Tales of the Shire Is the Hobbit Game the Cozy Genre Was Always Meant to Have

ign.com:

If your favorite part of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings books or movies is the time spent in the Shire – the lush, verdant, and hilly home of the habitually hungry halflings who live in holes (albeit well-decorated ones) known as Hobbits – then I’ve got good news for you: Tales of the Shire might make you very happy, regardless of whether or not you already play and enjoy the cozy genre. I played an all-too-brief 20 minutes or so, split across two save files: one from the beginning of the game (post-character creator) and another from around halfway through. My takeaway after that time was exactly what I was hoping for heading into the hands-on: that Tales of the Shire is shaping up to be a relaxing, no-pressure, no-drama escape into the Hobbit hillside where your biggest worry is getting a new recipe just right so you can make a new friend in town.

First, I love the art style in Tales of the Shire. It’s bright, sunny, and overall just pleasant, as it should be. The village feels big without being overwhelming or annoying to navigate. On that note, I adore the designers’ twist on the compass or arrow pointing you in the direction of your current objective that so many games use (or, to compare it to another charming fantasy game, the golden breadcrumb trail in Fable): here, when you’ve marked a destination on your map, adorable birds will land on fence posts or tree branches ahead of you every 50 feet or so, literally pointing with their beaks in the direction you’re supposed to go. It’s a great unintrusive touch that keeps you looking at the beautiful game world rather than constantly pulling up the map. Music, too, is as mellow and delightful as you’d expect.

I saw the basics of the cozy gameplay mechanics during my demo: cooking, building relationships with your fellow Hobbits, as well as both interior design and landscape architecture. The latter two are the most simple, mechanically speaking, but also allow you to most customize your Hobbit home. Outside, I