Whether or not or not motion RPG Dungeons of Hinterberg will be thought of a comfortable recreation is definitional. The normal cozy recreation is enjoyable, pastel-hued, and sure centered round quaint, repetitive gameplay that reassures and calms the participant. Stardew Valley for farming; A Quick Hike for strolling; Dorfromantik for tile-laying.
Hinterberg’s dungeon delving and monster slaying do break the mould a bit, however you may be doing each with a delicate, cartoonish artwork fashion swaddling you. And with a major quantity of the sport devoted to fixing puzzles in picturesque environments, the comparability inevitably presents itself.
There’s no gore in Dungeons of Hinterberg, and the violence is stylized, going down towards gooey, inhuman mobs that really feel extra just like the creatures from Jeff Smith’s Bone than wild animals. Protagonist Luisa spends her evenings making buddies, purchasing, and wandering the village. It’s some ways precisely what it says on the tin: a trip sim, the place Luisa is ready to chill out away from the stresses of her every day life within the metropolis. In order that’s it: Open and shut cozy, proper?
However improvement studio Microbird’s aspirations aren’t fairly that easy.
“Whenever you run into somebody you don’t fairly vibe with, that’s the place the comfy recreation label may not fairly apply to us,” says Philipp Seifried, cofounder of Microbird. “I really feel like most cozy video games pamper you on this method, the place everybody is sweet to you, or even when they’re not good to you […] they’re so excessive of their grumpiness that you simply simply chortle at them.”
Dungeons of Hinterberg doesn’t lock its characters into that simplistic of classifications. “There are a few characters that we count on individuals to not essentially [want to] hang around with,” says Seifried, mentioning Gertrude, a wealthy older widow who’s disdainful of the modifications made to Hinterberg since she started vacationing there as a youthful girl, and Thea, an area teen whose angle is abrasive verging on disrespectful earlier than she warms as much as Luisa.
Dungeons of Hinterberg additionally stretches the comfy recreation classification with its strategy to sophisticated subjects like tourism, professionalism, and burnout. There’s virtually a metagame ingredient to it: Luisa is attempting to chill out, destress and reorient herself by escaping to Hinterberg to problem the dungeons, however life retains getting in the best way—on this case the fact of what the huge inflow of unregulated tourism from the dungeons has carried out to Hinterberg.
“It has an impact on the place you might be visiting,” says Regina Reisinger, cofounder of Microbird. “There are individuals who revenue immensely [from the tourism] however in case you are a schoolteacher your life just isn’t essentially going to be improved if there are tons of of vacationers to stroll previous every day.”
It’s a remarkably apt metaphor for cozy video games as a style, which have been criticized for the romanticization of issues like agriculture, meals service, and gig work. To ensure that a recreation to be cozy, the argument goes, it has to make labor or work unilaterally enjoyable, stripping it of its real-world context and presenting an idealized model wherein the inconveniences don’t interrupt the expertise. Dungeons of Hinterberg embraces these inconveniences, tying them into the narrative of Luisa’s trip.
By interrupting the comfy routine which may outline a comfortable recreation, it offers Hinterberg texture and definition—however nonetheless lets Luisa catch her breath within the woods, when she wants it. And as I dive into in my assessment, it balances these themes with a deft hand.