The Shire has always been a place associated with lush gardens, beautifully decorated houses tucked away in little hills, and delicious food. Developer Weta Workshop looks to bring this lovely little place in Middle-earth to life in Tales of the Shire, and with each trailer or subsequent screenshot, it looks like they’ve nailed it. MMORPG had the opportunity to get their hands on this colorful, cozy game at Summer Game Fest. And I can say that it checked all of the boxes in what I’m looking for when it comes to your casual life and farming sim.
Tales of the Shire is a game focused on the idea of community and fostering relationships through food — which the title gamifies, as deepening those relationships with the various inhabitants and citizens of the Shire is dependent on cooking and sharing meals. While there are similarities to popular life and farming simulators in Tales of the Shire, such as Singularity6’s Palia or Concerned Ape’s Stardew Valley, the game focuses on this aspect to make it one of the core mechanics of the game, going so far as to outshine other elements. Everything you do is in service to perfect dishes and cook for the community, bringing them together over sumptuous meals of stewed fish and rhubarb soup of varying textures and flavors.
However, Tales of the Shire does away with the notion of failure. You cannot “mess up” or botch a dish; you can only make something that may or may not suit the taste of whomever you’re cooking for. Dishes are decided by texture and other factors when cooking. For example, I ended up making a spicy version of a dish by chopping up vegetables too finely. This is indicated by how chunky an ingredient is while chopping and by a meter on the right-hand side of the screen to indicate just how fine an ingredient is being chopped.
There are also ways to make a dish of higher quality, but I never succeeded in that endeavor. Mostly because I was awful at guessing how much I needed to chop up vegetables, fish, or other ingredients to land them on a marker on the lower right-hand side of the screen. This mechanic involves you moving a marker around on a grid as you add ingredients to your dish, with various elements deciding if the marker moves right, left, up, or down. I’m sure I could nail it with more time, but my time with Tales of the Shire was relatively short.
That didn’t mean I wasn’t able to check out other aspects of the game, however. I was able to get a taste for fishing, and though not as involved as something you would find in Red Dead Redemption 2, it was more forgiving than fishing as it appeared in Stardew Valley. There is a casualness to every activity, which allows for you to simply go about your day fulfilling requests for Hobbits, and the occasional Dwarf, fish, tend to your garden, or even decorate your home. I tasted a bit of this customization, moving around the planters that held my garden vegetables, a rug, and some chairs.
I was assured that more decoration options would be available once the game was released and that you would be able to fix up bits of your home. Character customization is limited as far as I could tell, but it was nice being able to change my character and clothing as I wanted, with attire ranging from capes and overalls to patchwork shirts, all usual Hobbit attire — and most certainly, no shoes.
The Shire itself is charming. Rolling hills of green are dotted with gardens and trees, with dirt paths winding between and down to numerous fishing spots. Though notably smaller than what was shown in The Lord of the Rings, the area still looks expansive, with little foraging spots scattered around to encourage the player to explore the locale. And for those that get lost exploring the Shire, the developers have taken care in signposting where you should go for quest objectives through the use of birds. Bluebirds will sit on fences or other fixtures to help guide you to wherever it is you need to be, which is a cute touch and clever use of animal life to lead you to your destination.
Naturally, I went in the opposite direction and went wherever I wanted to go, which had me stumbling upon a lake where another resident of the Shire was fishing. I was told by the developers that this elderly gentleman was not particularly fond of sharing his fishing spot, and that I would need to raise his affinity in order to cast my rod there. Personally, I think it’s an interesting touch to have certain areas locked behind affinity and what not, even if others may find it restrictive. Because, again, the game is focused on that community building aspect. It wants you to forge those relationships, to invite your neighbors over for a hearty meal. So it’s no surprise that everything would be tied to this.
Tales of the Shire feels like it could carve a space out for itself among other life simulators, allowing players to take a no-stress approach to its mechanics and simply play the game day-to-day. It’s also a good sign for The Lords of the Rings IP, as it is definitely higher quality than the Gollum game that was released prior. It seems like a game made for those that enjoy titles that fall within the “cozy” genre, regardless of its affiliation with such a recognizable IP. I’m certainly excited for it, and can’t wait for it to be a game I wind down with in the evenings.
