ReStory: Chill Electronics Repairs is a cozy game for retro gaming nerds

Who knew digging screws out of retro gaming hardware could be so fulfilling?

I’ve always found the “cozy game” thing kind of repugnant, to be honest. Something about making having a job look all cute and video gamey in our current world of income inequality and wage gaps doesn’t sit right with me. But I do like retro gaming devices, so while digging through all the roguelikes, deckbuilders, goofy AI disclosures, and roguelike deckbuilders with goofy AI disclosures, something about ReStory: Chill Electronics Repair stood out to me. My Steam Next Fest June 2026 coverage has mostly been about games that are weird and wacky so far, and perhaps I was looking for something a little more mundane and tactile. I ended up unlocking a certain appreciation for the “labor as game” genre, and am very much looking forward to more of this.

ReStory puts you in the shoes of a humble shop owner in early 2000s Japan. You have a sketchy landlord giving you a small space for 2000 yen a week, a screwdriver, a brush, a barely-functioning computer, and some shelf space. Luckily, you know your way around electronics, and there are plenty of people with cell phones, virtual pets, music players, and officially-licensed Atari hardware in need of some love. Your goal is to make money of course, which leads to more effective stocking, licensed to handle a wider variety of hardware, and the occasional tool upgrade or new decoration. In-between jobs, you get to know the locals, such as the mail delivery guy, repeat customers, a weird cop, and even that sketchy landlord.

The bulk of the Next Fest demo is fixing phones and virtual pets, all of which are just legally distinct enough to avoid problems while representing the real-world devices they’re based on as close to 1:1 as possible. In fact, once I worked my way up to the Not PSP, I could swear it’s literally the same thing. That’s a testament to ReStory’s verisimilitude and interest in accuracy for folks who are just as eager to dive into device repair in real life as they are in this game. There’s a real sense of tactile physicality to playing this game, from slowly getting the tiny screws out, one by one, to making sure you’re putting all the pieces back together in the right order once you’ve finished cleaning. There’s a certain beauty to the repetition in ReStory, which is what unlocked my appreciation for a kind of game I thought I was totally uninterested in.

See, as I played, I started to gain a familiarity with these devices. I found myself ordering additional copies to make sure I had spare parts available before I needed them, which meant disassembling more and more of the same things. I needed the cheat sheets or instructions less and less, and entered a sort of worksmanship-fueled flow state as I repeated the same device structures, backwards and forwards, to meet my business needs. There was a sense of both intimacy and fulfillment I found that was super surprising, and ended up being a kind of reminder that while having a job can suck, the actual work is an important element of what it is to be a person. There’s a joy and satisfaction to learning a skill, doing something with your hands, and gaining that competency over time such that you develop your own systems, both in your mind and in your practice, that are almost innate.

Just as I was really getting into my systems and structures and enjoying myself, I got my PSP license. Or whatever it says that isn’t literally PSP, but one letter off. I took that apart and was amazed by how familiar it was to the real thing, something I only had some familiarity with due to… popular activities surrounding that particular device I won’t get into here. After that device was done, the demo was over, and my career in device repair was put on hold. I was upset, to say the least. There’s a much longer list of devices, licenses, and tools I could see in the menus, but was not allowed to get my eager hands on. Alas, I’ll have to wait until the full game comes out. But I so badly want to keep playing, and even considered restarting the demo - a first for me, one with extremely limited attention span real estate. I had a great time, is what I’m saying here.

ReStory: Chill Electronics Repair is coming out sometime in summer 2026 for PC. This article is based on a publicly available demo as part of Steam Next Fest June 2026.

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