A Place For All My Books

A game about shelving, which is either the dullest premise imaginable or precisely your sort of thing.

Smirk & Dagger, a publisher best known for games in which people betray one another, have made a cosy one about arranging a personal library. You collect books and fit them onto shelves, and the whole thing runs on the small private satisfaction of a row that finally sits right. It picked up an Origins Award nomination in 2026, which suggests the industry was as surprised as anyone that it works.

The engine is tile placement, and the cruelty — there is always some — is that books arrive in the order they arrive, not the order you would like. A shelf you have been building toward for three turns can be undone by a single volume that is the wrong size and refuses to go anywhere else. One to four players, around forty-five minutes, and it plays perfectly well on your own.

Perfect for: Anyone who has reorganised their own bookshelves by colour, then by author, then back again, and enjoyed every minute of it.

1–4 players | Around 45 minutes | Age 10+