading way too much into this game that is supposed to be cute and friendly, but suffice to say, I would not have been as friendly to some of the game’s characters.

There really isn’t too much more to say about Tiny Bookshop. It’s a small, satisfying little shop sim with a big focus on its social elements, meant to win you over with its relaxing setting and the fulfillment of a rather specific, yet ideal off-grid fantasy.

If I could criticize the game for anything, it would be that the actual shop mechanics will leave something to be desired for those looking for more of a simulator-type game. Beyond the setup at the start of the day, you’re just standing around waiting for a recommendation or quest to pop up, so it’s not exactly the most exciting of management or store sim games. Though, frankly, that’s not what Tiny Bookshop wants to be. This small, self-contained, relaxing game allows you to sell used books to friendly people with very little challenge or consequence, prompting you to work just hard enough to make a small profit without really pushing yourself too far. It knows precisely what audience it caters to, and that audience will have a lot to enjoy in Tiny Bookshop.

Try Hard Guides was provided a Steam code for this PC review of Tiny Bookshop. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles on our Game Reviews page! Tiny Bookshop is available on Steam.