Yesterday I was scrolling on Facebook when an ad stopped me mid-scroll. It wasn’t selling anything so maybe that’s why I paid attention. Ok – it was a game. That’s why I noticed it. But it was from the HarperCollins UK account. It showed the TikTok viral book, The Pumpkin Spice Café, by Laurie Gilmore. And a cozy game based on the book!
This isn’t a licensed tie in. It’s not a big studio that bought rights to develop a game based on the book. The publisher itself put out a game for Laurie Gilmore’s cozy Dream Harbor romance, and it’s exactly the kind of game you’d expect: match lattes, crush pumpkins, and climb the leaderboard to become Dream Harbor’s top barista. They’re even running a competition alongside it, where top players can win a luxury coffee maker or the chance to name a character in Dream Harbor Book 7. You can play it here.
Why is the Pumpkin Spice Cafe Game Different?
You’ve probably seen games that have been created based on books before. This in itself is not new. But this game is different and I think it’s worth paying attention to.
This is how the old patter used to go:
- book gets huge and gets lots of attention
- game studio licenses it
- many years later, there’s an expensive adaptation to a video game
A good example is The Witcher. You know it was a book first, right? Before it became a best selling game? In the games, the story evolves and takes on it’s own path. The game doesn’t just retell the book.
Another classic example is the book Coraline, which became a movie. Then came the game. But the game belonged to someone else. Not the author. Not the publisher.
This is totally different. Harper Collins created the game for The Pumpkin Spice Cafe. The game is simple, free to play, and social on purpose. It’s not trying to get the most downloads on steam. It’s just a reason for Dream Harbor fans to hang out and have a little friendly competition in between book releases. This is a whole new kind of marketing and I think it is genius.
Cozy Readers Meet Cozy Gamers
Cozy is the perfect genre for game choice to go with this book. Cozy gamers and cozy readers are usually looking for the same vibe – comfort, low stakes, a place we can live for a short time. A book about running a café in a small town is basically a game loop. Serve customers, befriend the town, make the shop prettier. It barely needs adapting.
Look at what’s around it, and the pattern gets clearer:
- Moomin: Midsummer Madness arrives November 12, 2026, a point-and-click adventure from Tove Jansson’s 1954 novel, all gentle puzzles and hand-painted Moominvalley.
- Seasons of Books and Keys comes to Switch and Steam this winter, a fully voiced mystery adventure based on Honobu Yonezawa’s novel — published by Shueisha Games, which is the publisher’s own games label. Another publisher making its own games.
- The Witcher and Coraline are the old guard: great games, but licensed adaptations by outside studios, not the publishers themselves.
The publisher doesn’t stop at games. There’s an official cookbook too — The Official Pumpkin Spice Café Cookbook, with 60 recipes straight from the books, from Pumpkin Spiced Hot Chocolate to Loganberry Pie.
See the shift? Publishers used to wait for a studio to come calling. Now they’re building the games themselves, and cozy books are leading the way because the audience is already there, already scrolling, already wanting one more excuse to stay in these worlds a little longer.
I think this is a trend in the making, and I’m going to keep an eye on it. I put together a Benable list of cozy books that became cozy games.
CLICK HERE to check it out and find more book based cozy games.
In the meantime, tell me: if any book could become a cozy game tomorrow, which one would you pick? I have opinions, and I bet you do too.
Let’s Squad up!
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