Ever since reading The Hobbit at 10 years old, I’ve been able to see the appeal of Tolkien’s halflings’ lifestyle—which Tales of the Shire: A The Lord of The Rings Game aims to adapt into a cozy life sim.
After all, who lives cozier than Hobbits? They live in modest comforts, in touch with the earth, walking a balance between leisure and humble work. In a lot of ways (not including that nasty war and “One Ring to bind them” nonsense), the world of Tolkien’s legendarium is a perfect fit for this thriving game genre.
And now, at long last, Tales of the Shire has arrived to make (mostly) good on that promise and potential.
Tales of the Shire: A The Lord of The Rings Game is the latest in a long line of cozy games where players create an in-game persona and pursue the simpler things in life. No dodges and parries here; the only boss is the unescapable sense of pressure to keep improving your relationships, bank account, and yield quality. Here, players create their own Hobbit and move into a Bag End-quality home in the village of Bywater, immediately integrating into the neighbourhood and taking on a leadership role.
For many, a “life sim game” means Animal Crossing-esque daily cycles tied to the real-world time, like Disney Dreamlight Valley, but Tales of the Shire takes the Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons route instead. Each day lasts a certain amount of time, which pauses during conversations and in menus, and a fairly brief seasonal structure keeps the calendar pages turning from season to season. How you use those days is largely up to you.
“Tales of the Shire keeps true to tested cozy game conventions and Hobbit lore by focusing on a couple core activities.”
Like Animal Crossing, the player quickly becomes responsible for growing the village. The main story quests focus on the people of Bywater’s mission to expand their community and be recognized properly by neighbouring towns. It’s your job to talk the other Hobbits into pitching in a token effort (and doing everything else by yourself).
The writing is admirably faithful to the Middle-Earth legacy, which is no small task. Each of the main villagers you can build relationships with is believably accurate to the vibe of either Tolkien’s books or Peter Jackson’s films. They’re stuck in their ways and bicker like old married couples at the right times. It’s a hard tone to pull off, especially without coming across as a mimicry of Tolkien.
Likewise, the environments feel like a book come to life, for better or worse. Everything about them comes across like an illustration in a children’s book: animals live happily alongside Hobbits, there’s a whimsical air to the village, and most homes are set properly into the surrounding landscape. Tales of the Shire even bucks modern conventions by having little blue birds fly into your path to point in the right direction, instead of having a flashing beacon (like a glowing fairy dust path) break immersion.
However, there are downsides in this department. Bywater and its surrounding environments can be maze-like, especially without the ability to jump or even hop down a foot from a higher level—leading to some annoying backtracking on the way from one destination to another. And while the wayfaring birds are a charming spin on the typical golden breadcrumbs approach, I found myself hammering the map button far too many times to double-check their pointing.
The storybook aesthetic works great for the natural environment and the NPCs, but Tales of the Shire‘s character builder and the design of the playable avatar left me wanting. Usually, I don’t have much to complain about in a character creation screen, but it took a lot of finagling to find a look I was sufficiently content with for my Hobbit avatar. I appreciate the unique look that Weta Workshop went for… but I still wanted some better hair options.
(Getting into the game and having a touch of control over my wardrobe did help in the long run, at least, especially as I got to see my Hobbit actually interacting with the world.)
Gameplay-wise, Tales of the Shire keeps true to tested cozy game conventions and Hobbit lore by focusing on a couple core activities. The most interesting of these (for my money) is cooking. It’s not as simple as knowing the recipe and having the items—a multi-step process requires you to prepare specific ingredients in certain ways to achieve different flavour profiles.
For example, an NPC may ask for a fish dish prepared salty instead of bitter, and with a smoother texture instead of a choppy one. That smoothness can be achieved by chopping the components more, while frying them with seasoning can change the flavour profile. It makes cooking a much more interesting process than “pick the ingredients from your inventory and vaguely mash them together;” you’re an active participant.
Tales of the Shire‘s social aspects hinge heavily upon arranging get-togethers with other Bywater residents—inviting them to share a meal you prepare at a venue of your choice—so it quickly becomes important to have a wide array of ingredients at your disposal. Accommodating your neighbours’ whims can be difficult if you don’t have the right materials to shape their craved meals, or a deft-enough hand to craft them properly.
Feeding into this system, the next major activity is gardening. Many famous Hobbits, like dear old Samwise, are known for their green thumbs, and Tales of the Shire wants your avatar to stand among them. You start out with a couple of plots on your property, and can grow the typical seasonal assortments of veggies for cooking or for profit. With the emphasis on not only gardening and cooking, but combining them to become a Hobbit party host extraordinaire, this is another critical area.
While the majority of this system is fairly standard fare for farm sims or cozy games, there is a unique twist. Planting compatible seeds in the same plots can have a beneficial effect and increase the quality of your crops, so planning your garden becomes much more interesting than just dropping seeds in virtual dirt and ensuring they’re watered daily.
In practice, this can also be one of the most tedious areas of Tales of the Shire‘s progression cycle, given the in-game time required to grow crops and the relatively short seasons. Waiting to see if my plants would yield a higher-quality product left me stalling the main quests for longer than I’d like, and the season change threw a wrench in the works again. (Property management is mercifully intuitive, however, at least in terms of the UI; actually altering my home’s layout, beyond cosmetic details, also took longer to get into than I’d like.)
The last “club” and main pillar activity of Tales of the Shire is fishing. The mechanics here aren’t revolutionary—the actual fishing process is among the more novel and tight setups I’ve played. Still, the variety of catches can be a bit stale at the start, and fish aren’t as critical as having a good selection of other ingredients. However, I found myself relying on fishing to help utilize the daylight while waiting for other processes, and to earn money to maintain my other supplies.
That actually sums up my time with Tales of the Shire in general: a novel, yet not revolutionary, take on cozy games. Hobbitkind isn’t reinventing the wheel here, but there’s enough of a unique spin here that should satisfy Tolkien fans like a nicely-presented Second Breakfast. The quaint experience of living in a hobbit-hole and some satisfying gameplay loops compensate for other nitpicky problems with map design and progress scaling. Well-employed uses of the Tolkien “license” go a long way too, like an obligatory Gandalf cameo in the intro and a few other nods to the more famous halflings of Hobbiton.
