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Zine Month (or Zinetopia, or what name your chosen platform uses) is always a great time for indie games. As we reach the end, we wanted to spotlight a few favorites. Like The Wanderer’s Bookshop, a solo title currently on BackerKit. I had a chat with designer Lola Johnson to learn more about the game.
What got you started thinking about wanting to use this theme for a game?
I read a book! I picked up The Lost Bookshop by Evie woods and like every good book it changed me a little. It percolated in my head for a while and sparked a yarn collection inspired by different speculative and post apocalyptic fiction, and as I read more books and looked at the world, eventually a game of the same name. (https://johnson-ofair.itch.io/the-lost-bookshop) that I released back in September 2024. The Wanderer’s Bookshop has grown around it.
How did you turn the act of curation into this, how did you “gameify” it?
The act of curation in itself is like a game, it has a focus – what you are collecting, and the “hunt”- the process of finding and acquiring the items for your collection, which in itself is a thrill. The Lost and Wanderer’s Bookshops borrow this idea and direct your focus through the use of tarot cards. Building in the randomness and flow of games, with tarot cards and dice is just another layer. The way that The Wanderer’s Bookshop evolves The Lost Bookshop is to explicitly help you to engage with the collection you are building by encouraging you to read the books, pick up and explore the items, read, write and draw to fully interact with the little worlds that you pick up.
What is a “slow life” game and what’s your goal in creating one?
A slow life game is about being intentional, enjoying them at your own pace and specifically not needing to rush to complete it. Something that you can weave around your everyday life that gives you some space to breathe and grow. It explores the human experience and connections in a low stress way. I created the wanderer’s bookshop to encourage taking that pause and using some of your time to play a little in escapism, but also to grow your outlook. To get back in touch with evaluating and distilling the media we read to better understand it and the mechanisms of the world we live in. Using reading and creating which in its nature and humaness is a slow thing, as an act of resistance in a world that wants us to stop learning, stop taking time with ourselves, stop being intentional or stop connecting with other people that don’t look like us.
Many people do keep their journal games, or campaign journals, as a keepsake, but The Wanderer’s Bookshop makes that an explicit goal. How did you work that into your design?
The way The Wanderer’s Bookshop is built most of the tasks ask you to both play and create in a way that not only incorporates other media and ephemeral things but also creates a reference for your collection. Something that you might look back at to navigate your collection later on, but also to recommend something to other people. It creates an opportunity to see if you agree with your previous assessment of the books after you’ve picked them up again in the future, I think you learn a little something new every time you read a book.
When it comes to tasks that suggest you draw things or use ephemera your journal becomes a collection in itself, that will remind you of where you acquired something and its history, or your thought process in creation.
Tell me a little about the parallel play aspect and how that differs from regular solo journaling titles? How does that look in practice?
Parallel play in this game is about both encouraging connections through discussion and engaging with the places in our communities that play a role in supporting it, like libraries and bookshops, and weaving separate stories where threads occasionally interwine with others. It’s specifically Parallel Play because you still engage with The Wanderer’s Bookshop solo for the most part, but with an added layer of being able to influence and enhance each other’s solo play by adding new facets to the mystery they are solving, having a hand in the friend/s you are playing alongside discovering new secrets you’ve created for them. Exchanging books and stories about people and places that they can discover themselves and use in their play. Though of course you will likely have discussions about books and items, the idea is to essentially give each other little gifts to explore and experience, whether you do your tasks separately or sitting in the same room together. So in essence you are playing together, but not telling the same story, intersecting stories but different.
You’ve done a few games that play with mixed medium or “alternative” methods of playing a TTRPG. What draws you to experimenting with the form like this?
At my heart I am someone that creates in so many different mediums. Outside of TTRPGs I run a business dyeing yarn and designing knitting patterns. I’ve recently taken up stained glass and have in the past played with silver jewellry making, ceramics, woodwork and more. I dabble in digital art and have been in the last few years getting back into painting. I have always believed that there are so many ways to play, because all of them are in some way an expression of intention and emotion. Also because what you make or play with doesn’t really matter except to you and how it lets you experience the game. So for example Letters to Europa doesn’t actually require you to write letters, just to create something with thought and intention and then if that will serve you better, let it go.
You can back The Wanderer’s Bookshop on BackerKit now!
Images via Lola Johnson
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