There are so many games which use the name "the lord of the rings", there are new ones based on the movie, old ones which are "based" on the book, so why should i make another one?

The most new games are action games. just hack'n slay. nice for losing some frustrations, but they get boring very soon. they old ones are text adventures and role playing games, produced for classics like apple II, commodore 64, nintendo. more of the kind i prefer. but what I missed was, that they had too much stuff in it, which didn't fit to the book. i don't like playing a frodo, who has to find lost kids, fight spiders in areas, where they normally don't appear and things like that. so i grabbed all the books of tolkien and read them. again and again.

after all i found so many ideas for quests, that I thought it'd be worth to make a new game.
in my game you will play frodo and his fellowship, but not only them. as in the the first part of their journey only a few things happened, which would be so boring (if you think it's not boring just to walk, eat and sleep, you're really a hobbit )and the fact that i didn't want to change the story, the idea was born, to let the player get control of other characters in middle earth. you will hear many storys from the past in the game, like bilbo's escape in barrels (the hobbit), striders search for gollum, and others from the hobbit and the silmarillion. if you meet a character in the game who tells you more about the stories from the past you can play it. you can sneak through the halls of the elven king as bilbo and have to rescue your dwarf friends, you can play beren, the sons of elrond and many other characters on middle earth. but you'll never play something which didn't happen.

about he layout of the levels. reading the books again and again gave me a picture of middle earth. my picture. there are thounsands of other pictures outside. i don't want to destroy them. so i decided to capture this details, which every lotr-fan has in her/his mind.
the details j.r.r. tolkien wrote about. like the round doors in the hobbit holes.

i grapped every map of middle earth that tolkien ever made and began to create the world on my computer. after the first maps where done in their basic forms (only with woods, fields, mountains and hills), the first settlers arrived. i found a very detailed map of hobbiton, with it's regular houses in the south, the mill, the smials in bagshot row and after all a detailed map of the inside of bagend, in which every room from kitchen to cellar is mentioned. i read the books again to get more information on the buildings and i found it. like the typical structure of the smials (hobbit-holes), the material the houses in the southh were made of and stuff like that. i tried to capture all these small things and after a month of working again and again on the small village it was hobbiton. ok, it looks like my hobbiton in some parts. but 90% of it is based on the small details tolkien wrote down.

after the buildings where completed, i put plants like the party tree on the map. flowers, fields, rocks. to give this ghost town more live, i put the hobbits on it. farmers, the miller, women, men and children. I liked it more and more. but it wasn't looking like a real village. i looked outside (thanx god that i don't live in big city )and i knew what was missing. again i worked on it. birds, butterflys and other animals gave hobbiton even more live. after another work on the details, like fences, clothes which dry in the garden, some wood for the chimneys it was almost done. the last details where such as cabbage on the farmer's fields, chests on the market place and the "happy birthday bilbo baggins" sign at the party place.

now i think it's done. in this scheme i did the other maps, like the rest of the shire, the wood where tom bombadil lives, bree, and some others. actually you can walk form hobbiton to weathertop.

when will the game be finished? when it's done . as i make this game in my spare time, which isn't too much and lose so much time in getting as much as possible details in it, it'll take a few months until you can play "the fellowship of the ring". i hope i can present it as i planned on the 22th of septembre, bilbo'ss birthday and the day when the advenutre started...

if there's someone out there, who wants to help me (draw pictures/title screen, giving me resources like for the soundtrack in midi-format, etc.) leave me a message. you'll get your part in the "credits"

ps: actually all parts of the game are in german. but there will be an english version as well.

pps: send me your wishes for the screenshot galleries.eg: "i want to see balin's tomb". or "complete map of hobbiton without living details", "can i see the members of the fellowship?" i'll post them as soon as possible.