Has anyone purchased this game? I would love to hear some opinions on it! For only $2 I'm incredibly tempted! Let me know what y'all think.

I'd love to hear some impressions too.

I would like a see a review before I buy this but than again its only 2 dollars, I am sure I have that much in my sofa cushions.

It's pretty cool. You can buy new shelves and benches, etc, to make your store nice. You can sell books, mags and CDs. You can advertise your store and have discounts on the books you sell. You have to restock when supplies get low and it takes a day or so for the new shipment to arrive. You can have famous authors sign books at your store. You have to pay for rent and stuff.

Cute but of course nowhere near the depth of a PC simulation game. That's to be expected of course, given the handheld nature. It's good bite-sized fun.

Plus it's only 2 bones. You can afford it.

Does it seem... I don't know? Repetitive at all? I think one thing I really enjoy in Sim games is replayability... they always have some slight randomness to them. Is there any hint of that here?

it's kinda random whether people walk into your shop and buy anything or not, but then i only had it going through Day 3. I really love the art style, but the fact that it's stylus-only is a bit of a turn-off (this could easily have button controls) and the menus take a bit of trial and error to figure out even if you've been through the manual a few times already.

Also, it auto-saves your game, so don't worry about not seeing a 'save' option anyplace. just exit out to the main menu and then when you want to continue, tap 'continue'. :3

I tried it and its really good, but im a noob at it, theres things I already know but it will all change when I play it some more.

Well I figure what the heck I have $2.09 on my eShop account and I probably wont find another game that piques my interest like this for 2 dollars and any other game I will probably have to add more money on to get.

The landlord may increase your rent at anytime and you may be able to attend 'panels' to increase publicity of your store if you pay them a large sum. You may also get different sums of money if you make enough profit and such. All this is random.

Hehe I downloaded it before going to bed and played it for about 8 in-game days.
It is quite fun, in an adicting way. Though most of the time is just like watching at a fish tank, waiting for something to happen.
I guess it is because my shop is still quite new.

In some days, the writer of "100 faces" will come to the shop, let's see if people visits then!
Edit: having a writer signing books is pretty awesome. Kachingnkachingkachingkaching.

Also, is it just me, or something happened to the tittle screen text? It looks like someone had an accident with photoshop.
And.... I'm not sure if like the idea of having the game end in 99 days.

Note: it seems My ipad sccidently reported the comment above me, sorry!

Played this one for a bit; it's not the deepest of sims of course, but it's still pretty fun imo. I'm liking everything except the soundtrack; that out-of-tune flute that comes in every couple of minutes is painful to listen to! It's sad because playing with the sound on is more satisfying; you get to hear the cash register over and over ^^

Well, it managed to get me away from petit computer for a whole day, so I guess this game is pretty addictive.

I am surprised no one else realised this is a cheap an inferior rip off of kairosoft games?

It's hard to enjoy it in that context. Much like how I can't enjoy Gameloft games. I'm not a fan of plagiarism

That was mentioned several times in the news post.

Though, other than the graphics, I don't think this is that much like Game Dev Story (I haven't played other Kairosoft games yet [I just got a new itunes card to buy more]).

I wouldn't have gone as far to call it a ripoff, but the similarities are definitely clear. After an hour of this game I wanted to go back and blast through Game dev story again. But hey, this game still plays solidly and my dislikes about it are all pretty superficial

EDIT: actually @Waltz I am a little annoyed now, having realised that in Aus this game is 3 dollars and a Kairosoft one is 2-5.

I was going to wait for a review before downloading, but ended up getting it anyway.

Impressions:

• Gameplay time for me was about 6 hours. It might be puzzling at first if you're new to the genre, it has a text introduction but after reading that it plops you down inside your bookstore with no tooltips or basic tutorial. You just bring up the menu and see what's available.
• Gameplay is basically arranging the shop, ordering books/magazines/CDs/postcards, figuring out what sells and re-stocking/adding more capacity. As you earn fame, you can unlock more products by the current publishers and new publishers (you might need to raise some capital first to pay for the contracts) and completing the 4 milestones. You can opt to promote your store via ads or author book-signing events.
• There aren't a lot of options to customise the look of the bookstore, the furniture is limited, but what there is matches at least. I like the graphics.
• The process to re-arrange the furniture I find a bit flaky, some squares take a few tries to select, sometimes holding and dragging moves the furniture, sometimes it doesn't want to move.
• I like the auto-restock feature in addition to manual restock, which automatically pulls in more stock when the count is below a certain amount. As someone already mentioned, the book signing events are cool, just to watch people line up at the door and subsequently clean out your book inventory.
• Given the little flaws, it's still simple fun, e.g. choosing the titles to stock (although it's probably easier to stock everything as you unlock them, to do the milestones. The customers also like variety, it seems to increase the review score slightly.)
• I completed the last milestone on day 97 of 99. The game is easy, though for me the last milestone was hardest because of rising expenses like rent eating into income. I managed to scrape through by cutting back on expenses 10 days before and doing a book signing event to boost sales.
• Not much to do after finishing the goals. After the 99th day you just keep repeating that day, though it lets you continue earning money. Or you can restart, which overwrites the previous game.

Conclusion: for the game's asking price, if you like the genre it's a pleasant game for a few hours' diversion.

As for similarity to Kairosoft, it doesn't have different events that impact your management as in an average Kairosoft sim (just the occasional fair asking you if you wanted to pay for a booth there). In Game Dev Story you can affect the abilities of the team to a certain extent, here you just hire the staff and they don't have names, etc. I wouldn't call it a "ripoff", in which case Kairosoft sim games were probably a "ripoff" of something else. The keyword is simpler, I guess. Then again, it depends on what you expect of the game. If you want a Kairosoft clone then it would be a disappointment. On the other hand, the simplicity might be for the better, if people want to get their feet wet with this type of game.

Imho.

(Edited to add a short description of the gameplay.)

Well I downloaded it last night and I have to say the lack of a tutorial makes this game kinda confusing, but it an addicting kinda way. Right now I am just trying to figure out what to do.

As for it being a ripoff of a Kairosoft game as some of you mentioned. That it may be but it doesnt bother me as I dont use my phone to play games on at all, so its nice that we have this for the 3DS.

I really like this game! I think it's a pretty decent little Sim game, with enough options to keep it interesting. It is a bit minimal, but it is a cheap and tiny DSiWare game, so you can't really expect anything too epic from it. Overall though it has enough options to keep me coming back for more. If you really want to have some fun, try having a book signing event EVERY week, which is what I have been doing in my game. It makes stock management a lot of fun but if pulled off boosts your sales massively every week.

I think the people going on and on about Kairosoft similarities is a little bit silly. It's a Simulation game. This is a genre that has been around for years and years. Just because Kairosoft made an excellent Sim game doesn't automatically mean that anything similar must be ripping them off. While this does bear similarities to Gamedev Story, both Bookstore Dream and Gamedev Story are very similar to a lot of OTHER Sim games as well. Kairosoft made a great game but it isn't 100% original, it still follows a genre formula that has existed for many years.

Overall, Bookstore Dream has very addictive gameplay. Last night I played until about day 50, and will likely reach 99 soon, but to be honest I will probably start all over again right after! I definitely see this game being one you can easily come back to, though if all you care about is beating it once, at such a low price I still think it's worth it!

At the Asking price of 1.99 this game is just perfect. I downloaded it a few days ago and have been playing it non-stop. I think the interface works well it has some nice tunes which change up at different times of the day. It's just plain fun. I love the Kairosoft look and the game has a nice kairosoft feel to it. Bookstore Dreams is a mini sim. It doesnt have near the Depth of the kairosoft games however it has enough. I hope we see more games like this one in the Eshop and would also hope Kairosoft might someday bring games like Dev Story, Dungeon Village and their racing sim to the Eshop. This is absolutely one of the best pieces of software available in the Eshop. I was shocked at first at the Price of the game on thursday and thought oh boy it must be a dud. Highly recommended

I checked Circle's website and there's a 'Publisher Story' (or something) in the works and it says SIM so I assume it means simulation. I will also assume that it's similar to Bookstore Dream.