The game is visually pleasant, and its music fits the experience well. Unfortunately, that is where almost everything positive about it ends.

The gameplay is tedious and repetitive. The core loop revolves around constantly opening the inventory to swap items one by one to boost the required genre, a process that quickly becomes dull. You then travel to a location, wait for time to pass or for a recommendation request, and leave. During these waits, nothing happens visually, making the downtime feel long and empty.

The main mechanic—recommending books—is poorly designed. Requests are often vague, inconsistent, or contradictory. If you do not already know every work, it is nearly impossible to identify theatrical pieces, despite this being a frequent requirement. Characters may ask for something written by a woman and related to crime, only to accept any irrelevant book as long as it meets one criterion, or later claim they actually wanted romance. Some requests are outright absurd, such as asking for horror books with queer themes when the game provides no meaningful way to distinguish that.

This confusion is worsened by a categorization system that lacks logic. Authors like Agatha Christie or Shakespeare can appear under Crime, Drama, or Classics depending on the game’s mood, making informed decisions nearly impossible.

The economy is badly balanced. You earn very little money, yet nearly every action requires spending it: equipping items, traveling, and buying books. This creates constant scarcity that adds friction rather than challenge, slowing the game down and discouraging engagement with its systems.

The sale probability system is equally unbalanced. Even with the correct items equipped, selling in the optimal location, and following the list of popular genres, results feel arbitrary. Books from genres not even listed as in demand often sell better, making player choices feel irrelevant and rendering optimization pointless.

The characters are generic and lifeless, repeating the same dialogue with no relationship progression. Towns welcome you as if you were already beloved, despite having no reason to know you. You do not build trust or attachment, and quests feel less like meaningful interactions and more like errands.

Those quests do little to help. They are repetitive and padded, often sending you to the same location multiple times or asking you to sell a fixed number of books of a certain type. There is no variety or creativity, only repetition with no meaningful narrative or gameplay payoff.

Too shallow, imo. Gets tediuos pretty quickly

I was so excited when I found about the release of Tiny Bookshop and anticipated it more than anything since I'm a keen reader and the idea of owning my own bookshop seemed fascinating. I even managed to even play the demo twice before the release, because I was just yearning for this game so much. My excitement didn't go away when I finally got my hands on this game either and right from the start I was hooked.

It is exactly as you would expect - you manage your own tiny moving bookshop by selling different genres of books, decorating, going to various locations around the town and interacting with Bookstonbury's characters. It's quite a simple concept, but it works. There are also seasonal events and cases to be solved, manuscripts to collect and variety of decorations to buy to make your bookshop even cuter each season. After some time it might get repetitive to some people, but I personally didn't have that problem, only maybe a little at the very end when I finished the main storyline and wanted to collect all the memories, stamps and achievements.

All in all, I think this game is very charming and is fitting for everyone who loves books even if you are new to games, because it's very easy to play it. Personally, it matched my expectations perfectly and I'm very glad to have picked it up.