Early access code used with many thanks to Blep Games.
Bookshop Simulator is exactly what it sounds like: you are a brand-new bookshop owner, and you have to build your business, make money, and unlock new items to sell. This game is currently in early access, but it’s got a lot of things to do in it already.
A Good Start
Bookshop Simulator starts you with a tiny, empty store. You will need to unlock new items to sell, furniture, artwork, and other things, to customize your shop. You start with just a couple of books and a single bookshelf, and you can grow your business into three large shops with tons of different items to sell. There are candies, bookmarks, board games, comics, manga, and books.
There are a lot of items you can sell, and there are a handful of different furniture items to decorate the store with. Based on the game’s roadmap, there are also a ton of different upcoming things that will be added in the near future, such as custom book covers and a cafe to sell coffee and snacks.
Did I also mention you can get pet cats for your store? I’m not sure I mentioned the cats already, so here are a couple of pictures of the cats you can adopt. The adoption page also has a whole bunch of items to get for your pets, like scratching posts, food bowls, and litter boxes, but none of these seem to be a requirement for owning a pet.
The first building you get in Lyons, France, can only be upgraded a handful of times, giving you five expansions and a very small store. You will most likely not have any storage, but you can fit all the items you want to sell inside as well as a couple of employees and a manager’s desk, which is the item you need for your store to keep making money while you are not actively running it.
The second store is located in Paris, France, and you have a lot more room to expand. It has its own storage room with nine total unlockable spaces and a main room of 18 total spaces. The third store, located in Japan, has eight first-level square and a second story. You can unlock them in any order, but the Japanese store is extremely expensive, so you’ll probably unlock that one last.
You can also change the colors of most of the furniture, walls, and flooring, with the single exception of the bookmark holder and like two other furniture pieces, which seems like it is a bug rather than a choice the developers made.
The Gameplay of Bookshop Simulator
Every day, you will need to pay your bills, pay your employees, and then restock all your books. After everything is set, you will be able to order more books if you need them, expand your shop, repaint, and get things ready to start the day. The timer doesn’t tick down until you open up the shop for the day for the first time. You also have unlimited time after closing at 8PM to clean up after the day.
Once the day starts, you and your employees will need to ring up customers and restock on the fly. As you ring out customers, sell items, buy items, and do everything else you need to do, you will earn XP for your player level and XP for that store location’s level. Both of those different XP bars unlock different kinds of items to sell, pets, and furnishings. And that’s the main gameplay loop.
The Cons of Bookshop Simulator
There are a couple of things I don’t like about Bookshop Simulator, but these things may be updated in the future. The main one is the way the AI works. Your employees love to throw boxes all over the floor for no reason; they refill shelves first, throw the boxes on the floor, then put them away as a third priority, which sometimes makes a huge mess. Customers don’t seem to care, but it bothered me. The AI also won’t combine boxes of books or prioritize boxes with fewer books in them to empty first, either, which can cause problems on occasion.
Also, the furniture hit boxes are HUGE. There doesn’t seem to be a reason why each item needs so much room around it; it makes putting your shop the way you want it almost impossible. You can’t put shelves properly in the corner unless you have a corner bookshelf, but there are no corner manga or comic book shelves, not to mention used books. I wanted all my bookshelves to look the same, but I couldn’t put comics or manga in the shelves made for books and vice versa.
Another thing that is way too big is the stock shelves where you put boxes. The hit boxes are huge, and the shelves are so much bigger than they need to be, which makes having enough stock shelves in the smaller locations difficult.
Another thing that kind of bothers me is that all the models are exactly the same; the male and female models are all the same model wearing different clothing and hairstyles, and that’s it. Even your employees are all the same model.
Final Thoughts
Overall, Bookshop Simulator is absolutely my type of game. If you like shop simulators, you’ll also probably like this one. I’ve put an embarrassing amount of hours into this one, and I think anyone who wants a chill store-running time will do the same thing. I can’t wait for the upcoming updates that will add cafes and more book covers!
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