Sticky Business × Unpacking × Capybara Spa, but you're a taxidermist.
Genre: Cozy simulation / crafting / shop management
Tone: Whimsical, warm, slightly macabre, autumnal
Perspective: 2D or cozy isometric
Audience: Players who enjoy relaxing crafting, collecting, decorating, and shop-management games
The Concept
You run a tiny taxidermy and natural-history shop in a quiet woodland town.
Customers bring you specimens and commissions, and you carefully turn them into beautiful displays. You can customize how everything looks, arrange your shop, collect unusual specimens, and slowly turn your little workshop into a charming natural-history museum.
The important part: this isn't a horror game.
Think cozy cottagecore, rainy afternoons, warm lamps, wooden shelves, dried flowers, handwritten labels, and an extremely satisfying amount of organizing.
The Core Gameplay Loop
Receive → Prepare → Create → Customize → Display → Sell → Expand
A typical day might look like:
- Receive a commission from a customer.
- Learn the story behind their specimen.
- Clean and prepare it.
- Choose its pose and presentation.
- Customize the eyes, base, flowers, plaque, or surrounding display.
- Finish the piece and package it for the customer.
- Earn money and reputation.
- Buy new equipment, specimens, furniture, and decorations.
- Rearrange your shop until everything is just right.
The Satisfying Part
The game should lean heavily into the tactile, methodical feeling of crafting.
Players could:
- Carefully clean and prepare specimens.
- Select different poses.
- Choose glass eyes and other details.
- Arrange feathers/fur.
- Build custom bases.
- Add flowers, mushrooms, leaves, rocks, or little props.
- Write labels for finished pieces.
- Put completed specimens into display cases.
- Photograph finished pieces for a collection book.
Essentially: the same satisfying "everything has its place" feeling as Unpacking.
Collection & Discovery
As the shop grows, you gain access to increasingly unusual specimens:
- Small mammals
- Birds
- Fish
- Reptiles
- Insects
- Skeletons
- Antlers
- Feathers
- Botanical specimens
- Strange natural-history finds
Rare specimens could be discovered through exploring the surrounding area, trading with collectors, completing special commissions, or building relationships with local characters.
Your Shop
The shop itself is a huge part of the game.
Players can customize:
- Shelving
- Display cabinets
- Workbenches
- Wallpaper
- Flooring
- Lamps
- Plants
- Dried flowers
- Signs
- Labels
- Paintings
- Rugs
- Little curiosities
Eventually, you could expand from a tiny workshop into a full natural-history museum.
The endgame isn't necessarily "become the richest taxidermist."
It's:
Build the weird little museum you've always wanted.
Customer Stories
Customers aren't just sources of money.
They bring stories.
Someone wants a beloved pet preserved.
A birdwatcher wants a particularly beautiful specimen displayed.
A hunter brings in an unusual find.
A child wants to donate a collection of butterflies to the museum.
An eccentric collector asks you to create something extremely specific.
Over time, you get to know the people in the town and learn why the things you're making matter to them.
This gives the game the emotional storytelling of Unpacking without requiring combat, danger, or high stakes.
The Vibe
Imagine:
Rain tapping against the windows.
A wood stove crackling.
Soft instrumental music.
A little bell above the shop door.
Your workbench covered in feathers, thread, tools, and tiny glass eyes.
A fox specimen sitting on the table while you decide whether it should be posed sitting or curled up.
Then you finish it, put it in the display case, turn on the little lamp beside it...
…and spend 20 minutes rearranging your entire shop because one cabinet is slightly out of place.
That's the game.
Why I Think It Could Work
The premise is niche, but the gameplay appeal isn't.
There is already a strong audience for games built around:
- Decorating
- Organizing
- Collecting
- Crafting
- Running tiny businesses
- Completing commissions
- Customizing objects
- Cozy character stories
- Curating collections
Taxidermy provides a distinctive theme for those mechanics.
Instead of making another generic cozy café, bakery, farm, or flower shop, this would have an immediately recognizable identity:
"That cozy game where you run a taxidermy shop."
And that's exactly the kind of premise that can make an indie game memorable.
Possible Titles
The Little Oddities Shop
My favorite if the game eventually expands beyond taxidermy.
Moss & Marrow
More atmospheric and slightly gothic.
The Curious Cabinet
Leans into the natural-history/museum aspect.
Softly Departed
Cute but darker.
The Cozy Taxidermist
Extremely direct — and honestly kind of hilarious.
Little Remains
More melancholic/beautiful.
Fur & Feather
Very approachable and cozy.
The Elevator Pitch
A cozy shop-management game about running a tiny taxidermy and natural-history shop. Prepare specimens, fulfill commissions, collect unusual curiosities, decorate your workshop, and eventually build your own charming little museum. Think Sticky Business meets Unpacking, with a whimsical natural-history aesthetic instead of horror.
The Question
Would you play this?
I'm especially interested in whether the appeal of this concept is strong enough that you'd want to spend hours doing the actual preparation/customization/arranging, rather than simply liking the aesthetic.
I like both! I'm by no means a game dev or have ever contributed to any games but I would LOVE a game like this!! Feel free to ask questions or use this idea if you're interested in making this game, I will personally give you a kiss if you decide this idea is worthy of your time and you actually want to develop a game like this!