The stressful, nagging Tales of the Shire could be my first and last cozy game

I've never played a 'cozy game' before, but I'm told they're supposed to be relaxing. That's what Danielle, PCGamesN's resident cozy aficionado, promised me. But after playing Tales of the Shire, a certified cozy game, I'm not remotely close to relaxed. On the contrary, I'm quite stressed out.

Tales of the Shire takes place in Bywater, a village that's not a village, but you'll spend most of your time trying to convince yourself and others that it is, and from what I can tell, that's the crux of the story. But that's okay. If the 'villagers' want to squabble about petty titles, then it adds some tension to what I'd assumed would be a largely frictionless new entry on our best life games list.

You start off napping under a tree (a good sign) and are picked up by Gandalf and taken to 'the village,' gifted a rundown but quaint hobbit hole, and told to get about making friends. Introductions come swiftly, and soon the whole village wants to come to tea. But there's a catch: they're only interested if you're able to satisfy their cravings, and their cravings are a mystery until the day you cook for them. But that's okay; a short trip to the village square to get the supplies and then back to it.

But this guest wants a sour meal, and the only fitting recipe you have in your repertoire is rhubarb porridge. No bother, another quick trip to town for some rhubarb. No, you can only buy rhubarb seeds. No bother, I'll plant them ASAP and wait for them to grow. But it takes three days. No bother, the guest will just have to wait. But he wants to be fed today. Well, crispy fish pie will just have to do then. He sits down, he eats, he shakes his head, and our friendship has improved. I immediately hassle him for a gift for cooking such a slap-up meal.

Tales of the Shire is a mystery to me. It has a tranquil aesthetic, capturing life in the Shire with verdant hills and babbling brooks and nooks and crannies to explore. Yet it doesn't make things easy. Each day is short, racing through dawn, morning, afternoon, evening, and night, and it's punishing if you happen to be busy when night comes, forcing you to sleep outside and wake up late, further eating into your day and adding to the stress.

There's a lot to pack in, too, from manually watering the plants to ensuring invite people over regularly enough for dinner so that grudes don't start to brew. When my first hobbit pal grows grumpy at me, it makes me unreasonably sad. I'd only had a letter through the post that morning informing me that the grudge was imminent, but it didn't give me any time to react. This hobbit is mad that I haven't had him over for a meal recently, the same hobbit that called another villager a "half-wit" for not delivering his post on time. I didn't know this was Social Anxiety: The Game.

But the frustration comes in just how much there is to unlock to enjoy the game properly. There are areas of the map I've not yet been able to access, as well as rooms in my home and space in the garden, but by far the most irritating are the cooking stations, which you must jump through hoops to unlock. The cooking itself is overcomplicated while somehow being too simplified. You start off with a chopping board, and ingredients can be made either chunky or smooth, but when you unlock the frying pan, you can change the texture and refine the meal. Achieving flavor combinations requires a good bit of guesswork, and you can increase your star rating by using better ingredients, but other times, you just slap recipes in a bowl, then it's suddenly done (I hope the hobbits are craving raw pastry). I've also discovered a ton of seasoning and ingredients that I can't use as I don't have the right cooking station yet, and - bizarrely - the frying pan makes meals tender and the mixing bowl makes meals crispy, but maybe that's Tolkien lore.

In trying to unlock these things, I'm not fully relaxing into the game; I'm not spending my days skipping through the woods, fishing on the jetty, or mooching around unexplored areas of the map. I'm spending my days in turmoil that I need to find a specific ingredient of a specific flavor to satisfy a specific craving in fear of the wrath of an unhappy hobbit. Not that it seems to matter anyway, as upsetting my neighbors just slows down the speed at which they grow to like me.

The characters are, however, well drawn out and mostly a joy to interact with, and some familiar faces also crop up. Though the map is tricky to navigate as it all looks so similar, there are sweet birds that serve as a navigational tool by bounding between fence posts to show you the way to go. The recipes look delicious too, and I love serving comically oversized meals when my hobbit friends come over.

I've played around with the design tools, changing my wallpaper and moving the furniture around, acquiring new pieces from gifts or the local store, and making my home a bit more me. It's satisfying but still dishevelled. The boarded-up door, the rusty gate, and the overgrown garden lying beyond serve as a reminder of just how much more work I must do. But it'll have to wait. I have a hobbit coming for lunch.