I’m still playing Tiny Bookshop (neoludic games), and I have more to say about it. I left off part one by saying this is the perfect small bites game; I still think it is. I also said that I had several small complaints, and I want to expand on that a bit.
First, though, I am still enjoying the game. I still play several days at a time, and go for longer than I had planned. It’s very much has that ‘just one more day’ feel to it, and I give in to the impulse more often than not.
However, there are some small issues with the game that keep me from thoroughly enjoying my time in Bookstonbury-by-the-Sea. That’s t he name of the fictional coastal time, and it reminds me of Boston for whatever reason. I keep calling it Boston in my head, though Boston is not a coastal town.
I mentioned that during the demo, I would stress over making a bad recmmendation. Then, during the first few hours of the actual game, I was over that stress. Now, though, I am frazzled when I get requests like, “I ilke plays. I like nonfiction. I like to read books in a series.” And it’s clearly not possible to get all three. I am having a devil of a time figuring out which is most important. It’s usually the first one, but sometimes, if I find a book that fits the other two statements, I might be able to slide on the first. Or not. I’m not sure.
That’s my issue with this part of the game. Every time I think I figure out how the recommendations work, the game throws me for a loop. Also, I’ve played long enough to get repeat dialogue, so I think that the way it works is that each person has a set number of statements, and then the game just mixes them at random. Each request is rated one to four (or five) stars for easy to difficult. Actually, I’ve only seen one star and four stars, so maybe it’s a binary choice. Hm. I may have seen a five star difficulty, but it might have been four, too.
Anyway, I’m never quite sure what is going to be acceptable and what isn’.t My firiend in the RKG Discord has mentioned the same thing. It feels like a roll of the dice if a suggestion will work or not. And, of course, there’s RNG involved because you can only have forty books on the shelves for sale. I can choose how many of each genre I want to set out, but I can’t pick the actual books.
That’s too much RNG for me. I would like to be able to make a good rec every time or a decent one, but that’s not always possible. I hate not making any suggestion at all. I try to make one no matter what because sometimes, the game surprises me. I have not been able to figure out if the recmmendations actually matter or not except for certain NPC quests, which leads me to my next quibble with the game.