I've played my share of cozy games, and Tales of the Shire is definitely one for the maximalist decorators

I love clutter. Just tons and tons of crap stacked precariously on a shelf—all of it mismatched, sorted into asymmetrical piles, and serving no clear purpose. I like homes that look lived in. Clean, but not sanitized of personality. That's why I dig the hobbit design philosophy (or lack thereof), and have kept my eye on Tales of the Shire since its 2024 reveal. I'm wound way too tight to live a peaceful life in the shire, but their sentimental piles of mess resonate with my real life approach to decorating.

So after a few minutes of opening cutscenes and questing during a Summer Game Fest demo over the weekend, I asked Wētā Workshop if I could spend the rest of my Tales of the Shire demo time just… moving furniture around back at my hobbit hole. Thankfully I was met with enthusiastic approval. Apparently rearranging all day is a perfectly acceptable way to approach life in Bywater.

And that's how I spent a majority of it—obsessively picking up everything from one room and bringing it into another to make piles of decorative clutter. My closest in-universe relative is probably Smaug, though instead of gold, I'm sitting on a pile of colorful bottles, fraying pillows, and thrift store trinkets. Tales of the Shire is quite laid back; it's more akin to Animal Crossing than anything else, at least how I played it. My biggest concern was, "Can I make it cluttered and cute?" And the answer was always yes.

My demo began the same way players will start Tales of the Shire next month, by meeting Gandalf and being thrown into a few quests around Bywater. Truthfully, I didn't have enough time to develop a strong impression, but I'm not so sure I dig the character designs or personalities. It's part of why I was so easily derailed from the main quest, and with my time being so limited, I opted to go all in on cooking and decorating. Since hobbits measure their days by when they'll eat next, I assumed Tales of the Shire would nail that recipe.

For now, I'm going to have to hold off on awarding any Michelin stars. The actual process of boil'em, mash'em, stick'em in a stew was… fine. I liked rummaging around and foraging for ingredients and figure that will only improve the more I'm able to explore, but I can't see the actual cooking mechanics growing on me. The prep work didn't feel as satisfying as the end product looked.

Since hobbits all have their own tastes, Tales of the Shire tries to give you control over the little details, like making an ingredient smooth, tender, crisp, or chunky. You can season dishes too, swinging the flavor profile toward sweet or sour. It's a little too tedious to feel rewarding, but if the UI saw a bit of clean-up, I think Wētā Workshop would be on to something. Relegating those recipe details to UI elements in the corner of the screen didn't do much to express that my hobbit's knife technique mattered. The menus look like they're an afterthought, rather than complementing the cutesy kitchen decor.

Setting the table, surprisingly, was way more fun. You get to move dishes around and get creative with how to present the spread. It's a chore I absolutely hate at Thanksgiving but loved in my miniature Tolkien home.

That's when I leaned into the I'm-going-to-make-a-mess approach. It only took a few minutes of playing around to realize decorating my hobbit home was surprisingly free. There were hardly any restrictions on dragging things from inside to the outside or vice versa, so I took a bunch of cups outdoors to cozy up my garden as makeshift vases. It was also quite easy to move around garden beds and accessories, with no penalties for setting something down and picking it right back up.

By the time I was done with my demo I'd uprooted the whole damn garden and confined everything to a corner. It left the rest of the yard pathetically barren, but with more time, I would've done whatever quest or chore the other hobbits requested of me to get more furniture and plants. My inevitable jungle of a yard would violate a novel's worth of HOA rules anywhere else, but I'm delighted the hobbits let me get away with it.

This really is the life sim for disgusting maximalists. Much like the number I did in the garden, I spent the remainder of my time piling household items together in the dining room. To my disappointment there were a few non-decorable surfaces like the dining table, but since you'll regularly place tasty spreads there, I get it. Instead I focused on stacking pillows, bowls, books, and potatoes in a cupboard. I understand the combination makes no sense, but that's where Tales of the Shire and I are in sync.

It's a bummer I wasn't more endeared by passing interactions with the villagers, though. There's not much that sets them apart from each other, and their banter isn't quite as interesting as their surroundings. In Animal Crossing, the striking designs and personalities of the townsfolk are the game's biggest strength; those little guys carry the whole thing. On the flip side, actually decorating your grid-based home is limiting to the point I lose interest fast. Tales of the Shire theoretically meets my biggest need. It has all of the decorating features I long for in its closest mainstream cozy cousin, but I'm a little worried the personality I can create in my home won't extend to the actual NPCs, or even the UI. But I'll listen to any of the little gossips if they give me more stuff to feed my charming piles of mess.