Game: Monk Took Book
Genre: Simulation, Puzzle, Co-op
System: Steam (Windows)
Developers | Publishers: SquarePlay Games
Steam Deck: Playable
Controller Support: Yes
Price: US $8.99 | UK £7.99 | EU € 8,99
Release Date: September 3rd, 2026
A review code was provided; many thanks to SquarePlay Games.
Monk Took Book is a 2026 puzzle game developed and released by SquarePlay Games.
The Premise of Monk Took Book
Monk Took Book is a game about organizing, stacking, and remembering where you put hundreds of books in a cozy haunted medieval library.
The Gameplay
The premise of Monk Took Book is simple: we have daily book deliveries that we need to stack and organize. Then, every evening, we will need to fulfill orders for books by scholars using the library.
Of course, it’s not quite as simple as that. For one, the library in question is the greatest monastic library of the Dark Ages, and its collection is legendary and vast. Each morning, new books are delivered, and each has a distinct symbol on its cover. Since the books have no titles, these symbols are all we have to go on when organizing them and delivering them to the scribes who request them. At the beginning, we start with a relatively small selection of books and not many shelves, but as the game progresses and we fulfill more requests and earn more blessings, we can purchase more bookcases and more space, and grow our book collection. And then remembering where we’ve placed each book gets progressively more difficult.
The more orders we fulfill, the more coins we earn for upgrades and other tools. If we are playing in co-op mode with other monk librarians, it is much more doable. If we are playing by ourselves, even that can get complicated, very quickly. One thing to note is that while we can stack and carry the book, we can also throw and collect them. And throwing is quite fun, and not at all like the pain of dropping a book in real life.
Another thing to note during the night at the library is that the library itself, while cozy, is also haunted. We might encounter some Viking raider ghosts or some poltergeists. We might also have some trouble with more mundane visitors such as rats and spiders. The shop in the courtyard offers all kinds of tools and traps to aid us. It’s important to note that while those visitors sound unpleasant, none of them are truly scary. Monk Took Book is a cozy game, after all. Even more, in the options menu, we can turn off all the unpleasantness and just sort books and fulfill orders all night and day with nary a trouble.
To start and end a shift fulfilling orders, we need to ring the monastery bell.
As mentioned, when we fulfill orders, we earn blessings. Blessings are essentially the currency of the game. We can use them to purchase items from the shop, unlock new areas of the library, and upgrade any skills we might need to be more effective librarians. The shop is in the courtyard, just before the library’s main area. We can buy daggers, crossbows, or the holy cross to use against our nightly visitors. We can also buy tools to restore damaged books and more bookshelves. To unlock new areas of the library, we just need to go to any locked door and purchase it with enough blessings. Upgrading perks and skills like strength, jumping, speed, and so on will require us to go to the shrine and choose a saint to pray to. Of course, to be allowed to pray, we also need sufficient blessings.
The World of Monk Took Book
In Monk Took Book, we get to explore a whole island with a hand-crafted monastic library. Even when playing solo, the game world feels alive, if a bit creepy. There are cats around that we can pet. We see some other monks and scribes. We have a working day-and-night cycle. Even when we adjust the gameplay for no enemies and no book damage, the game has a slightly creepy atmosphere during the night, which makes you hurry along any orders you have.
Also, the developers have truly committed to the medieval theme, with the in-game texts and visuals on point.
Some Other Things
Monk Took Book has quite a nice selection of gameplay options. We can play first or third person. We can play solo or with up to four other players. We have a public or private lobby, meaning we can adjust the game so random players can join, friends or those we have invited, and nobody else. We can adjust the difficulty settings to reduce, increase, or disable some or all enemies. We also have arachnophobia mode, which lets us turn off spider appearances in the game. We can even adjust the rate at which new books appear in the morning.
The game also has manual and automatic saving systems with up to four save slots when saving manually. We can adjust the headbobbing if we get sick easily. Besides that, the game has the usual video and audio settings, as well as full key rebinding.
Conclusion
Monk Took Book is a delightful addition to the sorting-and-organizing game genre. It is also a great addition to the co-op genre. It offers unlimited options to truly personalize the game to the players’ wishes, and I, for one, can’t wait to try organizing and defending my monastic library with some friends.
Final Verdict: I Like it a Lot. 
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