At first glance, Dungeons of Hinterberg may seem like another Zelda clone, a pale imitation of the shadowy outlines you see wandering around the game’s magical Austrian town. Or maybe it feels like one of those games that are so busy chasing trends that they often go around in confusing circles, not unlike the first simple monsters you fight when you arrive. But stick around, just a dungeon or two, and you’ll experience one of this year’s highlights: a game that exudes care and attention in each of its many parts.
You play the role of Lusia, a disgruntled lawyer who arrives in the small Austrian town of Hinterberg for a much-needed vacation. The town has become a tourist magnet in recent years, attracting brave adventurers from all over the world thanks to the Zelda-style dungeons that suddenly appeared one day. The town and its surroundings are home to 25 of these labyrinths full of puzzles and monsters, and your goal is to solve them all. Rushing through the dungeons, however, would mean not understanding anything. After all, you are on vacation, or as they say, on holiday, and interacting with locals and other visitors is already half the battle.
Dungeons of Hinterberg is built on a deceptively simple foundation of combat and exploration. Fights take place in small enclosures and you can dodge and use light or heavy attacks. When you’re not fighting, you’re solving environmental puzzles that involve switches, moving objects, obstacles, etc. As mentioned in the introduction, this has all been seen countless times before, and the same goes for the exploration and socialization aspect. But that doesn’t matter at all, as every part of the game is extremely polished and well put together.
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It all starts with magic, which is introduced once you’ve completed the first dungeon. Your first spells are Wrecking Ball and Ball and Chain. As the name suggests, they’re very effective in combat, but their real value lies in puzzle-solving. For example, you might need to drop the wrecking ball on a slope, wait for it to fall, and use your chain attack at the right moment to lower a bridge. Or you might need to use the wrecking ball to hold down a pressure plate so you can break through a door. Each of the game’s four core zones has a unique main and ranged ability, such as a flying snowboard, jelly cube, and electrical pulse, and the developer uses these magical abilities to create some excellent, elaborate puzzles. Better yet, each dungeon is truly unique, and the developer isn’t afraid to throw in new ideas. One dungeon has something of Super Mario Galaxy about it, while another effortlessly switches to an isometric perspective reminiscent of Hades.
In many games, this creativity fades due to a lack of direction, but not in Dungeons of Hinterberg. The game is sharply focused and it’s hard to believe this is developer Microbird Games’ debut title. Each dungeon is carefully designed and, while the puzzles are sometimes challenging, they’re never unfair or obtuse. There are no chatty helpers or pop-up messages to guide the player in the right direction, as they simply aren’t necessary. Each dungeon revolves around one or two specific mechanics, such as lifting platforms or rolling carts, and gradually eases you into the game with simple introductory puzzles that quickly become more complex. The key to this, in my opinion, is that in each dungeon you’re limited to the two spells discovered in the main hub. Rather than having you dig through a wide range of tools in the hope of stumbling upon a solution, the game challenges you to be creative with a relatively limited number of possible interactions, which works wonders.
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I spent quite a bit of time on the puzzles, as they’re the best part of the game, at least for me, but thankfully the combat isn’t too far off. Its main function may be to break up the more intellectual gameplay with some hack-and-slash action, but don’t think for a minute that you can turn your brain off completely. As mentioned, spells can help you a lot in fights – provided you have enough mana – and over time you’ll also unlock attack channels (powerful combat skills with cooldowns) and combos. The enemies, which are creatures from Germanic folklore, show limited signs of intelligence (so you shouldn’t feel too bad about taking them out), but the combat is far from pointless, as they can overwhelm you with their sheer numbers or their spells or occasional trick. Overall, the combat is nimble and fun, and there’s a ton of customization, as some skills, such as the ‘Sword’, can be customized to your liking. For example, a perfect dodge that gives you a brief window of time slowing down comes in the form of optional skills that you have to prioritize. It’s no God of War, but it’s still very solid.
Puzzles and combat are the bread and butter of the experience, but fear not, there’s plenty of sauce to mix it all up. There’s plenty of optional content in the central areas, such as chests to find, monsters to fight, and quests to complete. They also function a bit like play zones, where you can test and familiarize yourself with your skills before putting them to the test in the dungeons. And of course, the areas themselves are beautiful to look at and explore, with a nice comic book aesthetic and plenty of little touches. If you get tired of all the adventuring, you can even rest at a designated viewpoint, marveling at the majestic snow-capped peaks of Kolmstein, or dreaming among the golden leaves of the backwoods.
Completing a dungeon or spending time at a rest stop will give you time into the evening, where you can explore the town of Hinterberg itself. This also lets you sell and buy items or visit places like the cinema for a little stat boost. But the main event is the opportunity for social interaction, improving your relationship with the townspeople or tourists. With more than a dozen different characters, like former ski racer and TV personality Klaus and Hannah, a sort of new-age blacksmith, there’s plenty of variety. And even if you don’t find any of them particularly interesting, you can still enjoy the unique benefits they reward you with. The buffs themselves aren’t the typical +2 attack modifiers or 5% increased movement speed. Entire subsystems like attack combos and weapon enchantments are locked behind these relationship walls, making your time in Hinterberg truly unique depending on who you interact with.
Many interesting points are raised in the conversations, and while the development of some of the side stories is a little heavy-handed, they are all sufficiently well-crafted. Overall, the script and direction of the scenes are of high quality, and while I personally didn’t like the characters or their highly stylized appearance, I can at least respect the quality on offer. The overall story starts off fairly slow, but takes up about a third of the game, and while it didn’t completely impress me, it does have interesting things to say about tourism, the corrupting influence of money, folklore, and many other topics.
I could probably go on and on about Dungeons of Hinterberg, and there are still many mechanics and subsystems I haven’t talked about yet. So much ambition, especially coming from a small studio, often leads to chaotic, directionless gameplay, but Microbird Games has avoided those pitfalls. It’s a shame they’re from Austria, because I really want to compare the set to a Swiss watch: every single part is of extremely high quality and harmonizes almost perfectly with each other. For a debut title, that’s just impressive.
However, with such limited resources, some bugs do creep in, although we’re a long way from modern AAA titles, which have more bugs than your average rainforest. What I didn’t like was the division of the already small town into separate zones, requiring quick (admittedly almost instant) movement between them. Another criticism is that movement, while functional, tends to be very stiff when jumping or moving around ledges. I guess it’s best described as a stiff version of how you did things in the old Assassin’s Creed titles, which were already pretty clunky! Thankfully, movement only got really frustrating in a few cases, such as when I was fighting on a moving raft and kept ending up in the lake, forcing me to restart (swimming is one of the few things you can’t do in this game). As for actual bugs, I played on PC and didn’t notice anything really negative other than a wobbly object here and there.
