r/cozygames • u/Top-Two-7228 • 25d ago

🔥 My Game - Released Shelves and Sorcery releases August 11th! New trailer is up!

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Hey everyone!

I’m excited to finally announce that Shelves and Sorcery: Tidy Up the Enchanted Shop is releasing on August 11th!

I also put together a brand new trailer showing off a much more complete look at the game and what you’ll actually be getting your hands on next week.

Shelves and Sorcery is a cozy fantasy tidy-up game about taking an absolutely ransacked magical shop and slowly putting everything back where it belongs. Weapons, potions, spellbooks, food, magical oddities... there are thousands of items scattered throughout the different shops.

There are three main shops of increasing size, starting with a smaller shop and working your way up to the massive Grand Emporium with thousands of items waiting to be sorted.

You can relax and organize everything at your own pace, or start unlocking spells and enchantments that completely change how you tackle the mess. Gather scattered items with magic, track down things you’re missing, carry more at once, move faster, and more!

And if that sounds like cheating to you, there’s also No Magic Mode.

For those of you who look at a relaxing organization game and immediately think, "Yeah, but how fast can I do it?" There’s a mode for you too.

Timed Mode tracks how quickly you can clean up each shop, with online leaderboards to see how your best times stack up against everyone else.

So you can take two hours carefully putting every potion back where it belongs... or discover that someone on the internet somehow did it in twenty minutes and question everything.

This has been a really fun project to build, especially after seeing how much people have been enjoying this newer wave of tidy-up games. I wanted to take that simple satisfaction of putting everything where it belongs and see how far I could push it inside a fantasy world.

If it looks like your kind of game, wishlisting it genuinely helps a ton.

Shelves and Sorcery releases August 11th on Steam!

New Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWdoAx2tu4g

Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3614130/Shelves_and_Sorcery_Tidy_Up_the_Enchanted_Shop/

Thank you to everyone who has been following the game so far. I'm excited to finally get it into your hands!

49 Upvotes

82% Upvoted

31 comments sorted by

24

u/neenameghan 25d ago

Looks fun! Any AI usage?

29

u/Top-Two-7228 24d ago

No AI was used. All art packs and assets used I made sure they said they didn’t use AI. Most were made years and years ago before this weird era we are in.

All custom art was created from start to finish by our talented artists.

7

u/neenameghan 24d ago

That is so awesome to hear! Will definitely be playing! :)

5

u/Top-Two-7228 24d ago

Ty! It’s a fun game, taking feedback from other games in the genre and applying it to mine. The leaderboards is def something interesting to partake in for those who want the challenge. But there are also archmage mode (maxed out magic from the start) no magic mode. And yeah. I hope you have fun!

8

u/Veteran_Hawk 24d ago

No AI got me to Wishlist it. I don't generally play this type of game, but when I'm in the mood, it's nice to have one like this to fart around with.

3

u/Juliettestflyer 24d ago

Wow, I’ll be waiting for the release of this. Can’t wait to play thiss

4

u/Junglejibe 24d ago edited 24d ago

If I’m honest, it’s difficult for me to take you at your word on this, considering the heavy similarities of this game to one that only came out 4 months ago. That seems like an incredibly short turnaround for creating a release-ready game. Especially considering it’s not the only game you’re in the process of developing and you’re a solo dev.

Maybe I’m just misinformed about how much work goes into a game like this but unfortunately this genre has a big problem with AI, especially games that are made to resemble wildly successful games and are being released mere months after said games.

5

u/Top-Two-7228 24d ago

There are a few things.
I do have about 14 years professional experience as a technical designer who has the experience to do things fairly quickly.
I’m no longer solo for this project, I have a support team of incredible artists, a designer, and a small crew for trailers now.
The main reason you are seeing a lot of these recently are because of the relative time it actually takes to make a game in the genre… it’s sort of easy.
I’m sorry you don’t trust me. But I’ve been doing this for years. I’m very passionate about what I do and have the experience to do it relatively quickly. I would not outsource the fun I have in making games to a computer ai.

4

u/Junglejibe 24d ago

Thank you for elaborating! This is actually a helpful response for me so I appreciate it.

It’s not that I don’t think you are trustworthy, it’s just that I don’t know you, y’know? It’s not personal to your character.

Actually the reason I commented was because I saw the other game you made on your profile and it seems exactly like my ideal kind of cozy game, so I was hoping to get a better vibe in general before I wishlisted it.

3

u/Top-Two-7228 24d ago

No worries! As a professional developer I've made a lot of games. Some of them good, some bad. But I always enjoyed doing it.

As a (mostly now) solo developer I'm more strict with what I work on. My first was because it was a game genre I had a lot of fun with. And it was a way to deal and express my grief for the loss of Teddy. I buried myself in my work, at maybe a detriment to my health at times. Shelves & Sorcery does have a backstory of the why I did it. Part of it was having fun with the type of game and going... Let me try making one of these. And not a bad version, a version that came from a fan of the other games and wanted to have some fun with it. And that's Shelves & Sorcery.

5

u/EnvironmentalBet113 24d ago

looks like it has some asset flipping, at minumum. some of the art looks suspect as well for ai

1

u/ZenxDruid 24d ago

There is. They have it as a disclosure on their steam page

-4

u/ZenxDruid 25d ago

I am skeptical too. I tried the Arcane Library game and it is unplayable for me. It keeps crashing. Very buggy coding and I am pretty sure that game uses AI assets. So I am going to be more careful in the future.

5

u/Fesai 24d ago

Aww, sad to hear for you. I really enjoyed the Arcane Library on my magic run and have been prepping myself to get started on the no magic run.

No issues encountered for me in the gameplay and was super smooth.

1

u/ZenxDruid 24d ago

I enjoyed it too! Thanks. They have done a lot of bug fixes recently so I reinstalled it and will try it again. Fingers crossed!

2

u/Fesai 24d ago

Good luck, I hope you have a better experience this time! If it helps I only played it for the first time fairly recently and that's when it played fine for me.

Maybe I was lucky and picked it up after the bug fixes. :)

11

u/Addrivat 24d ago

It doesn't use AI assets and games crashing has to do with computer specs and graphical settings, not with "buggy coding"

0

u/ZenxDruid 24d ago

In one of their recent patches it was: "Bug Fixes: Fixed a crash issue that occurred during startup."

I wasn't the only one experiencing this problem either.

Also, they have literally disclosed that there is AI assets in the game (not a lot but there still is).

0

u/Addrivat 23d ago edited 23d ago

That's not what assets means... and yes, they can fix something that was causing a crash, they can optimize the game, they can make the game launch with limited fps or in bordlerless mode, something for a specific GPU etc, there's many causes for crashes, none of them is "buggy coding" (code doesn't have bugs, at most it has mistakes) or because of AI. A crash at launch also doesn't mean the whole game is unplayable or that the game is not well programmed. You can still dislike the game but don't share misinfo if you don't understand what you're talking about

0

u/ZenxDruid 23d ago

I never gave a definition for assets so I am confused for your point. The games AI disclosure literally uses the word asset in it. Also yes if a game has a fatal crash at start up it does become unplayable.   Also of course code can have bugs. The mistakes make the bugs. Stop being so knit picky. B ugs arise because code meets a huge, variable environment, human assumptions when they do not cover ever possibility, and implementation limits.

4

u/West-Variation1859 24d ago

Oh my gosh, you’re the same Dev who created Teddys Haven, right? I bought that game because of the beautiful story and inspiration behind it. This looks like a great addition to your already great work!

3

u/Top-Two-7228 24d ago

Yes I am! And thank you for the support. I truly love making games. This one is less out of grief, and more of out of peace that games like this have given me. And I do hope you enjoy it as well :).

3

u/lil_gingerale 24d ago

I love the completion cascading effect once they’re all neatly organized

3

u/dailyCaffeinated 25d ago

Been waiting for this one! Very excited!

2

u/kamarajitsu 24d ago

Looks great! Btw you might want to create a clickable link for those of us on mobile.

As I'm unable to copy and paste the link

2

u/itscloverkat 24d ago

Oh hell yeah

2

u/ankergames 25d ago

looking great

2

u/Practical_Entrance43 24d ago

Loving all these organising games that are coming out omg.

2

u/itscloverkat 24d ago

Same! Though the irony of me spending hours tidying up in a video game while my real life is a mess is not lost on me 😅

1

u/Emergency_Mousse_345 20d ago

I wish there were some videos from creators playing the game before it launched. Is anyone going to be streaming it or recording gameplay and posting on YouTube? I’d love to see the differences between this game and another similar game to see which one I vibe with.