Shadowdropped as part of the most recent Indie World presentation, Tiny Bookshop is a quaint and simple take on the shop simulator genre. It doesn't take too long to figure out how to play, but it's difficult not to feel like the cover of the book might be more interesting than the contents.

The premise is that you operate a travelling bookshop in the form of a trailer attached to a small car. Each day you travel to a different location to hock your wares, but before that you need to stock your shelves with color-coded genres, like fantasy and travel, to entice the would-be patrons in that setting. Along the way you encounter specific characters who will make conversation with you, providing narrative tidbits about themselves and sometimes offering mini objectives to complete.

Depth comes in the form of items that you can use to adorn the bookshop or decorate the exterior, some of which need to be activated to have an effect. What's frustrating is that many of these items offer both an advantage, like increasing the likelihood of selling a particular genre, but also a downside, like raising your day-to-day operating cost or reducing interest in other book genres. The single-digit percentages associated with these items make their usage even more inscrutable. The simplicity of the gameplay is undermined by these item mechanics.

It's enjoyable for a little while to see the numbers go up and down as your profits soar and your inventory dwindles, but there's so little variety in the main loop that I didn’t feel compelled to discover all of the areas and associated characters. As a background game for the cozy-inclined, it offers a fairly passable experience, but Tiny Bookshop is far from a page-turner.