For all “cozy” is in the public eye, for all “cozy” is a genre of game, it does require some element behind the coziness. What Tiny Bookshop gives us instead is a glorified screensaver and some minimal adventure game elements, a strangely transitory experience much like customers wandering in and out of a bookshop, never really building the lasting connections with players that a cozy game should. It’s a game that’s about coziness more than a game that’s actually cozy, and in the end, that’s the thing that undoes it.