Tiny Bookshop

August 7, 2025, will go down as one of the biggest days in indie releases in 2025. With games like Ritual of Raven, Is This Seat Taken? and MakeRoom dropping on this day, it’s a particular highlight for cosy game fans. As if there wasn’t enough choice, neoludic games’ Tiny Bookshop also releases on the same day, and in all honesty, it deserves to be in such esteemed company. The game’s demo had already hooked me in, but the full game is even better.

In Tiny Bookshop, you decide to leave your old life behind and travel to Bookstonbury, a quaint little town with a huge love for books. Tilde, the local bookshop owner, has just retired, so the village is in dire need of someone else to supply them with something to read. Luckily, that’s where you and your mobile second-hand bookshop come in. Obviously, with this being a video game, you start out small: just one bookcase to fill and a bunch of books ranging from classics to non-fiction and fantasy to sell.

You get to decide which books to put into your store at the start of each day. Well, you don’t get to select the actual titles – which are all real-life books – but you select the genres you want to stock up on. Depending on the location you visit that day, one genre might be more popular than another. For example, people at the beach will have less interest in non-fiction, but children’s books will be pretty popular there.

It’s up to you to optimise the workings of your little store to start bringing in the money that will allow you to buy items to customise your shop. Every one of these will have an effect, whether it’s improving the chances of selling a particular genre or earning extra income. You can even interact with some of these items: when you buy a coffee maker, for example, you can choose when to make coffee, and that will in turn get customers to buy one, earning you a little on the side.

While the management aspect of the game is a lot of fun, Tiny Bookshop really is all about its vibes. Bookstunbury is a delightful place, no matter if you’re working at the seafront or the local café. It’s one of those places where everyone knows everyone, and soon, you’ll be included in that. Among the many customers you serve, you’ll start to have locals. These villagers will return almost daily, looking for more books but also sharing their life stories with you and often asking you for help.

This can be in the form of a musician looking for inspiration for a new album or even an investigation with the local journalist when the town mascot is deflated. These aren’t necessarily the highest of stakes, but there’s no need for those. You get to know your fellow townsfolk in interesting ways, and sometimes that’s all you need.

Obviously, working this way will have you running out of books rather quickly, so luckily there’s the local newspaper, where people put up books for sale every day. If you’re patient, you might even snag a great deal, although if you wait too long, the books might be gone before you make your move. The selection of books on offer is pretty interesting too. Like I mentioned before, these are all real books, and the descriptions the Tiny Bookshop team have provided are a lot of fun, although they’re not always the most insightful.

This can become a bit of a problem, as one of the game’s most fun mechanics is recommending books to people. While they’re browsing your wares, customers might reach out to you for help. They’ll be struggling to find what they’re looking for, so they’ll give you an idea of what that is in order for you to be able to help them. This is a delightful feature, but if you don’t have that much knowledge about literature in general, it can get tricky. Because sometimes, these requests will be very specific. 

For example, one of the professors at the local university wants to know about your literary knowledge and will only accept recommendations that she absolutely adores. Get too basic with your choices, and your recommendation will not be enough to continue that particular quest. This highlights another slight problem with the game: your recommendations are very dependent on the particular books you have with you that day. There’s a group of people who give you a quest to give them scary recommendations, but horror isn’t even a genre within the game. So if you’re unlucky, you won’t have any books with you that will suit that particular need.

But don’t let these slight details scare you off. It is utterly delightful, and it will make you want to read more yourself. You might even discover some books you’ve never heard of and increase your own personal library. The game perfectly shows why books are so important. There are so many wants and needs that can be fulfilled with a perfectly suited book, whether it’s a thirst for knowledge, a search for inspiration, or the need to have something relaxing to do.

Alongside the immaculate vibes – from the gloriously soft visuals to the unintrusive soundtrack – the gameplay for Tiny Bookshop is tremendous as well. I started playing the game on PC, just using my mouse to select everything, which felt like the logical way to play this. But one night, I wanted to try it out on the Steam Deck, and it played just as well using that system’s controller. So with the game also arriving on Switch, there’s just no excuse not to pick this one up.

I’m not overreacting when I say that this game might be one of the best cosy games to release this year. I know that’s quite the bold statement to make, as we’ve had some stellar competition releases already and there’s more to come, but I mean it. Tiny Bookshop does exactly what it sets out to do and will delight anyone who craves everything that the cosy genre has to offer.