Preview: Tales of The Shire is About Community

When I first got my hands on Tales of The Shire at Summer Game Fest 2024, I already knew it was going to be a game I’d enjoy. When I’m not playing an obscene amount of World of Warcraft, or speedrunning Resident Evil games, I’m tending to my crops and fishing in life simulators. Because Tales of The Shire seemed to wrap up the quintessential life simulator mechanics of tending to crops, fishing, foraging, and community building in a way that would feel satisfying. I can say that during my extended time with the game, that I feel more confident in that now than ever.

For those unfamiliar with the game, Tales of The Shire is a blend of Disney’s Dreamlight Valley and Singularity 6’s Palia. Two colorful, highly stylized life simulators that allow you to build community and harvest ingredients to cook dishes or craft furniture. It’s about doing and participating in the mundane. Discovering fishing holes, tending to your potatoes and rhubarb to make a dish for your neighbor. It’s about community.

You arrive in The Shire as an outsider from Bree, a small village that was briefly featured in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. The residence of The Shire, all Hobbits, seem eager to have you, with the exception of a few that you need to win over through various methods. Given a house, you can decorate it as you’d like, and even move around plots and carefully position crops to make the most out of the small planters provided. This is a change of pace from other life simulators, where you’re generally given a tile to plant a crop. Instead you can finagle up to four crops per planter if you place them correctly. Which means you can certainly max out your efficiency when it comes to growing and tending to your plethora of root vegetables and leafy greens.

Like most life simulators, you can also fish. The mini-game itself is fairly simple. Just pull the rod in the opposite direction of the fish to tire it out. However, I noticed that sometimes a tree would obstruct the stamina meter, which made it hard to tell if the fish was about to snap my line and swim back into the shallows of the handful of rivers and lakes that carve out space in this lush environment.

While all of these features are great, it’s how they come together that sets Tales of The Shire apart from other life simulators. Fishing and farming and even harvesting net you ingredients to cook, which is the star of the game. I did find this mini-game a bit unclear, not sure how chopping ingredients finely or into larger chunks would actually affect the overall quality of a dish. Because there is a way to track your progress, even if it doesn’t seem to matter much. And this is largely because the other residence of The Shire are happy to partake in whatever you cook for them. They all have their favorite meals, which you can use to invite them to your humble abode and raise your affinity with them.

This is largely the way you’ll get to know characters, outside of quests that will have you navigating the ins and outs of this beautiful, picturesque village that clearly draws inspiration from the Peter Jackson films. (Not the series of rotoscoped films that remain beloved among a group of Lord of the Rings fans.) Instead of the game providing a clear path in the form of a sparkling trail, blue birds landing on fences and perching in trees will guide your way. That said, if you run you’ll largely loose track of them and run in circles if you don’t memorize the map. I thought my getting lost was just a result of more modern sensibilities when it comes to game design, but I legitimately had a hard time finding some objectives.

Outside of that, the character customization is decent enough. You can change your face shape, eyes, nose, hair, clothing, and even the amount of hair on your feet. You’re a Hobbit after all. While the options for clothing seemed a little limited at first, once I was able to peruse the shops, I was pleased to know that more options were available. This included tops with double-breasted vests, trousers, billowing skirts, and earth-toned capes.

My experience with Tales of The Shire remains a positive one. While it isn’t the best looking life simulator on the market, even on higher end PC hardware, it’s still a fun game to play. I’m eager to get to know the characters and learn more about them, and I think the mechanics I’ve experienced so far lend itself to the overall gameplay loop and story it wants to tell through that. I know I’ll definitely be checking it out on release.

Tales of The Shire will release on PC, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, and Xbox Series X.