Tidying games tier list.

What makes a good shelving / tidying game for me?

• A ton of items get dumped in the middle of the map, and your one and only job is to put them on the right shelves.

• It has ways to unlock skills that upgrade your carrying size, light up the destination of the item you’re holding, attract nearby items of the same type, unlock sprint and jump, lower cooldowns, increase effectiveness etc.

• There are no other mechanics (beyond the occasional puzzle to figure out in which order items go on a shelf). Putting stuff on shelves is the end goal, not shelving to sell those items or anything like that.

My favourite games in the genre, the top of the crop. As perfect as they can get, a true master class. The games that belong on the top shelf themselves.

• Cleaning Up The Puzzle Gallery
  A different take on shelving meets jigsaw puzzling in an art museum.
  I have been having a very cosy, comfortable blast finding the pieces of all these puzzles and bringing them home to their paintings! It’s nice passively picking up some more art knowledge as well as juggling a couple dozens puzzles and listening to classical music. An ADHDer’s dream, truly.

• Librarian: Tidy Up the Arcane Library
  The game that started the hype!
  This is the shelving game. The one that captivated my heart and that of so many others, and set the tone for the entire genre. It genuinely does everything perfectly and is the best of the best! Good power-ups, well-paced progression, funny book titles and references to so many things, colour coding that makes sense and is consistent, and a compelling explanation to WHY you’re doing this to boot. Perfection.

• Sort Them Ducks
  Quack.
  The same concept as all the others: a bunch of rubber ducks have been thrown around in the store and it’s your job to put them back on their correct shelf. The duck designs are gorgeous and a few of them have got real quacking chuckles out of me. What sets this one apart is its gravity. Other games on this list usually have their objects “stuck”, meaning that they won’t drop down if you pick up an item underneath. These ducks bounce away with a vengeance, making it all feel so immersively rubbery!

Games that are great, with a lot of the things I love, that I got hooked on for a good while before putting them down.

• Cellar Keeper
  Throwing around the strongest bottles known in human history.
  The look and feel of this game is very much like Librarian, and that makes it comfortable, recogniseable and cosy in my book. Instantly hooked! Some category colours are bit close together and one of them is just blatantly wrong, but overall the names are well-labelled, and immediately show how many of them there are left to find.

• Shelve the Potions!
  Tidying gamje meets puzzle game!
  Combines the shelving genre with very light puzzle logic (i.e. figure out which way to sort bottles on shelves from your surroundings). Very satisfying, hits my potion bottle fixation. There are a LOT of things to figure out, but there are also adorable cats to help you through it.

• Shelves & Sorcery: Tidy Up The Enchanted Shop
  POV: you are a restocker NPC in Teddy’s Haven.
  It’s no surprise that this game exists - the objects in Teddy’s Haven really lend themselves well to this genre of game. Offers the same magically cosy atmosphere and interesting items, without all the other gameplay. Just restocking the shop, and petting the cat when you run into it! Slower pace of unlocking upgrades than the other games, though still balanced.

  

  • Supermarket Chaos
    The one that understood the assignment.
    The second shelving game after Librarian that scratched the itch that needed to be scratched. Introduced multiplayer and multiple maps and levels, which only got me addicted further. It doesn’t have a specific gimmick, but what sets it apart is its multiple maps

  

• Tidy Up Together
  Great atmosphere and more challenging quantities.
  Tidy Up Together needs a few UI and QoL updates, but overall is a very atmospheric tidying game that’s a little slower than its counterparts. Quantities of items are larger, meaning you’ll have to focus on one particular item a bit more to unlock your upgrades. Nice change of pace.

These are the “needs some more time in the oven” games. They have good elements that make me not dismiss them entirely, but they also lack in too many areas to really hook me.

• Toy Keeper
  Misbranded collectathon shelving game that needs an overhaul.
  Thinking of it as a collector’s storage instead of a shop, it scratched that “collectibles” itch I have in every game. The lack of tutorial, clunky controls, and awkward store layout hold it back, but its modularity and multiplayer potential make it a game to keep an eye on.

• TV Archive: Tidy Up Together
  Atmospheric but clunky.
  I like the concept of a video tape archive (reminds me fondly of my grandfather). I like how this game does the cooldowns for powerups, by recharging them with each video you shelve correctly. But controls are clunky and hard to remap, the game gets laggy and is hard to navigate because the jump isn’t high enough. Needs some adjustments.

I just really did not enjoy these games. They were either frustrating, unpolished, un-userfriendly, or just plain boring.

• Re:Store the Record Store
  Interesting concept, but literally unplayable.
  No AZERTY support or rebind keys options. Options only accessible from main menu, not in-game.Adjusting mouse sensitivity gets it lowered to 0.0 and stuck there, making me literally unable to play the game. This should not be a bug that makes it into a full release.

• Toy Shop: Tidy Up
  Not captivating, motivating or satisfying at all.
  Tons of toys to place, resize, and arrange however you like, but the lack of structure, goals, and progression made it less motivating. More a limited sandbox decorating game than a shelving game, and if it were marketed as such, I never would have played it in the first place.

I would love to try these out, but I don’t have them yet.

Have any other suggestions? Let me know on Discord!