Dungeons of Hinterberg

At first glance Dungeons of Hinterberg might look like just another Zelda-clone, a pale imitation in the vein of the shadowy outlines you'll see wandering around the game's magically infused Austrian village. Or it might seem like one of those games that is so busy chasing trends that it mostly ends up running around in confused circles, not unlike the first simple monsters that you fight upon your arrival. But stick around, just for a dungeon or two, and you'll experience one of this year's absolute highlights - a game that oozes care and attention from each of its many parts.

You play as Lusia, a disgruntled lawyer, who arrives at the small Austrian village of Hinterberg for some much-needed vacation. The village has been transformed into a tourist magnet during the last few years, drawing in brave adventurers from all over the world, thanks to the Zelda-like dungeons that one day suddenly appeared. The town and surrounding countryside host 25 of these puzzle and monster ridden mazes, and your goal is to complete them all. Yet, rushing through the dungeons would be missing the point entirely. After all you are on a vacation, or a slaycation, as it's called, and engaging with the locals and fellow visitors is half of the experience.

Dungeons of Hinterberg is built on a deceptively simple foundation of combat and exploration. Fighting takes place in small enclosures, and you can dodge and perform either light or heavy attacks. When you aren't fighting, you are solving environmental puzzles, involving switches, moving objects, obstacles and so on. As mentioned in the intro, it has all been seen countless times before, and the same can be said of the exploration and socializing aspect. But this doesn't matter one bit, as each of the game's parts are extremely polished and well-put together.

It all starts with magic which is introduced once you have completed the first dungeon. Your first spells are Wrecking Ball and Ball & Chain. As the names suggest, these are highly effective in battle, but their real value is in terms of solving puzzles. For example, you might need to drop the wrecking ball on a slope, wait for it to fall, and, at just the right time, lower a bridge with your ranged chain attack. Or you might need to use the wrecking ball to keep a pressure plate down, letting you move through a gate. Each of the games four hub areas have a unique main and ranged skills, such as a flying snowboard, a jelly cube and an electric pulse, and the developer uses these magic skills to craft some excellent and elaborate puzzles. Even better, each dungeon is truly unique, and the developer is not afraid to introduce new ideas. One dungeon has a bit of Super Mario Galaxy thing going one, while another effortlessly shift to an isometric perspective reminiscent of Hades.

Such creativity fizzles out due to a lack of direction in many games, but not so in Dungeons of Hinterberg. The game has a razor-sharp focus, and it's hard to believe that it's the developer Microbird Games' debut title. Each dungeon is meticulously crafted, and while the puzzles are sometimes challenging, they are never unfair or obtuse. There are no talkative helper or pop-up messages to guide the player in the right direction, as it's simply not required. Each dungeon is themed around a specific mechanic or two, such as rising platforms or rolling carts, and gradually eases you into things with easy introductory puzzles that quickly become more complex. What I think is key here is that each dungeon limits you to the two spells that have been discovered in the main hub. Instead of letting you fumble through a wide assortment of tools hoping to stumble upon a solution, the game challenges you to be creative with a rather limited set of possible interactions which works wonders.

I've spent quite some time on the puzzles as they, for me at least, are the best part of the game, but luckily the combat doesn't come far off. Its main function might be to break off the more cerebral gameplay with some hack and slash action, but do not for a minute think that you can just shut off your brain completely. As mentioned, spells can help you a lot during battles - providing you have enough mana - and with time you also unlock attack conduits (powerful combat abilities on a cooldown) and combos. The enemies, which are creatures from Germanic folklore, show only limited signs of intelligence (so you shouldn't feel too bad about cutting them down), but combat is still far from being mindless as they can overwhelm you with sheer numbers or an occasional spell or trick. Overall, combat is snappy and fun, and there is a large part of customization as some abilities, such as a perfect dodge giving you a short window where time is slowed down, comes in the form of optional abilities that you must priories. It's not God of War, but it's still very solid.

Puzzles and fighting form the meat and potatoes of the experience, but fear not, there is plenty of gravy to mix it all together. The hub areas have plenty of optional content such as chests to find, monsters to fight and quests to complete. They also function a bit like playgrounds, letting you try out and become familiar with your abilities, before they are put to test in the dungeons. And of course, the areas are in themselves beautiful to look at and explore with a nice comic style aesthetic and plenty of small details. If you get tired of all the adventuring, you can even choose to rest on a designated scenic spot taking in the majestic snowy peaks of Kolmstein or daydreaming among the golden leaves in the forestry Hinterwald.

Completing a dungeon or passing time at a resting spot moves the time forward to the evening, where you are free to explore the town of Hinterberg itself. This also allows you to sell and buy items or visit locations such as the cinema for a small stat boost. But the main event is the chance to have a social interaction that boosts your relationship with townspeople or tourists. With over a dozen varied characters, such as the former alpine skier and TV personality Klaus and Hannah, a sort of new age weaponsmith, there is plenty of variety. And even if you don't find any of them particularly interesting, you can still enjoy the unique perks they reward you with. The perks themselves are far from your average +2 attack or 5% faster movement modifiers. Complete subsystems such as attack combos and weapon enchantments, are locked behind these relationship walls, making your stay in Hinterberg truly unique depending on who you choose to interact with.

The conversations touch on many interesting points, and where some substories are a bit heavy-handed in their delivery, they are all well enough put together. Writing and cutscene direction is generally of a high quality, and while I personally didn't really jell with neither the characters nor their heavily stylized look, I can at least respect the quality that's on offer. The overall story starts quite slow but picks up pace around a third into the game, and while I wasn't completely blown away, it does have some interesting things to say about tourism, the corrupting influence of money, folklore and plenty of other topics.

I could probably go on and on about Dungeons of Hinterberg, and there are still plenty of mechanics and subsystems I haven't really discussed. Such ambition, especially when coming from a smaller studio, often leads to a messy, directionless game, but Microbird Games have avoided such pitfalls. It's too bad they're Austrian, for I really want to compare the game to a Swiss clock - each of the individual parts are of extremely high quality and work together in nearly perfect harmony. For a debut title, this is just extremely impressive.

That being said, with such limited resources, some faults do creep in, though we are far from the modern AAA-titles that have more bugs than your average rainforest. One thing that I didn't enjoy was how the already small town is divided into separate areas that requires (an admittedly near instantaneous) fast travel between them. Another criticism is that the movement, while functional, does tend to be very stiff when jumping or moving around ledges. I guess it can best be described as a stiff version of how you moved about in older Assassin's Creed titles - and these were clunky enough to begin with! Luckily, the movement only really became frustrating in a few instances such as when I was fighting on a moving raft and constantly ended in the lake forcing me to restart (swimming being one of the few things you can't do in this game). In terms of actual bugs, I was playing on PC and didn't really experience anything negative, besides a jittering object here and there.