Highly Anticipated Cozy Hobbit Game Debuts to Poor Reviews

Highly Anticipated Cozy Hobbit Game Debuts to Poor Reviews originally appeared on GameDaily .

Remember all those TikToks and Instagram Reels about a new "cozy" game based on The Hobbit? It promised to be a fun and light adventure set in The Lord of the Rings world.

That game was called Tales of the Shire and had many Tolkien fans excited for another Middle-earth adventure.

Well, the game finally came out, and sadly, it was not worth the hype. The game was officially released on Tuesday, and people aren't too happy with it.

Tales of the Shire currently sits with a 61 on Metacritic , and the user reviews are "mixed" on Steam.

"Despite an incredibly promising premise, Tales of the Shire is dreadfully boring and extremely buggy to boot," IGN wrote in its 4/10 review of the game.

This is a big disappointment for fans of Middle-earth and cozy games. It's been a while since we got a great Lord of the Rings game. The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria came out last year and received bad reviews. 2023's The Lord of the Rings: Gollum is one of the biggest gaming disasters of the last decade.

Middle-earth: Shadow of War feels like a lifetime ago at this point, and even that game, while really fun, had issues at launch. The world of Middle-earth is ripe with amazing potential, but gaming studios keep failing to put together a compelling experience.

At this point, I'd take an Oblivion knock-off with a Middle-earth skin put over it.

This story was originally reported by GameDaily on Jul 29, 2025, where it first appeared.