Cozy games have carved a chill little niche for themselves, and you don’t get much cozier than the Shire. The home of the Hobbits is the subject of a new game from publisher Private Division and developer Weta Workshop. The two paired up to announce Tales of the Shire: A The Lord of the Rings Game, currently planned for 2024.
Specific platforms weren’t announced, but the official Twitter is live and lists the game for consoles and PC. You can see a quick live-action preview in the teaser trailer.
Pipe-weed dreams
There isn’t much in the way of information beyond what little we see in the teaser. Like anything chill and Hobbit-related, the video shows someone putting the finishing touches on some book illustrations. If said book covers another harrowing journey, we’re not likely to take any part of that in this quaint entry. The official accounts describe it as a “cozy The Lord of the Rings game set in the Middle-earth universe.”
This all follows last August’s news of Private Division and Weta Workshop signing a deal for a new game set in Middle-earth. Weta has worked intimately with J.R.R. Tolkien’s world, handling effects for Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings films, among many other projects. Now we’ll just have to wait to see exactly how relaxing this take on the material will be once it launches.
Tales of the Shire is just one of the new projects in the works based on The Lord of the Rings. There’s also Return to Moria, which will hopefully wipe the taste of Gollum (yuck, sorry) out of everyone’s mouths.
