Tiny Bookshop

I've been playing this game all week while recovering from the flu and grieving over my best friend, and it's truly the perfect game for those type of circumstances. Super chill, calming music and art. The game is fun but not too complex. Requires strategy but not so much that you'd ever feel overwhelmed. The story is sweet and light. Plays perfectly over controller, so great for gaming from a depression nest. I definitely recommend this game if you're just trying to chill after work, or get your mind off things you might be dealing with.

this is one of those games where i wish there was a neutral option for steam reviews. essentially, there were a lot of problems i had with this game, but i still found it fun and found myself returning to it, so i’ve decided to recommend it. still, i want to be transparent with my gripes. my main problem with tiny bookshop is the book recommendation mechanic, and it’s to the point that i actively skip it. here are some examples of why:- - one character asked for something historical and i recommended animal farm. she was unhappy with me despite it being an allegory for historical events. - i had someone ask for a gruesome horror, and i selected a book that said it was gruesome in the description, and they then said it wasn’t gruesome enough. - characters will tell me that a book must have a happy ending, and can get mad if the book doesn’t. how am i supposed to know how the book ends if i haven’t read it, other than avoiding recommending books that i know are tragedies, or googling it? - there are also often countless times when they’ll say something like, “i love classics and i wouldn’t mind if it was a part of a series” so i decide on a classic, only for them to get mad at me that it’s not a part of a series. in my opinion, saying you wouldn’t mind means that it’s not essential for the recommendation, so it’s annoying that it’s not clear. - i also feel like some of the parameters are subjective. someone asked for a book that wasn’t too long and i recommended something around 300 pages and they said it was too long. for me, i can comfortably read that in a day. i much prefer when they say something like, “nothing over 300 pages” - sometimes the dialogue is laughably wrong — one character asked for a fantasy book and i found one that fit under the kids section. after she accepted the book, she said it looked potentially spicy, despite it being a middle grade book. - multiple characters will say a book must be by a female author, but it’s sometimes hard or impossible to know if the author is a woman, either because their name is androgynous or it only has their first initial. if these issues with the recommendation system didn’t exist i would find it fun, but instead of recommending books based on my knowledge of books, i’m often stuck thinking “what does the game think this book is?” instead of actually recommending books. other issues i had with this game:- - some quests are locked to seasons, and if you don’t complete them within the correct season, you have to wait for an entire year to pass before being able to continue the quest line. this leads to weird continuity errors— for example, i was helping a character recover while in the hospital, but didn’t finish the quest before the season ended. she was out and about and fine for the whole year, and when a year passed, she was back in the hospital recovering from surgery that she had a year prior. - the genres in this game encompass multiple genres within them; for example, the genre “fantasy” also contains sci fi books. there is a character who always asks for sci fi books, but since i have no choice about what fantasy books are on my shelf, there’s no guarantee of sci fi being there. additionally, it’s hard to tell what books are sci fi and not fantasy without googling them or having prior knowledge of the books. this is true for every genre; for example, crime also contains horror and thriller books, and some characters will want thriller and not horror or vice versa. i do like that the game has real books though, it has almost 1000 real and unique books included, and i’ve found myself screenshotting the ones that sound interesting so that i can read them later. i just wish that recommending them felt more fair.

i wanted to wait til i'd finished all the achievements but the "sell 40 books" per genre was too difficult, i think this is because i left it too late. it was probably easier to complete them when bigger events were happening. i really did not expect this game to be so long and full of things to do. i loved the characters that filled this game, they all became people that i wanted to succeed and wanted to get to know. decorating my shop felt super fun, making it cute whilst figuring out how to boost the right genres. not going to lie i was thinking there would be potential date-able characters but i found out that was not a part of the game. all achievements (excluding the sell 40 of each genre) were very fun and smooth to do, they kept me even more hooked and if there was more to do i would love to keep playing this game. thank you for making such a great game!!