After several hours toiling in the pastoral fields of Hobbiton, it finally started to sink in why two generations of Bagginses felt compelled to leave in search of dangerous adventure. Sure, the Shire has a hazy comfort to it, and there’s plenty of unique food to gorge on and friendly faces to meet. But once the saccharine novelty begins to wear off, this bucolic wonderland is actually a fairly dull place to live.
Tales of the Shire is set in the Third Age of Middle-earth, years before the events of The Lord of the Rings. As such, there are no Nazgûls or Uruk-hai – instead the “action” centres on the quaint town of Bywater, whose most pressing issue is its municipal status. Here, you play as a recent transplant from the nearby hamlet of Bree, who gets swept up in the process of turning the town into an official village by building infrastructure and befriending locals one odd job and home-cooked meal at a time.
Hazy comfort … Tales of the Shire. Photograph: Private Division
Naturally this high-fantasy life simulator houses plenty of Tolkienian paraphernalia. You can find the Three-Farthing Stone nestled atop a hillside, and walk through the homely Green Dragon Inn. Plus, there are plenty of familiar surnames bobbing around, from Tooks to Cottons and Brandybucks – heck, even Gandalf pops his head in every so often. A chunky art style frames these iconic spaces and characters, coating the world with an appropriately twee veneer. It’s not a huge map to explore, but what’s there is tenderly dressed, with hanging washing swaying in the breeze, dinky lanterns, and roaming wildlife aplenty.
As an upstart Hobbit, your primary goal is to feed and be fed, with all aspects of day-to-day life revolving around this all-important activity. In the wild you can find veggies, nuts and fruits to forage, and the rivers are home to plenty of fishing spots where you earn your catch of the day. There are also seasonal seedlings to purchase and plant, as well as artisanal shop stalls offering speciality items such as flour. With each day running on a timer, the major source of friction is in how efficiently you can dash about and hoover up the goods before bedtime.
Fishing spots aplenty … Tales of the Shire
It’s a well-trodden loop familiar to anyone who has played rural life sims such as Stardew Valley or Harvest Moon. But here, the steady flow of button clicks and undemanding chores operates more successfully as a sleep-inducing mental message than any form of compelling challenge.
If you can brave the repetition and invest in your relationships with others, the game begins to open up, providing a slew of formulaic but appetising skill paths to rank up. Collecting ingredients is only half the story; you’ll also need to cook them up into satisfying bundles to serve at extravagant Breakfasts, Second Breakfasts, Elevenses, and so on. Combining elements of Cooking Mama and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Tales of the Shire asks you to balance culinary profiles and textures to curate the perfect plate. To do this, you’ll chop, mix and sauté ingredients while consulting a flavour compass in the bottom corner of your screen to ensure your food is as delicious as possible. Eventually, by feeding the right folks, your kitchen expands and there are more opportunities available to get you into the Middle-earth Michelin Guide.
But beyond its overly familiar mechanics, Tales of the Shire’s most pressing problem is how naive and placid it all feels. When vague interpersonal issues arise between your new friends, they’re always resolved in a swift, often mundane manner. Much of your time is spent running between frustrated halflings as they burden you with their petty dissatisfactions.
Not all cosy games need to evoke hard emotions. However, it does feel like a disservice to the emotionally complex source material not to explore the richness of the world at large – especially when dry humour, tragedy and finely drawn social structures are what make Tolkien’s writing so powerful. Without any challenging quandaries to pull at your heartstrings, the promising atmosphere in Tales of the Shire is overwhelmed by endless fetch quests. Diehard Tolkienites and Stardew Valley lifers may be better off looking elsewhere for their cosy thrills.
Tales of the Shire is out now, £34.99.