Dungeons of Hinterberg is an action-RPG that depicts a woman’s vacation in an unusual resort village in the Alps. Hinterberg was a quiet place until magic suddenly manifested in the countryside. Now monsters roam the nearby forests, mountains, and swamps, guarding portals that lead to twenty-five different dungeons, curious mirror worlds filled with more monsters, puzzles, and alien logic. In response to this fantastic transformation, Hinterberg reinvented itself into a bustling tourist destination, inviting travelers from around the world to become Slayers and challenge themselves against the dungeons. One of these Slayers is the player character, Luisa Dorfer, a junior associate at a Vienna law firm who is dissatisfied by the choices she made in her life. She throws herself into completing Hinterberg’s dungeons, but as she ticks each one off her list, she becomes aware that something destructive is happening to the village beneath its theme park-like atmosphere. Luisa may be the only person who can save Hinterberg from the coming calamity.

After Luisa arrives in Hinterberg and completes the tutorial dungeon, her remaining time in the village is played one day at a time. Each day is divided into discrete portions where Luisa completes specific activities. She awakens each morning in Haus Theresa, the guest house where she stays during her vacation, and enjoys a few minutes relaxation on its patio. Eventually, Haus Theresa’s owner will check on Luisa and ask which of Hinterberg’s regions she plans to visit that morning. This is the first of many impactful decisions I make for Luisa on each day of her vacation.

There are four regions outside Hinterberg for Luisa to explore. Doberkogel is an image from an Alpine postcard, filled with sloping hills and deep valleys containing pastures and mountain lakes. Hinterwald is an old growth forest filled with massive pine trees and a gentle river cutting through its center. Kolmstein is a frigid mountaintop where long, barren snowfields connect caves and ice sheets beneath a floating island. Brünnelsumpf is a marshland flooded with toxic waters, so Luisa must use a small paddle boat to search for secrets in its castle ruins and reed beds. Hidden within these regions are doorways leading to the twenty-five dungeons of Hinterberg. Thoroughly exploring all of them is the only way to see Luisa to the end of her vacation. 

Luisa is not the graceful and acrobatic protagonist of a 3D platformer. She handles much more like an out-of-shape lawyer on vacation, laden by a large backpack and a heavy sword. It takes several seconds of sustained movement for her steady jog to advance to a flat run. If I slow Luisa down to examine her surroundings or angle her around a tight corner, it takes a few more seconds for her to reach her top running speed again. Dungeons of Hinterberg wants Luisa to take her time exploring, to treat visits to each region more like a leisurely nature walk than a heroic sprint, and it forces me into that same mindset through her movement speed.

Many locations around Hinterberg, particularly in mountainous Doberkogel and Kolmstein, have high viewpoints that Luisa can only reach by climbing. The handholds that mark her linear path to the top are marked by familiar white paint. Luisa climbs along these routes with limitless strength and lumbering speed, seemingly unencumbered by her heavy pack yet still inexpert at cliff climbing. Generous fast travel points dotted around each region limit the necessity of navigating these climbing sequences more than once. They are uninteresting padding the first time Luisa climbs them. They might become aggravating if she were forced to complete them every time she visits a region.

Before Luisa is allowed to do anything when first visiting a region, she must seek out its local Skill Shrine. When Luisa touches one of these spinning stone artifacts, she is imbued with that region’s magic, letting her cast two spells. 

In one of Dungeons of Hinterberg’s best ideas, the magic Luisa receives from a Skill Shrine is unique to its region. In one region, Luisa finds herself conjuring giant exploding orbs and flinging spiked balls attached to a chain. In another, she creates slime blocks she can climb upon and rebounding orbs of electricity she can toss. In the next region, she can summon and steer small cyclones and direct gusts of wind with a wave of her hand. 

Spells have useful effects on the environment. Exploding orbs destroy boulders and open cracked walls. The spiked ball remains attached to Luisa’s hand when it embeds itself in a surface, letting her hit distant objects and pull them towards her. Cyclones can carry Luisa over hazardous thorns and poisoned pools and up to unreachable platforms. Wind gusts can throw smaller objects and activate windmills. Each region’s spells are necessary for navigating their surfaces and also for completing their dungeons. Knowing that visiting a new region on the next day of Luisa’s vacation will mean using a different set of spells keeps solving Dungeons of Hinterberg’s puzzles engaging well into the double digit hours of playtime.

While Luisa searches each region for Skill Shrines and dungeon entrances, her progress is impeded by monsters. Seemingly made from the same magic that created the dungeons and bestows Luisa with her powers, monsters appear in small stationary packs at chokepoints and major thoroughfares in each region. When she encounters a group, she draws her sword and a circle appears around the area, marking a battlefield perimeter. Luisa is unable to leave this circle until either she or all the monsters inside are defeated.

Combat is Dungeons of Hinterberg at its most action-focused. It is played in real time with Luisa attacking monsters and dodging away from their attacks. To differentiate monsters’ similar bodies and the abilities they use in combat, each wears a distinctive mask with empty, staring eyes on top of their oily, fluid bodies. A majority are diminutive creatures, barely reaching Luisa’s shoulders, who attack with basic swings of their fists. They are only dangerous in swarms, which is exactly how they like to attack. Other monsters bombard the battlefield with projectiles from a distance. 

The most powerful monsters usually appear one at a time. Gigantic trolls lunge at Luisa with their full mass or try to crush her with massive tree trunks. Witches fill the arena with lightning and ice, their targets marked by red circles which Luisa must carefully weave through to safety. The penalty for death to these attacks is minor. Luisa respawns in an instant a few feet away from the monster pack that killed her, ready to try again or retreat to a less dangerous area.

Luisa’s primary tool for defeating monsters is her sword which is swung with fast and heavy attacks. Fast attacks may be strung together into endless combos. Heavy attacks may only be used one at a time but can knock some monsters onto their backs, leaving them vulnerable to subsequent fast attack strings. Luisa may also use the region’s magic spells in combat; while she may cast spells for free to solve puzzles, when used against monsters, they are limited by her magic meter. Her final offensive options are Attack Conduits. Luisa may equip several of these powerful special attacks and use them in battle for free, but they have long cooldowns before they may be used again.

Luisa’s offensive options sound numerous, as though they are components of a rich and varied combat system. In practice, her basic fast sword swing is the only attack that really matters. Larger monsters are unmoved by the heavy attack. Smaller monsters are killed faster by going right to fast attacks. The only monsters which demand the use of magic spells are protected by a green shield that is only vulnerable to magic. Luisa eventually finds an Attack Conduit which instantly shatters all shields on the battlefield, and it has the smallest cooldown of any Conduit she finds. Both shielded monsters and offensive magic cease to be a factor once Luisa obtains this Conduit.

My experience with Dungeons of Hinterberg’s combat quickly devolves into tapping the fast attack button, over and over, and using Attack Conduits whenever their cooldowns are up. The only break in the monotony is dodge-rolling away from monsters’ counterattacks. Luisa’s roll is slow and seems to make her float, as though she has paradoxically become both weightless and superheavy. To prevent me from abusing the dodge, Luisa is limited by a stamina meter that quickly drains and regenerates. This lets her dodge whenever she needs to but punishes her if I use it when it’s not needed.

The collective effect of all these systems is to make Dungeons of Hinterberg’s combat feel slow and mostly thoughtless. It becomes boring within my first hour of playtime; there are still more than twenty ahead of me before I see Luisa through every dungeon. It’s almost tempting to enter the options menu and toggle on the Disable Player Death option so I can completely turn my brain off while tediously hacking through hundreds of monsters.

Exploring Hinterberg’s four regions is how Luisa spends her mornings. When she discovers one of the dungeon entrances, a shimmering portal in reality that is burning hot to touch, she may choose to enter that dungeon and enter the Afternoon portion of her day. 

Each of Hinterberg’s twenty-five dungeons is a totally unique creation, barely recycling a single idea between them. Most are heavily puzzle-based, making creative use of each region’s localized magic to create something that is encountered nowhere else in Hinterberg. In Doberkogel’s dungeons, the ball and chain spell is used variously to knock down objects suspended by black tendrils, expand and retract jelly platforms, and become the missing mechanisms powering a conveyer belt. Brünnelsumpf’s electric orb provides power to inert devices, though how the orb travels to the devices changes. In many dungeons, Luisa must throw the orb into tubes which carry it to locations outside her line of sight. In another, she must activate buttons to raise and lower platforms that send the orb ricocheting like a ball in a pinball machine. Dungeons of Hinterberg is impressive in its ability to reapply a spell’s basic function to different scenarios, creating new mechanics.

Some dungeons are made special and distinct by playing with the camera. Most of Dungeons of Hinterberg is played from the familiar over-the-shoulder perspective standard in 3D action games. A few dungeons move the camera to a far-off, fixed perspective instead, transforming the experience into one reminiscent of isometric dungeon crawlers. Luisa’s hack-and-slash combat style fits in perfectly with this style of videogame. One dungeon finds her riding giant lily pads up and down toxic rivers, fighting off waves of enemies who jump aboard to attack her. Another dungeon uses the fixed perspective to create structures with the mindboggling geography of an M.C. Escher printing.

One dungeon in each region is the designated home of that region’s boss fight. These encounters combine the best aspects of Dungeons of Hinterberg’s puzzle solving and the most tedious aspects of its combat.

As each battle begins, the boss’ health meter is protected by an impenetrable shield. While contending with the boss’ attacks and servant monsters it summons to impede her, Luisa must use her magic and the lessons she’s learned about the region’s environment to remove the boss’ shield. This is the engaging part of each boss fight, only disrupted by Luisa’s magic meter. If Luisa runs out of magic before breaking the boss’ shield, she must defeat the lesser monsters to gather orbs that restore her magic meter. This can be aggravating when the method to break the boss’ shield requires precise aim and timing that wastes a lot of Luisa’s magic.

Once the shield is broken, the bosses revert to the same tedious combat flow: Fast attack upon fast attack from Luisa, dodge away from the boss’ telegraphed attacks, and use Attack Conduits when their cooldowns are up. Even against the most titanic and intricate boss encounters, the combat systems in Dungeons of Hinterberg have no imagination or excitement. They are Dungeons of Hinterberg’s design at its lowest point.

Completing a dungeon concludes Luisa’s afternoon and she returns to spend the remainder of her day in the Hinterberg village. It is here, away from the danger of the monsters and the puzzles of the dungeons, that I am able to take a careful look at Hinterberg’s visual design.

Dungeons of Hinterberg’s graphics are made to look like an old-fashioned print comic book. It accomplishes this with a number of simple effects. Characters take form with delicate black outlines, as though drawn with a pencil. The textures that fill in these outlines are subtly detailed, if not totally plain. Luisa’s jacket is a uniform seafoam green and her hair a flat pinkish-red. The simplicity of the characters’ colors contrasts well against environments decorated with much more detailed textures. This makes the characters really pop out against the backgrounds, as though a character artist and a background artist with differing styles were deliberately paired to create a distinctive, contrasting aesthetic.

It’s the way shadows are portrayed that lends a true comic book style to the visuals. Most shadows are ordinary, distorted reflections of nearby shapes casting themselves across their neighbors, turning their colors several shades darker. These regular shadows enhance objects in the middle-distance of the frame. Shadows on objects close to the frame and far from it are instead represented by a distinct speckling pattern, as though dozens of minute dots are gathering to create an impression of texture where little exists. This illusory effect is a recreation of the Ben Day process, an economical coloring method prominent in 20th century comic books, and underscores the visuals’ comic book inspirations.

When Luisa finishes in a dungeon, successfully or unsuccessfully, she returns to Hinterberg. Once there, she has some free time to go shopping. Hinterbergs’ businesses that serve Slayers accept a theme park currency, Hinterbucks, which may be spent on new equipment, cosmetics, and restorative items. A shady scientist also helps Luisa with a collection of Charms that change her combat capabilities. In another clever system, instead of upgrading charms to make them more powerful, Luisa can exchange materials looted in the regions and dungeons to shrink their size, letting her equip more at once. 

Time stands still while Luisa shops and will not resume until she decides how to spend her evening. The choices I make to close out her day in Hinterberg have the greatest impact over how she develops as an action-RPG player character. 

There is no formal leveling system in Dungeons of Hinterberg. Luisa does not earn experience points for slaughtering huge numbers of monsters and does not ascend through experience levels for doing so. Instead, her statistics develop based on the choices she makes. Completing a dungeon for the first time increases her hit point total by five. She is not required to visit a dungeon when visiting a region. She may instead rest at a Scenic Spot, an idyllic viewpoint where Luisa spends a few hours reminiscing about her life. Aside from giving me a lot of insight into Luisa’s past, her personality, and her thoughts about the future, Scenic Spots also boost one of her defensive stats. These small choices snowball over time into noticeable improvements to her ability to withstand attacks from Hinterberg’s monsters.

A greater and more immediate statistical impact comes from the people I choose to have Luisa befriend when she returns to Hinterberg in the evenings. There are sixteen non-player characters she may potentially befriend. Their relationship is measured by an invisible meter. Luisa can increase this meter by giving the NPC gifts purchased from Hinterberg’s shops and by spending the evening with them.

Hinterberg’s NPCs vary in occupation, social status, and most importantly, how they help Luisa develop as their friendship deepens. They not only improve her statistics, they also provide her with powerful new items and services. Hannah is a longtime Hinterberg resident who runs a smith out of her house. Befriending her allows Luisa to upgrade her armor and customize her weapons with powerful augments. Dani, Jae, Sam, and Renaud are all professional Slayers. Ingratiating Luisa, an amateur and neophyte, with these dungeon masters is intimidating but results in great improvements to her skills and, eventually, access to the best equipment in Hinterberg. Even a stray dog, a local intellectual, and a moody journalist can reward Luisa’s friendship with unexpected advantages.

Not every statistic Luisa develops directly relates to her combat performance. Luisa also has social statistics, meters that rate how she is perceived in Hinterberg: Renown, Amusement, Familiarity, and Relaxation. Each serves as a gate to people and places around Hinterberg. Like Luisa’s combat statistics, her social statistics climb for performing nearly any action.

Luisa’s social statistics seem important at the start. In Luisa’s first few evenings in Hinterberg, her undeveloped Renown prevents her from befriending Renaud, the haughtiest and most self-serious of the professional Slayers, and her low Amusement makes her an unappealing guest for Kai’s hyperactive web show. Spending time with other, less exclusionary NPCs, or using Luisa’s evening to read a book, relax at the spa, or see a movie at the cinema boosts Luisa’s social stats high enough to satisfy the snobs. After the second week, I have built these stats so high without even meaning to that every gate Luisa encounters is instantly bypassed. The social stats are an interesting idea in theory. In practice they really only matter in the first few days of Luisa’s vacation.

Luisa may potentially befriend several NPCs who have lived in Hinterberg since before its recreation into a tourism center. Each provides a unique contrasting viewpoint on what tourism has done to their town. The pictures these conversations paint of Hinterberg shows how incredibly well thought out this setting is.

Thea and David provide a ground-level perspective. Described as “local teens” in their profile, they have become jaded about their situation—not least because the outbreak of magic has rendered cell phone reception nonfunctional. They know the answer to every tourist’s question before it is asked. They resent intrusions into their personal lives. To them, magic is both common and boring. When Luisa first interrupts the pair, they are using their magical abilities to sullenly play a game of holographic Battleship.

Hannah and Julian offer similar, yet oppositional perspectives on Hinterberg’s economy. Hannah runs an artisanal smithy out of her home. Julian owns a chain of stores called Gear & More that sells adventuring equipment to Slayers—and Hinterberg’s branch happens to be directly next door to Hannah’s house. Both characters’ livelihoods are dependent on tourism, but it is portrayed in different ways. Hannah is truly interested in the craft and is fortunate that her passion happens to be lucrative. Julian is much more mercenary; though he owns Gear & More, Hannah’s conversations with him revolve around his desire to open more restaurants to service a greater number of tourists. He is not only invested in Hinterberg’s tourism for his livelihood, he is motivated to increase it to further enrich himself.

In a strange choice, Dungeons of Hinterberg sits on a fence between Hannah and Julian’s competition. Luisa may befriend both of them without the other penalizing her for it. Though Hannah’s business is threatened by Julian’s, from a design perspective they actually offer different and complementary services: Julian’s shop sells equipment, while Hannah’s upgrades it. Luisa inevitably ends up patronizing both. It would have been much more interesting, and created an incentive to play Dungeons of Hinterberg at least twice, if Luisa’s choices locked her out of one of their services.

These realities about Hinterberg’s economy are the ultimate cause of its central conflict. If Hinterberg is reliant on Slayer tourism to survive, what happens to the village if the dungeons suddenly disappear? What if the purpose of the dungeons is not to support tourism? What if they have another, deeper meaning? As Luisa completes the twenty-five dungeons, she catches the attention of a conspiracy among a few of Hinterberg’s influential inhabitants to keep anyone from completing every dungeon. The conflict feels a little soft—it never feels like Luisa is in any actual danger in town—but the dynamic of Luisa being threatened by these conspirators and Hinterberg being threatened by increasingly unstable magic is still an interesting one.

Dungeons of Hinterberg is a collection of good ideas that doesn’t quite cohere into a whole. I’m impressed by the detail put into the setting and its unique graphics. The twenty-five dungeons are well crafted, containing lots of great puzzles that are thought-provoking without becoming so abstruse that they leave me stuck for hours. The social RPG progression, while a little half-baked on the stat growth side, relates lots of great details about the characters and is a wonderful introduction to this form of RPG design.

It’s the in-between activities that hold all of these strengths together where Dungeons of Hinterberg feels weak. Movement feels slow and floaty, making the necessary act of exploring the world feel unnatural and unsatisfying. Combat is the real weak point. It has many features, but it does not have layers. Few options interact in a meaningful way and the fast attack is the only attack worth using. Looking backwards at Dungeons of Hinterberg, I will forget these weak points. Its strengths will stand out in my mind. When I am playing, its weaknesses are impossible to ignore. They hound every moment of Luisa’s vacation.