Preview: Tales of The Shire is about community
When I first got it Shire Stories at Summer Game Fest 2024, I knew it was going to be a game I would enjoy. While I don’t play a huge amount of World of Warcraftor speed run Devil’s abode games, I am taking care of crops and fishing in life simulation games. Because Shire Stories seems to have encapsulated the core life simulation mechanics of tending crops, fishing, foraging, and building a community in a way that feels satisfying to the player. I can say that over the course of my long time playing the game, I feel more confident than ever.
For those unfamiliar with the game, Shire Stories is a mix of Disney Valley of Dream Light and Singularity 6 Palia. Two colorful, highly stylized life simulators that let you build communities and collect ingredients to cook dishes or craft furniture. It’s about doing and participating in ordinary things. Exploring fishing holes, tending potatoes and rhubarb to feed your neighbors. It’s about community.
You arrive in The Shire as an outsider from Bree, a small village briefly introduced in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. The inhabitants of The Shire, all of whom are Hobbits, seem eager to welcome you, with the exception of a few that you will need to conquer through various means. Once you have a house, you can decorate it as you please, even moving plots of land and carefully positioning your plants to make the most of the small planters provided. This is a change from other life simulators where you are usually given one plot to plant your plants in. Instead, you can cheat up to four crops per planter if you place them correctly. This means you can definitely maximize your efficiency when it comes to growing and tending to a wide variety of root vegetables and leafy greens.
Like most life simulators, you can also fish. The mini-game itself is pretty straightforward. Just pull the rod in the opposite direction of the fish to tire it out. However, I found that sometimes a tree would get in the way of the stamina gauge, making it difficult 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 make up this lush environment.
While all of these features are great, how they work together is what matters. Shire Stories apart from other life simulation games. Fishing, farming and even harvesting will get you ingredients to cook with, which is the star of the game. I found this mini-game a little unclear, not sure how chopping ingredients or cutting them into larger pieces actually affects the overall quality of the 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 residents of The Shire are happy to get involved in whatever you cook for them. They all have their favorite dishes, which you can use to invite them to your humble abode and increase your intimacy with them.
This is mostly how you learn about the characters, outside of the quests that take you around this beautiful, picturesque village, which is clearly inspired by Peter Jackson’s films. (Not that the rotoscoped series is still beloved by a select group of people.) Lord of the Rings fan.) Instead of the game providing a clear path in the form of a sparkling trail, bluebirds perched on fences and trees guide you. However, if you run, you’ll largely lose sight of them and run in circles if you don’t memorize the map. I think my getting lost is just a result of more modern sensibilities when it comes to game design, but I had a really hard time finding some of the objectives.
Additionally, character customization is pretty good. You can change the shape of your face, eyes, nose, hair, clothes, and even the amount of hair on your legs. You are a Hobbit, after all. While the clothing options seemed a bit limited at first, once I was able to browse the stores, I was happy to find that there were more options. Including double-breasted vests, trousers, flowing dresses, and earth-toned capes.
My experience with Shire Stories Still, that’s a positive. While it’s not 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 fit the overall gameplay loop and the story it’s trying to tell through it. I know I’ll definitely be checking it out when it releases.
Shire Stories will be released on ComputerPlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch and Xbox Series X.
