This Cozy Indie Made Its Budget Back in 12 Hours. Then It Sold 300,000 Copies in a Week

ReStory turned fixing old consoles in 2000s Tokyo into a breakout hit: 300K sales, 96% positive Steam reviews and millions in gross revenue.

Your tiny electronics workshop overlooking the streets of mid-2000s Tokyo. Image: Mandragora / official ReStory account.

There is a point in ReStory: Chill Electronics Repairs where you are sitting behind a tiny repair counter in mid-2000s Tokyo, unscrewing a suspiciously familiar handheld console while lo-fi music plays from an old radio. There are bills to pay, customers waiting, spare parts scattered around the desk and probably one screw you have absolutely no idea where to put back.

That somehow became one of Steam's biggest indie success stories of August.

ReStory launched on August 6 from developer Mandragora and publisher tinyBuild. According to tinyBuild CEO Alex Nichiporchik, the game had already earned back its development budget within roughly 12 hours. By the following day, gross revenue had passed $1 million with nearly 80,000 copies sold; by August 10, reported gross revenue had reached $3 million. Then Mandragora announced the bigger number: more than 300,000 copies sold during its first week.

That would already be impressive for a cozy simulator about repairing old electronics. But the Steam numbers make it more ridiculous. During the week of August 4–11, ReStory ranked #9 on Steam globally by revenue, sitting in the same top ten as Apex Legends, Counter-Strike 2, Dota 2, Cyberpunk 2077, Marvel Rivals and Palworld. Its concurrent-player peak passed 19,000, and SteamDB currently shows a peak of 19,647.

For a game where a major activity is brushing dust off fake PlayStations, that is honestly kind of insane.

The numbers behind the breakout

The launch did not exactly come out of nowhere. Before release, Mandragora said ReStory had crossed 700,000 Steam wishlists, giving it a huge pool of players waiting for the release notification. But wishlists do not automatically turn into sales, and plenty of heavily wishlisted indie games disappear after launch. ReStory actually converted the attention.

As of today, Steam shows 6,389 reviews from verified Steam purchasers, with around 96% positive, enough for the coveted Overwhelmingly Positive label. Including reviews from other key sources, Steam lists more than 7,000 user reviews overall.

The quick version looks like this:

• 300,000+ copies sold in the first week

• Development budget recovered within about 12 hours

• $1M+ gross by roughly the first day

• $3M gross reported by August 10

• 19,000+ peak concurrent Steam players

• #9 on Steam’s weekly global revenue chart

• 96% positive Steam-purchaser reviews

• 700,000+ wishlists before launch

And ReStory is still hanging around Steam’s live best-seller list almost two weeks after launch rather than disappearing after its first weekend. SteamDB had it around #33 globally by live revenue when I checked.

Watch the official launch trailer

Official launch trailer from tinyBuild and Mandragora.

So why are people obsessed with fixing fake PSPs?

The concept is almost aggressively specific. You inherit a small electronics-repair shop in Japan during the mid-2000s and spend your days dismantling phones, cameras, game consoles, music players and household electronics. You remove screws, separate shells, clean dirt, diagnose broken parts, order replacements and then try to remember how the entire thing goes back together. The game includes officially licensed Atari hardware alongside fictionalized devices that are very obviously inspired by products from Sony, Nokia, Apple and others.

Taking apart a handheld is more detailed than you might expect. Image: Mandragora / official ReStory account.

The fake-brand names are part of the charm. Players encounter things like Nony handhelds and other slightly-off versions of technology anyone who grew up in the 2000s will immediately recognize. But this is not PC Building Simulator with a Japanese skin slapped over it. You also manage money, pay rent and electricity, buy licenses for new device categories, hunt for parts through an intentionally old-looking in-game internet and upgrade your tools.

Then customers start bringing their lives into the shop. Some repairs become small narrative decisions. You might discover something questionable on someone's phone or get pulled into a teenager's attempt to confess to a crush. Those choices feed into branching character stories and multiple endings.

The physicality seems to be what really hooks people, though. Reviewer Spencer Legacy at MonsterVine gave the game 5/5 and described the process of disassembling, cleaning and rebuilding devices as unusually satisfying. Catherine Tran at Netto's Game Room gave it 4/5 and said sessions that were supposed to last an hour repeatedly turned into entire afternoons. The r/Games review thread currently lists an 89 OpenCritic average with 100% recommendation across seven indexed reviews.

See what actually playing it feels like

Gab Smolders' first ReStory video has already pulled well over half a million views, which is another good indication that the game's audience extends beyond the people actually buying it. Her series continued after the first episode rather than being a one-off sponsored-style look.

That matters for indie games. Viral YouTube and Twitch visibility can turn something extremely niche into a game millions of people at least recognize. Watching someone slowly clean a ruined handheld also happens to be weirdly good background content.

What actual players are saying

The overall reaction is extremely positive, but it is not universal praise, which makes the conversation more useful.

Players who like ReStory keep returning to the same words: satisfying, nostalgic, relaxing and addictive. In the r/Games review discussion, someone who played the demo said they enjoyed it enough to dedicate their launch weekend to the full version. Another player comparing it with Cozy Game Restoration described ReStory as the more story-driven and approachable option, while the competing game focuses more intensely on technical detail.

People with actual repair experience have also been joining the discussion. The independent ReStory community guide collected comments from console and PC repair hobbyists praising the detail of the assembly and disassembly systems; one repair hobbyist described the game as a relaxing way to virtually do something they already enjoy in real life.

The criticism is pretty consistent too. Some players think the loop becomes repetitive in long sessions. Loot Level Chill gave it 7/10, praising the nostalgia and shop-management loop while arguing that cleaning and repairing different gadgets can eventually start feeling too similar. A recent player review on StopGame made almost exactly the same point: very addictive at first, but the repetition becomes more noticeable after several hours.

There are smaller frustrations as well. One Steam reviewer with carpal tunnel asked for an accessibility option because cleaning currently requires holding the mouse button so frequently that they could only comfortably play for around 15 minutes at a time. Another positive reviewer loved the overall loop but hated that a cleaning job can complete at around 90%, arguing that leaving a tiny bit of grime behind ruins the whole satisfaction of restoring something perfectly.

That last complaint might be the most cozy-game complaint imaginable: “I love your game, but please let me clean the remaining 10% of dirt.”

A short player-focused review

This short review gives a much quicker look at the repair loop if you do not want to watch a full playthrough.

Then came the AI-art argument

The game's success also created its first proper controversy.

Shortly after release, some Steam users began examining promotional and Steam Community artwork and accused parts of it of looking AI-generated. That produced negative reviews and long forum discussions. Mandragora responded publicly. The studio says there is no generative-AI content inside the game itself. It also said some separate Steam Community background assets had been produced by an outsourced artist the studio “shouldn't have trusted,” acknowledged that it had failed to review those materials carefully enough and stopped working with that artist. Those backgrounds were subsequently replaced.

That wording matters. The developer did not say the game itself secretly used AI art, and it would be inaccurate to claim that it did. The controversy centers on external/community promotional assets and the studio's quality-control failure around them. Players are still arguing about it on Steam, but Mandragora's stated position is clear: no genAI inside ReStory itself.

The fact that the argument became big enough for the studio to address immediately also tells you how quickly ReStory grew. Nobody spends hours inspecting the Steam backgrounds of a game nobody is playing.

And then tinyBuild revoked 649 copies

The next drama came from a completely different direction.

tinyBuild CEO Alex Nichiporchik announced that the publisher had revoked 649 ReStory game keys, saying most had ended up on what he described as shady key-reseller sites. According to Nichiporchik, some buyers had exploited cheaper regional Steam pricing and resold keys through less-regulated marketplaces. tinyBuild traced the source and cancelled the affected keys.

His advice was not particularly subtle: buy the game through legitimate stores, and if a deal looks too good to be true, it probably is. Some legitimate Green Man Gaming keys were accidentally caught in the cleanup, but tinyBuild said those customers would receive replacements automatically.

The discussion hit r/gaming quickly. One of the top comments essentially did everyone a favor by naming the game immediately rather than making people click through a headline, while another commenter said they had played the demo and thought it was fun. The bigger conversation quickly turned into the familiar argument over grey-market key resellers and whether buying a suspiciously cheap key actually helps an indie developer at all.

That is a pretty unusual first week: 300,000 sales, millions in revenue, overwhelmingly positive reviews, an AI-art argument and hundreds of revoked keys.

This probably is not the end of ReStory

Mandragora says it is already working on a free content update with a new gadget, and the studio says a longer-term roadmap will include additional updates, collaborations and DLC. The soundtrack has also launched with ten tracks in both clean and in-game radio-filtered versions, and the digital art book was expanded from 20 to 45 pages.

That is probably the biggest difference between a pleasant indie launch and an actual breakout hit. When something suddenly sells 300,000 copies, the conversation immediately shifts from “Was this successful?” to “How far can this go?”

Personally, I think the reason ReStory works is surprisingly simple: it understands nostalgia without making nostalgia the entire game. Yes, the chunky phones, fake PSPs, CRT monitor, old operating systems and 2000s Tokyo setting are doing a lot of work. But if taking a console apart and putting it back together did not feel good, nobody would still be playing after the nostalgia wore off.

And clearly a lot of people are still playing.

Maybe the funniest part is that one of Steam's most commercially successful new indie releases this month is not about killing gods, surviving zombies or saving a fantasy kingdom. It is about sitting behind a tiny desk, putting screws in a little container and hoping the customer's handheld turns on when you are done.

Apparently, we were all more desperate to work in an electronics repair shop than anyone realized.

Want to see the full repair loop before buying?

Full PC gameplay walkthrough without commentary.

ReStory: Chill Electronics Repairs is available on Windows and macOS through Steam. Its 10% launch discount is scheduled to end August 20.