Review: Tiny Bookshop (Nintendo Switch 2)
Tiny Bookshop is a business-simulation title developed by Neoludic Games and published by Skystone Games. It’s cozy with real-life book titles for you to recommend to NPCs while living a simple lifestyle.
First, let me begin by saying this is a slow-paced game. At first, I wasn’t sure about how slow it was, but the longer I played, the more I found myself losing time IRL. Each in-game day is roughly three to four minutes in real time. Yes, that sounds fast, but during this time, you’re watching NPCs slowly make their way into your van to check out your secondhand bookshop.
Since time moves on its own, there’s no time management needed in Tiny Bookshop. It’s more about managing your customers. They’ll enter your van, browse books, and buy what they want on their own (hooray for no math!) Some NPCs will ask for recommendations, though. For example, maybe they’ll want to read a specific trope, or they may ask for a quick read. And here’s where the gameplay comes in.
When a customer asks for a recommendation, you need to browse through the books on your shelf and decide which is the best option for them. Each book will show the title, author, blurb, genre, and page count. Whether you’re an avid reader or not, you should recognize most of the books. I gravitated toward recommending books I’ve actually read because I knew more beyond the blurb.
Honestly, that’s the main difficulty of Tiny Bookshop. If you don’t know which books to recommend to an NPC, you need to guess based on the blurb and cross your fingers. There are three reactions you’ll get: positive, neutral, and negative. The customer will buy the book if your recommendation was spot-on or neutral. The only consequence in this game is if you miss the mark on a recommendation and the customer doesn’t buy the book. You won’t lose money, but you won’t gain any, either.
In addition to managing that, you also need to manage your money. It is a business sim, after all. Tiny Bookshop has various locations for you to park your van each day, but each location costs money. Not a lot, but if you didn’t make too many sales the day before, then heading to a cheaper area the next day is a good idea.
In between these days, you can buy boxes of donated books by genre to help restock your shelves. You can also buy trinkets and decorations for your van, each one giving your shop some sort of boost. For example, a plant may increase the chances of people wanting to buy sci-fi.
Some NPCs will visit your shop each day and talk to you, giving you quests, such as selling a certain amount of fantasy books in a specific location. When you complete a quest, they’ll give you a reward, like a new decoration for your van.
While there’s no main story in Tiny Bookshop, the NPCs with names get together at the end of the summer for a bonfire. I won’t spoil anything, but that scene made me tear up. It just showed that Tiny Bookshop is deeper than a simple, cozy, simulation game, giving the NPCs their own backgrounds that many players can probably relate to. Even though it’s slow-paced, if you enjoy cozy games, then this title is certainly worth checking out.
