I've been playing a lot of Librarian: Tidy Up the Arcane Library! on my laptop on a nearly daily basis. I'm currently at 18.5 hours, which isn't a whole lot, but considering you can speedrun the game in under three hours, it does make my time spent on just over half of the game feel a little bloated. If you're not familiar with the game, I have a First Impressions article shortly after I first started, and I've only gotten deeper into the game. What Librarian (shortened for my own sake)is, is an organization sim, somewhat of a sub-genre of the cleaning sim games like Powerwash Simulator and Lawn Mowing Simulator, where you complete busy tasks that just need to get done. I would categorize it with games like Wilmot's Warehouse and Unpacking, but more focused on its niche. In Librarian, you pick up books off the ground and put them back on the correct shelf. That's the gist, but the gameplay loop is pretty much the same. Pick up one to 10 books and put them back. Repeat. I mentioned it before in previous articles how much pleasure I get out of organizing things in the real world, like two of our bookcases and our two movie bookcases (moviecase?).
Knowing that I am definitely going to finish Librarian at least twice, the first run without using any magic to help organize and put away books, and a second run where I lean heavily on the magic in hopes that it will feel like a halfway different game, I have been keeping an eye open for similar games. While I have found other similarly styled games, mostly releasing in the next week or two, that could be mechanic clones with a different asset pack, most of the games I've seen don't have the same appeal as Librarian.
First, there's Supermarket Chaos (June, 2026). You're in a supermarket where all of the items have been knocked off the shelf, and you have to put them back. Like Librarian, there is a skill tree that you can build out to make organizing and putting items back easier and faster. My disinterest in this game is that it's a grocery store in the real world. And I find putting specifically books back where they belong infinitely more interesting than 10 packs of raw chicken breasts.
Then there's Cellar Keeper (August, 2026), probably the closest visually and mechanically to Librarian, where you are putting away 2,448 bottles of wine back in their correct location by type of wine. Shiraz, Pinot Gris, Cabernet, Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Noir, etc. Along with the type of wine, there's also the specific vineyard label, and I'm not sure if the game would get as specific as the vintage too. While moderately interesting, apart from the labels, all of the bottles look the same. There doesn't seem to be a distinction between red wine bottles, white wine bottles, Champagne (or bubbly for those that don't use Champagne grapes), or the occasionally oddly shaped wine bottle for port, or maybe a limited vintage Viognier.
In a similar vein, there's Shelve the Potions (August, 2026), where you have to sort 2,000+ potions by color and shape of the bottle. I'm sure there are other criteria, as each potion has its own type of label with a number or a symbol.
Keeping with the fantasy theme, there's the aptly named Shelves and Sorcery: Tidy Up the Enchanted Shop (August, 2026), where you are tasked with putting back not just potions and books, but grocery items, spell components, weapons, armor, and other questing equipment.
And then there's Cleaning Up the Puzzle Gallery (August, 2026), where you're tasked with putting back over 2,000 pieces in the correct puzzle that line the walls and panels of the gallery.
And if oversized puzzle pieces of public domain works of art are too big and uniform for you, there's Never Sort by Color (November, 2026), where you have to put away and sort through a Japanese bedroom that looks like a LEGO YouTuber's filming room exploded.
Lastly, but not actually because I'm not about to list ALL of the organizing sims that are being released in the next six months that all have used some level of AI in the development of their games, is TV Archive: Tidy Up Together (August, 2026), which I am probably the most interested in. Except I'm significantly less interested in the multiplayer aspect of it. I don't think I'd be able to organize sessions to play this with other people because I don't have a consistent "Time to play games!" schedule. What I like about TV Archive is one of the reasons why I really enjoy Librarian. I like organizing things on a shelf like books and movies, two things I have in my house. And I did work in a video store with Dellanos 26 g-damn years ago, so there's that too. I'm also interested to find out what the movies are titled, how many are just straight-up parodies of existing titles, how many are wholly original, and if they have a top shelf against the back wall that the little customers can't reach and likely can't make out entirely what all those stickers are supposed to be covering.
By the looks of things, I don't think this is going to be a genre that I'm going to be swimming in for the next month. Maybe there'll be a similar game that crops up that interests me, but it can't just be another clone or whatever game Librarian: Tidy Up the Arcane Library! is itself derivative of. Plus, the developers, ArtRising, have said that they're planning on future updates, and if that means a different library with different books, then I'll probably have to stick with this one game. But only as long as the quality of the humor stays true to what I've been playing so far. It's got to be special, to me at least.
~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
But It's All Routine
No comments:
Post a Comment