Note: with this review, we’ve moved from the “+” and “-” format in our VERDICT to Buy, Rent, or Pass.
Mix a little Diablo II, a little Dwarf Fortress, and a little Sim City and what do you get?
Hinterland—a surprisingly fun game, even without the professional polish.
DO: Build a little village all the while terrorizing the “hinterlands” with your villagers cum warriors at your side. Essentially make your tyrant of a king happy.
TYPE: clickfest hack and slash with a dose of micromanagement on top
PLATFORM: PC (Steam version reviewed here)
PRICE: $20 (via many different digital download vendors)
MEAT: You play a character (one of many typical fantasy classes with a few tongue in cheek classes as well) that’s been called by the king to establish a village and conquer the region for your liege. Travelers come to your village and you get them to stay and perform their special skill while possibly using and training them to raid the countryside with you. One caveat: when they are with you they don’t perform their skills in the village. Your village is raided as well and you can minimally defend it. The game session ends once you’ve conquered all the regions. The replay-ability comes from all the character classes and villager skill classes. Essentially, you play for high scores—and a dragon or two.
PERKS: easy to learn, lifetime to master; humorous; variable game sessions; excellent developer support; dragons; huge replay-ability; casual or hardcore; cheap;
SCREAMS: to be less ambiguous in some parts; online leaderboards; to have specific quests (the king’s requests can go to…); to have random map encounters; to have major weapons and characters (ie dragons) not be always so close to the endgame; to be able to reuse your characters; to have a little more polish; to have a screen zoom function; to be a little more reliable on some machines
VERDICT: Buy. The next game by TiltedMill—with a little more money put into by you owning this one—will be stellar. This is an excellent independent developer effort.