A relaxing Slaycation
In the small Austrian village of Hinterberg, there lies a secret. No, it’s not that magic flows throughout its lush countryside, or the monsters that populate its lands. It’s not the abilities, weapons, or gear you’ll discover, purchase, and upgrade. Rather, this secret lives in the background; watching, waiting, and plotting. And, as vacationer Luisa is set to discover, some secrets are desperate to come to light.
Luisa travels to the small town of Hinterberg to escape her mundane and boring life. She is a Lawyer. Was… a Lawyer, and is intent on pushing her world into the background if only for a few short weeks. While she visited Hinterberg in her youth, this latest trip is during a time where Hinterberg is known for its magical dungeons, a series of 25 attractions that contain magic, discovery, and an escape you simply can’t find anywhere.
Before magic arrived at this small little village, it was a quaint tourist hotspot that felt like any typical place. However, when portals began to appear all over its countryside, and you could wield magical spells to fight off a series of dangerous monsters, it caused Hinterberg to be a destination sought after by those wanting a break from the every day, a way to channel all that frustration and ordinary into extraordinary.
As magic began to bring in tourists, influencers, celebrities, and the rich, it caused Hinterberg to change, to adapt to what it would continue to be, not what it had been. While many would see this popularity as a boon, some would see it as the loss of what identity that small village originally had, cast into vacational stardom by their newly elected mayor. And as you begin to discover more about this magic and its place in Hinterberg, something starts to not sit right, that there is something else going on here that has caused the village to not only prosper in tourism, but also experience earthquakes, disasters, and more. Something is wrong in Hinterberg, but why won’t anyone do anything about it?
Luisa’s journey in Hinterberg is to discover more about herself. She hates her job. Hated… her job, and begins her journey to become a slayer. She’s introduced to the ins and outs by a local celebrity, a man she remembers watching on tv, and begins to make friends with a few other tourists, as well as a few locals. These friendships are more than just moments of conversation as getting to know each and every person in the village can cause that friendship to grow. While there isn’t a romance mechanic, leveling up that friendship will cause different perks and bonuses to factor into the gameplay. From rarer loot dropping in battle to additional HP, MP, and stamina, you’ll unlock the photo mode, earn extra Hinterbucks, and gain the ability to upgrade and enhance your weapons and gear.
The dungeons of Hinterberg reside in 4 key zones. A smooth hike through the alpine pastures of Doberkogel, a deep old forest in Hinterwald, an icy glacier in Kolmstein, or the swampy marshland in Brunnelsumpf. Each area has its own collection of dungeons that you must seek out. You’ll find signposts to guide you, but they only reveal nearby locations as opposed to those that lurk well beyond your starting point. Each location has different methods to explore such as using a snowboard ability to get around Kolmstein or a kayak to reach various islands around the mashlands in Brunnelsumpf. These areas will often present puzzles or challenges to reach some of the more indirect dungeons, such as lowering the waterline or simply having to rely on particular story moments to provide passage. These areas are also travelled by the various townsfolk and tourists, each seeking out their own sense of adventure or there to assist Luisa in their own way.
Planning out your day to explore these locations is where the general loop begins. You’ll have the morning, afternoon, evening, and night, to tend to a series of traits. Renown, Amusement, Familiarity, and Relaxation, are all affected by what you are doing throughout the day. Morning is usually reserved for choosing where to go, your afternoon is tending to exploring one of the four locations, either taking in a dungeon or finding a nice view to relax to. Your evening is then spent engaging with the people who make up Hinterberg and taking in a spot of shopping. You may want to first spend time with Hannah who runs the local magicshop to increase her ability to make your weapons and gear stronger or maybe you’ll just want to pet her dog, who can aid in tracking down various secrets as well as boosting the appearance of rarer gear.
Some members of the cast are more regular, such as Alex, who becomes something of a confidant, assisting in plotting out your evenings when you tend to the more narrative pieces of the story. You’ll also have to contend with a few celebrities and ace slayers, such as Jae, a pro slayer from East Asia, to a German influencer in Kai, not to mention a pro slayer by the name of Sam, who has a love for the celebrity lifestyle. Each character has their own arcs within the story and while you can give them gifts to boost that friendship, each of these people are worth getting to know solely for their boosts to your overall gameplay, as mentioned previously.
By interacting with any of them throughout the evening, or a group of them at the campfire, you’ll earn advancement in one or several of those four traits. After which, you’ll return to the Inn to either read a book, watch some tv, each of which affects those traits but also make you weaker the next day, or get a good night’s sleep and retain that extra health. This essentially makes the morning and the night to be the least active when it comes to real choice and gameplay. Each cycle will then allow a day to pass. I was able to work through each of the dungeons in 26 days, with the bulk of the cast being solid to decent friends with Luisa by the end.
Hinterberg itself is split up into zones: Main Square, Shopping Street, Tourist Area, and the location that houses the Inn that Luisa is staying at. There are shops to buy potions, gear, weapons, and gifts, but these are only accessible in the evening as morning will ship you right off to one of the four regions with little to no time for much more than a brief conversation or story event. The village itself is fairly big, but locations are fast travelled to as you cannot walk around the entire village from one area to the next. Thankfully, the map also illustrates who is where, making it easy to follow up with a particular character to wrap up their questline. It is possible to complete the game with leaving certain narrative threads hanging, so keep that in mind.
The dungeons themselves vary based on the region, but as you enter into said region, you’ll need to acquire the magic of that area first as that magic will not be available elsewhere. These vary from creating cubes out of slime to allow you to reach higher places to being able to snowboard around the glacial resort. Other locations have you creating tornadoes from your fingertips to a large metal ball that can explode at your beck and call. Each magic also has a range variant, such as a laser blast to hurling around a spiked ball on a chain. These abilities also factor into combat with the cube trapping nearby enemies as you wail around on them to entering into your tornado as you damage them as you spin around. The limitation of each magic being restricted to its own zone is twofold; first, it allows puzzles to be tailored to their use and allows each area to feel purposeful in its design. However, on the flipside of that, it prevents the use of interchanging those powers to create very elaborate concepts and builds for its puzzles and combat. While there is a tease of this later on, it only furthers my desire for this to have been the default. If we ever get a sequel, this is my most requested feature.
As it stands, the puzzles are fine and are sometimes thoughtful, but are extremely easy to not just figure out, but even to accidentally brute force them considering there really isn’t any sort of red hearing to confuse or mislead you. I don’t think there was a single puzzle that really made me impressed or even remotely stumped me. Most puzzles only have one or two interaction points and you’ll solve it while you assume there was probably something more to it. Most puzzles have you interact with one object to grant you access to another spot to then press a button there to then go back to the first location and proceed. They do get more involved as the game goes on, but you’ll never once be stuck trying to figure out what you need to do.
Some levels will shake things up by offering different perspectives. From side-scrolling platforming to an isometric view, these distractions are fine enough, but don’t control terribly well in some instances, especially if the camera or certain elements are blocking your path. Thankfully, the bulk of the game is what you’ll see in trailers as you move naturally around in a full 3D landscape with the ability to move the camera.
Now, with so many dungeons and a somewhat decent selection of enemies and bosses to fight, combat is the most used series of mechanics present in the game. Thankfully, combat is fairly good here but does have a mild sense of repetition once you find the abilities and perks that work for you. While you can shake things up to have that variety, I generally found a good kit that worked well and rarely changed from it, unless it was try out the new hotness.
Luisa will only use a sword, meaning those slayers in town with all sorts of different weapon types… well, maybe we will see that level of variety in a sequel, but for now, Luisa is only able to wield a sword. I’ll also stress that while you can buy or find different swords, they don’t change in appearance, and neither does her armor. Luisa’s look doesn’t change regardless of the armor, elbow pads, or leggings you’ll find. While that is likely to refrain from making a series of different character models, even different colors to her outfit would have been welcomed.
Luisa will have a medium attack, a heavy attack, a dodge roll, and access to potions and abilities. Attack Conduits are set skills that will vary based on the slots you have available. These range from bladed tornadoes, leaping attacks, and meteor strikes, to ranged attack slices that cut through anything in front of you. These are varied in their function, but there are not too many of them to really make you feel spoiled for choice. You’ll also have access to charms that boost stats, such as unleashing a shockwave on a kill, deflecting damage, to increasing your defense or offense.
As you interact with Hannah and other people in town, you’ll be able to utilize these systems more. From reducing the use-cost of your charms, you can equip more of them. By leveling up your sword or armor, you’ll gain additional stats. You can also buy different conduit attacks or ways to increase their charge rate. Nearly every system present in the game is built to make you faster, stronger, and more capable. Honestly, this is the best overall feature set of what the team has done here; it all works.
The actual act of combat varies based on the level as you’ll occasionally have different angles to fight from. More often than not; however, combat is the standard camera as you dodge and lock-on, dealing out swings of your swords or using your conduit skills. Being the small team size that Microbird is, there are not too many enemy types and you’ll see a lot of the same ones over and over again. There are small ones, big ones, and those that have unique skills, often replicating what your conduit attacks can do, especially the bladed tornado skill. I think combat works well enough, but I was never truly impressed by it, as it tends to offer the bare minimum of what I was expecting. It’s functional, but standard sword play is wildly basic.
One thing I did want to mention is that while it may be a small nitpick, Luisa cannot manually jump. Jumping is typical of some of the older Zelda games where it is situational, such as running off a platform and then the jump animation automatically takes place. Now, by not allowing Luisa to jump, it preserves the design of the world and its puzzles. It prevents over design to not allow sequence breaking. However, the amount of times I had to run around to an elevated path or get stuck behind something knee high, was pretty frequent. I can understand why there is no jump, but the little hang ups of not being able to access a knee high ledge or something small was, as I said, constant. Luisa will only jump or climb things of a certain height or gap width, making its use very design-focused. Again, I understand why it is like it is, I just wish there was some sort of compromise.
Part of Dungeons of Hinterberg’s appeal is in its striking and colorful visuals. I remember playing through Journey to the Savage Planet and trigging one of the visual modes in the game. It provided a colorful world surrounded in its line-art, making it feel very animated. While that game was likely not the inspiration here, the presentation of its world feels and looks nearly identical. Some areas remind me of Mike Mignola’s artwork, as his illustrations of the world of Hellboy were heavy in their contrast, with rich blacks that made other colors and details pop. I think DOH is a gorgeous game in that regard, but its cast doesn’t have the elaborate character models to show off as much detail. In fact, climbing a ladder with Luisa shows off the rigging and spine of the character in an odd way, but otherwise, when you are in cutscenes or combat, the character models are fine enough, giving off that cell-shaded look we’ve seen several times before.
While my time with DOH was pre-release, I did experience several bugs that required me to reset the game. One locked my hand in a position of using my ranged skills, preventing me from doing any sort of attack without flying around the level, often above nothing and cast outside the playing area. Reloading wouldn’t work as the loading screen would appear, and while I could hear combat and my game playable, I couldn’t see anything. I got stuck in the environment several times, to which a jump would have freed me. Instead, I had to reload my last save. Given my early access to the game via a near-complete build, I would likely assume these issues and more won’t be present in the final build and don’t really affect my score, given their extreme infrequency.
Dungeons of Hinterberg was a game I was immediately interested in when it was first shown off. I had been following its development closely and was eager to dive in. In the end, it was an experience that started strong and ended equally that strong. While I certainly have minor issues with some basic combat and its far too simple puzzles, I still find Dungeons of Hinterberg to be a great game, one where its flaws don’t sour my experience. I would love to see a sequel that improves upon its weaknesses as I truly feel that the idea of a town beset by magic and turned into a tourist trap is a charming one, and an idea that Vienna-based developer, Microbird, almost nearly pulls off.
Developer - Microbird. Publisher - Curve Games. Released - July 18th, 2024. Available On - Xbox Series X/S, PC. Rated - (E 10+) - Descriptors unavailable. Platform Reviewed - Xbox Series X. Review Access - A review code was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.
Jeff is the original founder of Analog Stick Gaming. His favorite games include The Witcher III, the Mass Effect Trilogy, Hi-Fi Rush, Stellar Blade, Hellbade: Senua’s Sacrifice, and the Legend of Heroes series, especially Trails of Cold Steel III & IV.