It is, after all, in the name.
I’ve been having a remarkable time with Dungeons of Hinterberg, a fantastic action adventure title from Microbird Games. From the story to the visuals, characters, and environments, the game is endlessly charming.
Something I was not expecting however, was for Dungeons of Hinterberg to fill the Forest Temple-shaped hole in my heart left behind as The Legend of Zelda shifted its design philosophy with Breath of the Wild. I enjoyed the shrines and Divine Beasts, I got great joy out of finding creative and unexpected ways to solve the puzzles within. However, I also emphatically miss the more traditional, linear dungeons of the past, with their intricate puzzles bearing a single solution.
Enter Dungeons of Hinterberg. I hesitate to refer to it as a “Zeldalike,” but there is no doubt that the pre-Breath of the Wild era of The Legend of Zelda is a core part of its DNA. Dungeons of Hinterberg has a whopping 25 dungeons that range in size from small and focused, similar to Breath of the Wild’s shrines, to lengthy and more substantial, comparative to those found in Ocarina of Time.
The dungeons are mostly split across four locales, with each locale providing the protagonist Luisa with two magical abilities that essentially function as dungeon items, such as the ability to strike distant switches with energy beams, or create a large block to aid in climbing or jump gaps. The dungeons within each locale tailor their puzzles to these spells, and accessing more difficult dungeons will result in the puzzles becoming complex. The final few dungeons in each locale utilize your spells in some impressively tricky and complex ways.
This gradient of complexity draws direct parallel to The Legend of Zelda games of yore. The shrines of Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom are good fun, but each shrine is developed with the knowledge that it can be accessed from the beginning, and so even the most difficult shrines tend not to utilize Link’s abilities in particularly complex ways.
Dungeons of Hinterberg’s choice to iterate on the same two spells per locale allows for that delightful gradual ramping up of puzzle complexity we loved so much in games like Twilight Princess. The dungeons begin trivially simple, and as the player gets stronger and more comfortable with their spells, the difficulty increases until I had encountered some real head-scratchers by the end of Dungeons of Hinterberg. That was not a phenomenon I had encountered very often in Breath of the Wild.
If you would like the chance to once again experience that classic The Legend of Zelda dungeon experience, but in a fresh and modern format, Dungeons of Hinterberg is for you!
Have you played Dungeons of Hinterberg? Do you have feelings about dungeon design? Be sure to let us know what you think over at our Discord channel!
Featured Image: Microbird Games, Nintendo
The Boss Rush Podcast – A Podcast About Video Games
The Boss Rush Podcast is the flagship podcast of Boss Rush Media and The Boss Rush Network. Each week, Corey Dirrig, LeRon Dawkins, Stephanie Klimov, and Pat Klein, as well as their friends, fellow content creators, developers, and industry veterans come together to discuss their week in gaming, including what they’ve been playing, a randomly chosen rotating weekly segment, the Boss Rush Banter of the week, answer community write-ins, and more. Members of The Boss Rush Network’s Patreon will receive the exclusive Pre-Show at any tier along with other perks.
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