Librarian: Tidy Up the Arcane Library - The Leo's Review

Librarian: Tidy Up the Arcane Library – The Leo’s Review 🧐📚

I don’t remember the last time I played a cozy game before, maybe it was PowerWash Sim 2, so not that long ago 🤔 Still, Librarian: Tidy Up the Arcane Library, developed by the indie studio ArtRising, feels like a cozy game in the purest sense, and let me explain: from the magical setting and relaxing tone, to the art style, music, and polished yet simple gameplay, this thing is the definition of coziness.

Story – The Arcane Library

A dumb fairy showed up one day at the arcane library of Celesthall University and left the whole place in ruins. You’re the librarian, and your job is to shelve every book back where it belongs. Until then, the doors stay sealed, courtesy of the principal with the most generic wizard name possible (yeah, we’re talking about Merlin).

And we’re talking about more than 3,072 different books to sort through, with each saga having its own art style and identity. Yeah, it already sounds like a lot on paper, but once you actually get into the game, it somehow feels like there are even more than that.

(Relaxing) Gameplay

We’re looking at a relaxing first-person game with smooth movement and minimal but satisfying gameplay. By looking at a book, you can see its name, which gives you clues about the genre it belongs to. By pressing the interaction key, you pick it up (up to 10 books in total), and by interacting with the library shelves, you place books back where they’re supposed to go. To know where each book should go, you must check the two maps near the stairs (one per floor).

During your long journey of putting books back in their place, you’ll level up different abilities that make the task easier over time (so no, you won’t be spending an actual eternity just organizing the damn library 😅).

(Magical) Art-Style

The art style is actually pretty detailed, and everything looks nicely hand-crafted, with each book featuring its own unique design. There’s also some cute background music, mixed with bits of magical ASMR (yes) that help sell the fantasy mood. We’re obviously talking about a one-level game, but it still feels complete, polished, and aesthetic.

Technical Aspects

I can’t really say much about how hardware intensive it can be, since my current setup is particularly powerful, but I can point out a couple of things:

• Game runs on the Unreal Engine, which usually feels like an overkill for smaller games..
• Or is it? Surprisingly, the game seems to run pretty well, probably thanks to the small scale of the level and a few smart tricks to simplify physics so the engine doesn’t have to calculate more crap than needed (you won’t find any lag while moving around that sea of books, don’t worry).
• It’s also well known that UE can deliver some really good visuals. I’m pretty confident the devs knew exactly how to make the game look this nice while still keeping performance more than decent 🙌

Final words

I really loved the game, it also gave me the perfect excuse to write a review on my site, as a simple cozy experience, it works flawlessly. But I think we can still break things down a bit more, right?

The pros

The cons

Honestly, the biggest issue with the game is that it makes you wish this same concept existed in other scenarios with the same, or even better, level of immersion. You can read that as a limitation, sure, but also as proof of how well this small unique experience works. Apart from that, I can’t really say much more, the game is almost perfect for me within the scope it’s aiming for.

As for localization, they mentioned other languages will come in future updates, I would love to lend them a hand with LATAM Spanish.

Get the game on Steam!

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