Arguably, slaying monsters in the woods is self-care.
Luisa is a young lawyer from Vienna, and she’s burned out. Dungeons of Hinterberg leans into this millennial malaise and twists it cheekily: she’s going to leave the city and take a little break to find herself and figure out what she’s doing with her life in a picturesque Austrian mountain town that’s recently been rocked by the arrival of magic. Instead of ski slopes, Hinterberg has dungeons, the appearance of which has attracted tourists and attention from all over the globe. Surely a few weeks of slaying monsters and completing dungeons will help Luisa solve the aimlessness and fear of being in your mid-twenties and not knowing what to do with your life?
Of course, once Luisa arrives in Hinterberg, it becomes clear that things won’t be that simple. Shortly after she arrives Hinterberg suffers a major earthquake, and rumors begin to circulate that it’s the volatile—and heavily exploited—magic that’s endangering the village. Louisa’s in town for a vacation, but as she meets the locals, socializes with other tourists, and does her own investigating, she begins to agree that there’s more to the glamorous local economy than meets the eye. She’ll still explore the dungeons, of course, but between excursions it’s the reality of the village and its magical industry that becomes paramount, and Dungeons of Hinterberg does an excellent job of striking a balance between Luisa’s search for meaning and the larger story of the town.
My time as Luisa was split into strict time blocks. Morning she eats breakfast, afternoon she completes a dungeon or relaxes at a scenic spot, evening she explores the town and socializes, and at night she can read, watch TV, or head straight to bed. How she chooses to spend her time influences four stats—familiarity, renown, relaxation, and amusement—which become a bit of a balancing act but never prove too challenging to keep in check. I tended to be overfamiliar but unamused, which meant I had to spend a few evenings binging reality TV in order to gain access to certain NPCs.
The bulk of Luisa’s days are spent in dungeons, which you access by exploring four different regions, each of which grants Luisa two different magic powers she can use in combat or to solve puzzles. The combat is simple, which works in its favor: there are enough mobs scattered across the maps that they could have become aggravating if I were not confident in Luisa’s ability to slice them to pieces (sometimes with her magic skills, but more often with an Attack Conduit she gets quite early in the game that basically turns her into a Beyblade). The enemies are strange little gooey blob-creatures with masks modeled after Alpine mythology, and it’s fun to realize that the horrible goat-thing that enjoys sticking its neck through the ground to torture me is in fact a legendary forest spirit.
