Dungeons of Hinterberg | Review

Enjoy your slay!

Jon "Sikamikanico" Clarke July 18, 2024Last Updated: July 18, 2024

0 915 7 minutes read

Welcome to Dungeons of Hinterberg, where relaxation, sightseeing, dungeon crawling, and monster slaying go hand-in-hand. Set in a fictional town in the mountains of Austria, Hinterberg is particularly unique because, in this world, magic is real, and has broken out across the small village and its surrounding areas, resulting in a massive tourism boom.

As it turns out, transforming dungeon crawling into an international tourist attraction brings would-be adventurers flocking to the town in droves to experience their very own ‘slay-cation’. It goes without saying, that there’s a lot of money riding on this ‘real-life’ monsters and magic industry, and that brings a whole host of problems along for the ride.

For some additional reading/content, check out my interview with the co-founders of Microbird Games, Developers of Dungeons of Hinterberg right here!

Slaying 9 to 5

In Dungeons of Hinterberg, you play as Luisa. She’s journeyed to the small Austrian town (itself inspired by the incredible-looking Halstatt) to try a little magic and adventuring herself, seeking to escape her hum-drum city life as a trainee lawyer.

The game itself is a delightful medley of various genres. We’ve got hack-n-slash monster slaying and magic casting, all layered with some light RPG systems in addition to loot, armor various upgrades, charms, and enchantments to find and equip.

Sprinkled on top of all that is a generous helping of social sim-style relationship building, tasking you with making friends and building meaningful relationships with the many wonderful characters across Hinterberg.

Each day you’ll spend in Hinterberg and its surrounding areas is split into three sections – the morning, which usually involves some conversation and occasional plot development, and then a decision on which region to visit for the day. Noon, where we’ll go out on our main dungeon-crawling expedition if we so choose, and then the Evening, where we will socialize, shop, and explore the town of Hinterberg itself.

Can we be besties now?

While this is a great way to make me feel like I’m actually on a sort of virtual holiday, one of the most interesting effects I found this routine produced in me is I became genuinely invested in the characters and relationships Louisa maintained.

It helps of course, that dedicating time to specific individuals can benefit you in surprising ways. You can just choose to hang out with the character that interests you the most, but savvy players can check the log and see what perks may be coming down the line by seeking out specific characters to focus on and befriend.

Spend time befriending a reluctant journalist, and you’ll unlock a photo mode for the game to snap cool pictures to your heart’s content. Engage in a spot of combat training with one initially surly character to unlock a hit counter to see during combat. Other characters may guide you to a hidden dungeon or improve your overall health and magic abilities. The game doesn’t force you down one path too much most of the time – there are some characters I barely interacted with at all.

Dungeons of Hinterberg breaks down these relationships into 4 categories that can rank up – Renown, Amusement, Relaxation and Familiarity, and depending on your points in each of these, will unlock other characters for you to interact with, in addition to improvements on certain armor and weapons. For example, having a high renown score can allow access to certain locked-off areas and their associated dungeons that only ‘Elite Slayers’ get to engage with.

Earn enough amusement, and you can hang with big-named “Social Media Influencers” or other influential guests and gain access to nightclubs or fancy restaurants. On some nights, many characters will gather around a communal campfire.

It’s always worth checking your map to see who’s hanging around, as engaging in a group activity can level up multiple relationships at once. Of course, you can choose to be entirely anti-social and chill out on your own. Maybe catch a movie at the local cinema, or spend some time in a Spa getting pampered. These will all help increase levels in different ways.

Explorin’, brawlin’ and dungeon crawlin’.

There are four main areas around Hinterberg to go and explore. There are the rolling hills of ‘Doberkogel’, which is the first area you’ll get to explore following a brief tutorial on various slaying mechanics in addition to the game’s overarching narrative.

‘Hinterwald’ is an autumnal and mythical forest area, with a large number of nooks and crannies to explore, all adorned with ziplines, giant trees, and spiky thorns. Oh, and numerous dungeons of course. Then we have ‘Kolmstein‘, all ice and snow-covered mountains and chairlifts (and incidentally, my favorite in terms of magical traversal) and lastly, ‘Bunnelsumpf‘, a foggy, reed-covered marshland with islands you can only reach by boat.

Each of these main areas has a skill shrine to visit that equips Luisa with a particular sort of magic that is unique to that area, with a near and ranged variant to play with. In ‘Doberkogel’ for example, we unlock a triggerable bomb and a chain-shot of sorts that allows us to drag items (or enemies!) towards us. The hover snowboard and purple laser you get in ‘Kolmstein‘ never got old – hurtling at speed through the snow and across magical purple grinding rails was a delight, every time.

When you’ve decided where you want to go, you can walk around and explore the area and choose to engage with the various dungeons available to you. Each dungeon entrance is depicted by a bright purple gate and shows you the appropriate offensive and defensive levels you need to reach, so you’ll always know whether you’re at the right level for the battle ahead. Some dungeons require hunting down, others only unlock when you’ve completed a certain number in the area first.

Dungeon Delights

The imagination and level of design chops on display in Dungeons of Hinterberg are frankly, brilliant. There are 25 dungeons strewn across the main areas for you to tackle, with the magic unique to each area key to making it thro ugh alive. Sometimes the levels will become 2D side scrollers, or planet-scaling snowboarding playgrounds for you to hurtle through at great speed.

Others will transform into isometric labyrinths with more than a dash of Monument Valley added in for good measure. Some dungeons are almost pure puzzling with a dash of combat, others are more challenging combat with basic puzzles instead, and there are even bosses to contend with to, on occasion.

One particular dungeon even had me playing spot the difference in and out of different doors, with the area I was in changing in subtle ways each time. My point is – I never once got bored, or frustrated with the dungeon crawling, and it never outstayed it’s welcome which is an impressive feat for a smaller team.

Sometimes, just like during any holiday, you may not want to go dungeon crawling at all. Maybe you’d like to find a quiet spot, and just take in the view. Breathe in that mountain air. Hidden around the main hubs are spots just like that, where you can spend the afternoon just watching the day go by, and you’ll get a nice stat bump for your trouble. Sometimes it’s good to just…unwind.

Hack’n’slash

Combat, which is a relatively simple light/heavy sword attack affair is nice and responsive, with Luisa able to roll out of danger with the press of a B button, provided she has enough stamina. Various health and magic boosting potions can be assigned to a quick select system for use in a jam, but on the game’s standard difficulty, I only really started having trouble later in the game, bar a few difficulty spikes here and there.

With the added variety of magic powers – embedding a monster in a large summonable block of jelly was always a good time – there’s a delightful dance to the combat. Add in some special moves – be it a swirling whirlwind of swords or a battle cry that briefly stuns your enemies. It’s just a nice, solid combat system that rewards quick thinking. There is a strange sort of slowdown sometimes when using the whirlwind move that I experienced on occasion, but nothing game-breaking to my eyes.

There is a story mode difficulty for those looking for less of a challenge, and for younger players, a ‘god’ mode of sorts, with players unable to lose the last health point they have, effectively making them invincible.

Playing on PC with a controller, I was pleased to see ultra-wide support straight out of the gate, and the game ran superbly, bar one odd crash where Luisa got stuck in mid-air. One fix I’d recommend the development team look into is the selling of trash items found in the various locales.

On mouse, you can use the scroll wheel to increase the number (sometimes into the hundreds!) pretty swiftly. On controller, you had to press up on the left stick or D-pad each time, which would mean over 300+ button presses just to offload my rubbish for some hinterbucks, the town’s unique ‘hero’ currency. Not fun, and probably a minor design oversight.

Visually, I think the art style is wonderful – it’s bright and bold, with this fun, cel-shaded look that never gets old. I particularly loved the way far-away characters would be greyed out like in various animations and comic books, slowly filling with color and definition as I got closer. Occasionally, things can get a little confusing visually, and on one occasion it took me a moment to realize I was being killed by thorns on the floor, due to the overall noise of the visuals at times.

The music is nice and varied for the most part. Although the combat music got a bit repetitive after a while, I really loved a number of tracks that kicked in when exploring the main areas – particularly when snowboarding.

Despite the lack of voice acting, the characters are mostly memorable, and I was delighted at just how into the plot I got. Uncovering the mystery of just why magic has returned to the real world, and what the purpose of the dungeons truly is, had me absolutely hooked from start to finish.

Book Stamped

An incredible, nigh-on herculean effort from a very small team, developers Microbird Games have made something very special in Dungeons of Hinterberg. In my 20 or so hours exploring, I found a successful medley of genres with enjoyable combat and a variety of gameplay mechanics resulting in something uniquely memorable.

Throw in a whole heap of imaginative puzzling and level design, great characters, and a surprisingly engaging plot to boot, and I can’t help but give this vacation spot very high marks indeed. I thoroughly enjoyed my ‘slay’.