At 5 p.m. last Sunday, after two days of Summer Game Fest demos and a third day of bouncing around Xbox dates, I was ready to go home. I didn’t expect my penultimate stop to end up being the game I’d keep thinking about all week, even more than Armored Core 6. Hinterberg Dungeons just caught me.
I didn’t see it coming, because at least by Hinterberg Chips is a veritable collection of “been there, done that” video game stuff:
- A distinctly Moebius à la Sable art style that threatens to be overused any day now
- Classic Zelda-style dungeon puzzle solving
- Action RPG sword fighting in walled arenas that looks decent, but not, like Devil May Cry caliber
- Rail grinding, which Sonic made cool, then a little less cool, 20 years ago
- Character relationships with townspeople to level up
I love all of that stuff in games, especially the Moebius comic-inspired art – one look at Hinterberg made me think “ooh, pretty”. But that was only enough to get me through the early hours of Sable, and the basic Hinterberg elements I’ve seen in so many third-person action/adventure games that they no longer appeal. really my attention. The way the pieces are put together must be something really special.
Or, apparently, really Austrian.
I was in love with Hinterberg within minutes of its demo debut, as indie studio co-founders Regina Reisinger and Philipp Seifried started talking about how the game is rooted in the history of small seaside resorts in their native country. The premise of the game is basically: what if booming tourism erodes the culture of a historic small town? But instead of skiing, people show up to check out the local magical dungeons.
If Shigeru Miyamoto had set The Legend of Zelda in his childhood version of Kyoto and cast a bunch of clueless tourists wandering around outside his historic temples, you’d have something like what Hinterberg is looking for. There’s immediate humor in the fact that the magic is real, but a bit outdated. Your character Luisa has worn herself out in corporate life and instead of leaving to start a farm, she decided to kill a bunch of goblins in the Alps and learn how to ride a magic hoverboard. Sounds like a good vacation, to be honest.
Luisa is dressed like she could go to a yoga class, except with a sweet sword strapped to her backpack. One of her first acquaintances in town is a hipster journalist who hates being stuck reporting on, Ugh, all that magic stuff. Boring! The guy can’t wait to get back to Vienna.
Hinterberg itself is charming, though: as an American, the Austrian town ironically looks like a more exotic video game setting than a world of pure fantasy. You’re not the chosen one: you’re just someone who rents a room at a bed & breakfast and hangs out at the bar at night, with a busy day of adventures in between.
The Persona-inspired relationship system means that in exchange for an interview with the reporter too cool for the Alps, Luisa gets gear to boost her combat ability a bit. Despite this conventional life simulation system, it’s much more fun for me when the guy who complains about the nightlife asks me why I chose the main sword for my goblin slaying. He really doesn’t appreciate how good the conversation is here compared to the average bar.
The theme alone makes Hinterberg seem fun, but the adventure and combat also seem surprisingly sharp for a game launched by just two developers, with now a total of 10 on the project. They estimate it will take a good 20-25 hours to play, so it’s a pretty meaty adventure.
Each region around Hinterberg that Luisa can visit has its own magical aspect with different types of magic you can use to traverse that area. The campaign is dotted with portals that take you into dungeons, which can range from bite-sized combat encounters to elaborate multi-room puzzle gauntlets. I got more and more excited as I saw the world, as it seems to be quite free-form – you can make your way to a high point and search all the dungeons in the area, approaching them in the order you choose. Swordplay was on the simpler side of hack-and-slash, but more importantly, you can creatively mix magic for what seems like a promising degree of variety.
There are endless indie games inspired by Zelda and Persona today, but perhaps none that reinterpret them with such a clear and personal vision. Dungeons of Hinterberg doesn’t come out until 2024, but hopefully a demo will hit Steam much sooner than that.