ShelfLife
Nobody here stays buried

The household

Alive & opinionated
Tap a resident. The neighbours are listening.
Life beyond the planks

Household stories

Little adventures. Questionable decisions. Things worth keeping.

Visitors & conspiraciesSomeone always wants something.
Workshop & keepsakesMake something of your adventures.
From your residents, with feeling

The note board

Complaints, confessions and the occasional compliment. Mostly complaints.

Everything else

Play & household

Sound & motion

Your save

Saved on this device. A backup keeps your household safe.

PrivacyDelete account

Little adventures, long memories

A little adventure

Open at all unreasonable hours

The Playroom

A resident makes an excellent accomplice. Qualifications are not checked.

Every run pays souls, up to a daily purse. Beat your best for a bonus.

Make a pet

Grow one, or draw one. Name it. It takes over from there.

Change one thing
Colour
Fine details & custom colours

Keep the parts you love. Adjust the face and colours without rerolling anything.

Leave it blank and one gets picked for you. You may regret that.

Decorate

The room, the shelf, and the things that live on it.
Live shelf previewChanges save as you choose.

Room

Wall

Shelf

Accent

More rooms, woods, walls and accents are sold by the Collector’s Exchange. Almanac room sets are prizes on each chapter’s track.

Things for the shelf

Tap to place furniture near a resident. On the shelf, tap it again to invite them over: tubs are for getting into, lamps are for arguing over. Drag to rearrange, or use the position control on its card.

The narrator

Whoever reads the notes out loud. They did not audition.
Voice

Help and field guide

Nobody here came with instructions. These are our best guesses.

The first-day tour

Everything else, in order of mischief

  1. Deal with the emergencies.

    Something goes wrong on the shelf every twelve minutes, and up to three disasters pile up while you are away. Each one is a choice. Every choice pays souls; not every choice goes well. Spend souls on coffins, collect cursed curios, and watch the neighbours’ opinion of your house get worse. Turn over one omen a night and finish three unholy chores a day for extra.

  2. Make someone peculiar.

    Grow a creature and change its parts, or draw one and give it moving stamps. Name it. Move it in.

  3. Keep it fed, fussed, and clean.

    Tap a creature to care for it. Helping when a need is below 72 earns care credit; every three credits adds a bond point. Rounds help everyone a little, but build no bond. Games and conspiracies add at most three a day per resident; care is the steady route.

  4. Read the room.

    Check the shelf for notes, arguments, and small developments. A resident files at most one grievance an hour, so reading often costs nothing. A strong bond unlocks drawing tools and furniture in Decorate. Tap a byline on the board to keep one resident’s notes.

  5. Reconsider the neighbours.

    Drag to rearrange. On a phone, hold first. Or open a resident’s card and choose a shelf position. Furniture affects the creatures beside it; some neighbours feud. Watch them: they nudge, whisper, glare and steal from whoever is next to them.

  6. Encourage a terrible idea.

    Small conspiracies offer choices with visible costs and rewards. Help, redirect, or leave the residents to their own devices. They act after three minutes; another plan follows five minutes later. Nobody dies. Sometimes the raisin does.

  7. Make a little history.

    Stories holds a six-beat weekly case and temporary visitors. Follow the evidence through care, placement and choices. A case waits until you finish it. Visitors stay six hours and leave museum curiosities when welcomed.

  8. Keep your promises.

    Accept a resident’s request in its card, then fulfil it within twelve hours of accepting for a bond point. Refusing costs one and adds a grievance. Friends form after fifteen minutes beside each other with a bond on both sides. Rivals can reach a truce once both are at level three.

  9. Find your kind of mischief.

    Open Play on a phone or Playroom on a larger screen. Pick a resident, then a game: judge its petty lawsuits on Shelf Court, catch snacks in Feeding Frenzy, stack coffins, hold a Séance, or push the dead back down in Grave Whack. Every run pays souls, beating your best pays extra, and Expeditions bring home parts for household projects.

Needs change while you are away, up to eighteen hours at a time, and only half as fast at night. They cannot die. You can take a break. Your shelf saves on this device; More → Back up keeps a copy you can restore elsewhere.

Keyboard: Tab through controls, Enter or Space to activate, Escape to close a sheet. The game respects your device’s reduced-motion preference, and More has a Calm mode.

Take everyone with you

Email or share your shelf

Take your residents, drawings, game progress and memories to another device. Send a copy to yourself, then restore it there.

Choose Mail, another device, or Files if offered. The backup may be a .json or .txt file; Restore accepts both.

Or email a downloaded copy

Download the file first. Then address an email to yourself, attach the file from Downloads or Files, and send it.

The email draft includes restore instructions. You must attach the backup yourself. You can also use your usual email website.

On the other device

  1. Save the email attachment or shared file.
  2. Open Shelf Life and choose More → Restore.
  3. Select the file and check the preview before replacing the shelf.

Back up any shelf already on the other device first. This is a snapshot, not automatic sync: send a fresh backup from the device you last played on whenever you switch.

Replace this shelf?

Keep a backup of your current residents if you might want them back.

Entirely optional

Cloud save

The game saves automatically in this browser. Cloud save adds an online copy; an email account lets you use it on other devices and join Friends.

Turn on cloud save to copy this shelf, then add your email below to keep a way back in.

Nothing leaves this device until you turn it on. No account is needed to play, now or later.

Stored: this shelf (the same data as a backup file), your email if you add one, and when it was last saved. Nothing else.

A postcard

Wish you were here. They do not.
A postcard of your shelf: the residents on their planks, a note, and a caption
Developing…

Your small world

Long memories, short legs

Memory museum