A bookshop by the sea
Many games revolve around high-octane action and rivalry. “Tiny Bookshop” embraces the exact opposite. What the popularity of cosy games reveals about the modern world.
Luca Rehse-Knauf Cosy games are all about relaxing, not competing. Players are under no time pressure, experience no violence and need have no fear of losing. They furnish homes, tend gardens, make friends or run a small bookshop. In today’s fast-paced and increasingly digitalised world, more and more people seem to be yearning for a safe, friendly and cosy virtual space.
Here’s one example from Cologne. In “Tiny Bookshop”, a game made by the independent studio Neoludic Games, players run a small bookshop in a picturesque seaside town. They recommend books, collect stamps and Polaroids or do yoga. The game involves virtually no pressure to perform or achieve anything.
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Open consent formFrom bookshop to computer game
“Tiny Bookshop” is what is known as a cosy game. Rather than competition, speed and challenges, such games are all about creating virtual worlds, forming relationships and going about everyday activities. Nintendo’s “Animal Crossing” series is one of the best-known cosy games: players decorate their homes, plant flowers and make friends with their animal neighbours. According to Nintendo, “Animal Crossing: New Horizons” alone has sold more than 50 million copies.
The idea for “Tiny Bookshop” came about in New Zealand in 2019. While on a trip there, David Zapfe-Wildemann watched an antiquarian bookseller who was selling books from a trailer. “He was sitting in front of it under a sunshade, reading a book himself. Customers would come out and give him money for a book, he would take the money and then continue reading,” the games developer told the German Press Agency (dpa).
Rather than opening a bookshop himself, Zapfe-Wildemann teamed up with fellow student Raven Rusch to develop “Tiny Bookshop”, initially as a project at Cologne Game Lab at TH Köln - University of Applied Sciences. In 2021, the two founded Neoludic Games in Cologne.
Cosy games are the perfect digital antidote to the hectic pace of daily life. Rather than violence, competition and peer pressure, they offer a world of books, good neighbourly relations and time for the small pleasures in life. Perhaps that’s what makes them so appealing: after all, games don’t always have to be fast-paced, loud and challenging. Sometimes all you need is a small bookshop by the sea.
