When I was in college, I worked weekends at a Waldenbooks store. Before I returned to Shacknews in 2016, it was my favorite job ever: Working with colleagues I called friends, putting books into the hands of customers eager to journey to new worlds and meet characters who would become close friends.
Walden’s, as we called it, was part of the Borders chain of bookstores, but smaller. It didn’t have a cafe or any of the other accoutrements of a larger store like Borders or Barnes & Noble. It was your neighborhood bookseller, inviting you to browse and buy at your leisure. It was a special kind of magic. Tiny Bookshop, developed by Neoludic Games and published by Skystone Games, captures the essence of that magic by inviting you to run your own cozy bookshop and match each of your customers with just the right book.
The premise is simple. Your titular tiny bookshop is mobile, so each day you choose a different location to set up and deal your wares. You get to design your little store to make it uniquely yours, and then, once the day begins, you wait for customers to pop in and browse. Like any good bookstore, you’ll have regulars, and you can bond with them by completing missions.
But that’s not the core of Tiny Bookshop. The core, the heart of the game, is stocking your store across seven genres of titles, increasing your stock’s limit through upgrades, and taking each customer’s wants into consideration when helping them find their dream read. The best part? Some of the game’s books are fictional, but others are real. Perhaps that will lead you to try them in real life.
Tiny Bookshop was made for me. Before I became a writer, I dreamed of running my own indie bookstore and spreading the joy of reading by helping every customer who passed through my doors. Tiny Bookshop lets me live out that dream, but without the pressure of running a real business. It’s a game that brings me warmth and joy, and that alone makes it worthy of the Shacknews Best Cozy Game Award of 2025.
