My Thoughts

Tales of the Shire has definitely been a highly anticipated game for many Lord of the Rings fans, and, I must also add, for cozy gamers. Tales of the Shire has you playing as a hobbit who is moving away to another Hobbiton, aka, Bywaters and establishing yourself.

The game loop itself is quite satisfying when compared to other cozy games with similar formats, where different parts of the loop connect to each other. The loop looks something like this –

Grow / Forage / buy ingredients -> Invite Hobbits -> Plan and cook meals -> Have the meal -> Increase their friendship levels & gain rewards such as recipes, ingredients or upgrades.

This loop in turn feeds back into the main ‘quests’, moving time forward, with events taking place around Bywater, going from making friends and becoming a  part of the fold to becoming a village and more.

It makes for quite a satisfying cycle, for gamers who enjoy slower paced games with little urgency, beyond of course ensuring you’re able to actually share a meal with the hobbits you invited. I also love the fact that the hobbits are polite about the meals they receive, and also make sure to let you know they’re upset you forgot about inviting them over for a meal and then don’t show up.

Each of the areas have their own gameplay, such as Fishing, Farming / Gardening, Cooking and Foraging.

Farming and Cooking tend to have more elements to it, such as companion planting to grow even better fruit and veg, while cooking focuses on quality of ingredients as a tallied total, alongside flavour combos and texture which you get from various cooking stations.

I appreciate the simplicity of the game and its loop, thought there’s certain other areas that I believe could be fleshed out to make for interesting personalities and further acknowledging your own hobbit’s tendencies. Let me give you a brief overview of how i would use the game’s existing system and build on it!

What if we could change our Hobbit’s sleeping habits?

For example, the current day night cycle assumes that you’re a hobbit that enjoys starting early in the day and ending the day in the evening. But there’s all kinds of hobbits that make a village, including some who appear only by night time. It would be interesting to have the system note this change, and acknowledge either your hobbits night time shenanigans or even late rising shenanigans.

Which would mean increasing content for the night time, having hobbits that you only bump into during the night, and other fun chance encounters that could be designed around your hobbits’ nighttime adventures, including fun additions for quests like lights and voices in the forest, as Delphinium mentions when you get to know her better.

I’m really enjoying the basic day – night system and UI for the game, but what if this system could ALSO log your nocturnal or not so nocturnal habits?

From what I can glean on how the current day cycle system works, you skip a segment and a half or up to two segments of the cycle, when you sleep at night, or get put into bed. This in turn does some nice tidying on the back end, resetting the cycle for you, starting a new day and updating quests, giving your more news, gifts or letters.

But, what if we further built on this cycle?
The current assumption for the day cycle system is that your hobbit sleeps or is put to sleep by the end of the night. However, what if this cycle continued regardless of your hobbits’ sleep cycle…? 

In order top shift your hobbit’s sleeping patterns, your hobbit would now be able to sleep at any point in time they like, after a segment and a half of the day has passed since they have slept, as opposed to 3 segments that they stay up, currently.
For example, as the game encourages at the start, you put your hobbit to bed in the evening, they get up at dawn, and you potter around in the garden for a good bit of the dawn and morning. You can now choose to put your hobbit to bed for the afternoon, allowing them to catch a little snooze. They will now wake up again towards the end of the evening or the beginning of the night, allowing you to explore the village of Bywater by dark.

This would make for interesting dialogues acknowledging your hobbit’s late rising or nocturnal habits, as players can then start a cycle where they sleep during the day and are up for most of the afternoon, and active during the night.

For the love of chairs…

I love base building games. Especially where you get to spend an inordinate amount of time making it look cool AND functional. It was one of my favourite parts about V-Rising. Having said that, my beef remains for third and first person games that allow you to base build and give you furniture… that then don’t let you sit in them.

Considering that hobbits enjoy spending time in their hobbit holes, and invite others over for meals, games and other activities when they like, I was rather disappointed to note that you couldn’t sit in your rocking chairs and knit or make random pieces of clothing in this way. Especially considering there’s looms, spindles and sewing kits you can leave in for decoration.

Hopefully something we might see in a future update.

Speaking of clothes, what about knitting some?

Nora’s shop is great to find and buy pieces of clothing, which I admit becomes a nice economy sink alongside furniture, once all the hobbits have their friendship levels maxed out, and you’re looking to do something more with that money than get more planters. Which in my opinion, why not just get more planters?

However, if being able to further interact with furniture around your hobbit hole becomes a possibility, I would love to see the addition of a new mini-game that allows you to knit a clothing items to add to your wardrobe.

I believe this could be a fun minigame, with your hobbit first picking out a pattern they’d like to knit, such as deciding whether its a dress, if it has sleeves or not and colours through their yarn. 
As for yarn and colours, if you guessed that it would be sold through Nora’s shop, you are on point and knew exactly where I was going with this.

Your hobbit will then get to start or continue the mini-game when they are seated in the rocking chair, with a similar tension mechanic as the fishing mini-game. By the end? You have a sweater!

Yes, I knit and yes, that’s why I would love it in this game as well haha.

Dinner parties are grand, but what about birthday parties??

When I say this, I do mean for both the hobbits in the village as well as your own hobbit.

It would be a great once in a year activity you get to plan, with a decision on which day of the season you would like to have it, so that we aren’t disrupting existing systems.

What happens? 

To begin with, for the first birthday, a random event picker, which decides whether the hobbits plan this birthday as a surprise, send you letters, visit, or invite you to their own hobbit holes for your birthday, with the last one dependent on having maxed out their friendship level.

I believe this would make for a fun community activity in single player, with the hobbits gifting you with seeds or flowers and little ornaments to decorate your own hobbit hole, and make you feel all the more a part of the village of Bywater.

From your hobbits’ second birthday onwards, you can choose to send out invites for a grand party, choosing to use either the space at The Green Dragon, The Ivy bush Inn, or, your own cozy Hobbit Home. Once invites are sent out, you plan your own little birthday celebration, cooking up a feast and celebrating a lovely year having gone by with the village.

Similarly, for other hobbits birthdays, you may get a quest each ‘year’ that varies based on the hobbit and your friendship level with them. Talking to them to wish said hobbit would be the basic part of this quest, with variations depending on the hobbit’s personality, and how other hobbits choose to help them celebrate.

You can even raise this special hobbit’s friendship level by bringing them gifts!

What about annual celebrations??

Tales of the Shire drifts into ‘game plus territory’ after Bywater is declared The Village of Bywater, leaving you with some miscellaneous tasks to finish, such as getting the club levels maxed out and so on. 

I’m hoping to see newer and bigger areas to explore as we see updates come in, but so also an annual celebration system as with the birthdays I described above.

It would be interesting to continue the Bywater Festival annually, possibly with levels of how much all the hobbits choose to invest in the festival each year. Will this be the year that the Bywater Festival reaches new heights?

For future Bywater Festivals, your hobbits will get a chance to contribute more than putting up the festival bunting, by including additional floral decorations, tables to share meals, and cook a LOT of variations of the Bywater dish.

This allows for the Bywater Festival to reach all new heights every year!

Final Thoughts

Honestly, I’ve been enjoying living out my hobbit life on Tales of the Shire, and I’m excited for future updates from Wētā Workshop Game Studio. If you haven’t played Tales of the Shire yet, but enjoy cozy games and cooking and hosting, you’ll likely love what we’ve currently got on Tales of the Shire.

I’ll see you there hobbit!