Neoludic Games on Tiny Bookshop, the cosy business management game made for creatives and bookworms alike

When we spoke to David Zapfe-Wildemann and Raven Rusch, the primary art directors for the game, we found out that the idea began organically on one fateful afternoon in Christchurch, New Zealand, during an exchange semester when the duo were still Melbourne-based students. “I came across a small second-hand bookshop in a small wagon. Off to its side sat an older gentleman reading a newspaper. I was immediately hooked by this way of living: surrounded by the things you love, being hands-off and relaxed while running a business,” shares David. “Back in our flat, I immediately began researching how it would be possible to run such a mobile bookshop back home in Germany. Unable to do it right away, I made do by designing a card game prototype around it. This would eventually turn into Tiny Bookshop.”

For David, the focus wasn’t on making a cosy game for its own sake, but manifesting his own fantasy. If he couldn’t run a real tiny bookshop, then he set out to make it possible in the virtual world. It’s not just a business-simulation game, it’s about interacting with the community that you live in and the characters within it – and baking that core value into the game’s design, writing, art direction and sound. In Tiny Bookshop, you can see the coastal town you’re set up in go from day to night, you can see seagulls, sea lions and even cannon fire from a nearby castle. All of these factors can affect your bookshop’s business, from boosting sales in a certain genre to scaring customers away – all depending on what variables colour the section of the town you’re in. These elements of the game aren’t merely numbers or statistics, they’re thoughtfully designed and illustrated in Raven’s warm, painterly style (which was inspired by children’s books and nostalgic postcard drawings).

“The ideas for the individual characters came from different places and people in the team – some were workshopped to fit a specific need within the game, but most just came from an idea of ‘Hey, wouldn’t it be great if we had a character that was like this, and they were into this and that’,” says Raven. “Intuitively, we tried to have the characters feel distinct and diverse, so we gave them different interests, origins, ages and so on.” The game’s focus on the player as a centrepoint for the town’s literary-minded is made extra enjoyable when you connect with the variety of characters who have signature looks and interests, which you pair with 931 real-life books, from Ariel by Slyvia Plath to James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl. Although some literary types can fit a certain cliche, Tiny Bookshop offers moments of surprise. “Often the visual identity was a result of a back and forth between writing and art, thinking about what kind of person would embody these traits well and be easily identifiable for the player, yet interesting and maybe subversive too,” says Raven.

In a lot of simulation games from the big boom, the user interface can feel separate from the world. In Tiny Bookshop, it feels integrated. The menus and buttons feel like its part of the physical stationery and paper of a real bookshop, thanks to the team’s attention to detail. “We used custom shaders that add paper grain, slight wobble and a brushstroke effect to all the UI and the texts, we also made sure the UI gets impacted by the ambient light as well, anchoring in the same time and space of the 3D world,” shares David. Not only does the game have a tactile sense to it, but it especially helps when much of the gameplay entails stocking shelves, designing the bookshop and even shopping at a flea market.