Burned Out From Game Development, I Made Tiny Tape Store

I Needed a Break, So I Made Tiny Tape Store

Slakkedis Studio founder Morras started Tiny Tape Store because he needed a break. What began as a small side project became a quiet love letter to VHS rental stores, pixel art, and learning when a game should simply leave the player alone.

This is part of Fix Stories, our first-person series where developers share the real stories and lessons behind making games.

In this story, Morras — Game Developer & Founder of Slakkedis Studio — explains how burnout, childhood trips to the video store, and a desire to make something less demanding became Tiny Tape Store.

Tiny Tape Store Release Trailer

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I needed a break.

I’ve always loved making games, probably more than I enjoy playing them, and I’d been busy making them for the past few years. Burnout sucks, and I’d just spent a full year working part-time on a multiplayer platformer. When the summer holidays came around, I realized I needed to step away for a bit.

So naturally, I decided to make another game.

My idea was simple. One of my fondest childhood memories is going to the video store with my family and renting a few movies for the weekend. We’d wander around the shelves, argue over what to watch, and eventually leave with a handful of VHS tapes.

In 2026, that’s not really a thing anymore. And I realized my own kids probably aren’t going to experience that feeling either.

So I thought: why not turn that warm, cozy feeling into a game?

I’d been playing games like Rusty’s Retirement and Ropuka’s Idle Island, and I loved how they could just sit there alongside whatever else you were doing. I also loved games like Retro Rewind and Rewind 99 for capturing the feeling of running a video rental business.

But I wanted something simpler.

I didn’t want to make another game that demanded my attention. I wanted something that could sit quietly on my desktop, something I could glance at while working, occasionally interact with, and just enjoy having around.

That became the core idea behind Tiny Tape Store.

It’s a retro VHS video store that lives on your desktop. Customers wander in, rent tapes, and go about their business while you slowly build up and decorate your tiny store. There are things to do, but nothing that feels urgent. The game doesn’t really care if you look away for a while.

That was surprisingly difficult to design.

I’m used to making games that constantly ask the player to do something. Make a decision. Press a button. Move somewhere. Optimize something. But Tiny Tape Store needed to do almost the opposite. I had to learn when to leave things alone.

The same philosophy carried over into the art.

I knew immediately that I wanted pixel art. The combination of a tiny video store, VHS tapes, and 1990s nostalgia felt like it belonged in that style. The problem was that I didn’t really know how to make pixel art.

So I learned Aseprite.

What started as a necessity quickly became one of my favourite parts of development. There was something really satisfying about building the store one tiny pixel at a time. Suddenly I wasn’t just making a game about a video store; I was building a little place that I actually wanted to spend time in.

And I think that’s what Tiny Tape Store ultimately became for me.

It started as a way to take a break from a much bigger project. Somewhere along the way, it became a little love letter to something that doesn’t really exist anymore.

Fast forward to launch week, and I’m incredibly happy that I stuck with it. I’ve poured my heart into this little idler, and now it’s sitting on other people’s desktops.

I started making Tiny Tape Store because I needed a break.

I think I accidentally made the kind of game I needed to “take one”.

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Tiny Tape Store grew from burnout into something much more personal: a small piece of 1990s video-store nostalgia designed to share the desktop rather than take it over. You can read more first-person development stories in Ominomicon: How I Shipped by Giving Away the Code and Instant Estresso: Music, Coffee, and Solo Mobile Game Development. Developers and creators with their own first-person story can also submit to Fix Stories.

Tiny Tape Store

Release: August 18, 2026

Genre: Casual, Indie

Developer / Publisher: Slakkedis Studio

Platforms: Windows PC — Steam

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