My thoughts about Hinterland after some minutes

[Tiarilir]

Alright, had a quick peak at the game, and here's my review of it (So far!)

(NOTE: This is an exact copy from another forum, excluding this and the last sentence)

When trying to launch the game, I noticed it was VERY slow to start. It took me about 2 minutes to get in the ****ing game, and while I was at it I noticed the cursor for the game was fugly. "This doesn't bode well", I thought to myself.
So I decided to start up a game at the basic settings, except changing game length from "short" to "long".
There were many types of characters to choose from, but I couldn't ass myself to look through them all and picked a Footman. He was quite good at melee and started out with some basic resources. I thought combat was going to be all there was!

So after choosing some traits and such I started loading the game. Again I was faced with a looooong loading screen, has to have taken 2 minutes. But then I realized it was a good thing too, at least when it was creating the world. Since it's random every time It'll probably be quite nice.

And now I'm in the game, it gives me some splash screen that says I'm chosen by the king to expand his territory or something like that. **** that I thought, and pressed the small and tiny "How to play" button in the upper area of the splash screen.
I noticed that it didn't go in depth, and I was quite lost to be honest. So I just closed it and thought I'd experience the game on my own.

Interface seemed quite basic. Minimap in bottom left, resources top middle, character top right, along with party beneath it. (I never actually got to the party but that's what I saw in the gameplay videos, lol).
On the left side you have a crucial button though. This is where you should experience the most in the beginning of the game, since it comes without a tutorial and is quite confusing.

There are Visitors in your town. You can choose to dispose of them, and wait for new ones. You can hire them if you fill certain demands they have, along with a sum of gold depending on their skill, or you advertise for some gold to get instant new followers.

The resource management seemed simple at first, but it actually has a huge inpact on the world. First there's Gold. This is the basic currency of the game. The only way I noticed to get gold was to get out and kill stuff, but I noticed a Trader character class so I believe there'll be other means in the game too.

Then there's food. Food is crucial in the game, as each person needs one food each day. I myself couldn't figure out how to get food until it was too late (I had to advertise a couple of times and then I found a hunter who provided 1.5 food a day). He left me after one day since I didn't have any food, and apparently the Main character is the one that has first hands on the food.
If you run out of food the game will give you a couple of days to get back on your feet. In my case 7, and I don't know if it's different in other games, for other classes or whatever. If you stay at 0 food for too long the game is lost.

There's also Fame, which you gain from killing enemies or fulfilling random tasks the king will give you from time to time. I got about 30 fame or something, and then the King wanted me to send him 10 food in a few days. I had 0 food and was starving so I refused, and this got me to go back to -12 fame. Apparently I then got "unworthy". I don't know what happens if you stay at bad fame for too long, but probably something bad.

Something that annoyed me was that the Minimap didn't work properly, it bugged quite a lot for me, but this is basic stuff.
Also, poitons seem to be needed a LOT, since I lost half of them on my first encounter with an enemy site.

Oh yeah, enemy sites. There are a couple enemy sites across the world, and each of them displays how many monsters are left in the site when you're in the specific Area. Different sites do different things, e.g an Ancient Temple or something that I found gave my village "souls". It seemed to be a good thing but I didn't notice any difference since I couldn't figure village management out.


This is probably everything I have for you guys now, and this is from playing like 15 minutes. The game seems to be worth the money at least, but I'm not sure how much fun it'll give me. Probably at least 20 hours, and for 25 dollar (including VAT) that's a cheap game.

This is what I think so far, and I will definately give the game another go even though it was pretty hard at start ;-)

[Will Jennings]

Thanks, Tiarilir. Could you say a little more about what problems you were seeing with the minimap?

[Tiarilir]

No problem. I thought I might as well create an account here and copy it ;-)

It's pretty hard to explain, but the normal "dots" of enemies, sites and such become lines instead when I'm running around, so instead of being a dot in the middle of the minimap they become a vertical line from the bottom to the top of the minimap.

Edit: I've noticed this is mainly when switching from an old zone to the Village zone.

[Nenjin]

Stopped in to say: great job guys. Granted, you didn't have huge budgets for top end graphics and what not, but the game play seems rich. I really like how you went all out on the items, thought up interesting village roles, put in lots of upgrades for them, and gave leveling some depth beyond "you're tougher."

The RPG aspects of the game really work well and takes me back to a time when game play was a hell of a lot more important than looks.

Couple things, mostly cosmetic-

-Attack and Defense bars for characters are kind of jumbled. Mouse overs with numerical values like you did with health would be great.

-The Region map ends up looking a little cluttered. You could expand it and fade it out and I think it would read a little clearer.

-The run speed feels kind of unnatural, and the character has a tendency to get themselves stuck on impassible objects. Pathfinding could use a little tweaking.

-You could use a little copy editing for grammar and consistency I think. I had to read twice when talking to townspeople. Everything is in the voice of the main character until you reach "I will avoid the enemy and run away if town is attacked." Couple other incidents of that sprinkled elsewhere.

Again, I'm enjoying it a lot. Was worth the wait. Back to playing!

[mort-uk]

Yep I have the problem with mini map too, the colours (dots) bleed downwards, becomes all smudged. Corrects itself, but then goes again. It's constantly doing it.

[bergotronic]

Hey All, I have been following hinterland for awhile now, I guess I haven't been checking as often recently because I nearly soiled myself when I was checking the gaming blog Joystiq and they had right there on the front page "Hinterland released on steam for 20$" I immediatly came into these forums and read these positive reviews, and saw that a staff member immediatly asked about some of the issues a user was having, well this has convinced me to buy, and come out of my forum lurker home.

[Will Jennings]

Originally Posted by mort-uk

Yep I have the problem with mini map too, the colours (dots) bleed downwards, becomes all smudged. Corrects itself, but then goes again. It's constantly doing it.

Thanks, both of you. We think this has to do with getting near the edge of the world in widescreen resolutions -- a temporary workaround would be to play in windowed mode or in a 4x3 resolution. Please PM me if you're seeing these symptoms and you're not using widescreen.

[Teredin]

Good to know about the wide screen issue, since that is what I have.

[mort-uk]

Originally Posted by Will Jennings

Thanks, both of you. We think this has to do with getting near the edge of the world in widescreen resolutions -- a temporary workaround would be to play in windowed mode or in a 4x3 resolution. Please PM me if you're seeing these symptoms and you're not using widescreen.

Well after you said that I went back in and tried. I can recreate the problem everytime by bringing up town view or region view when at the bottom of the map, generally in the town. I couldn't recreate the problem out in the wilderness, though I couldve sworn I had it out there before.

1680x1050 resolution, yep. Max settings, 4x AA.

[CustodianV131]

Lots of thought after so few minutes! Nice!

Haven't played enough myself yet. I did test a bit though and the first time you create the world (ie pick a character and start playing) its takes a fair while. Reloading after that is far quicker though.

I also notice the game going to a grey screen when starting up. Guess that's just how it is. Would be nice if it stated "loading Hinterland", "getting a cup of tea", "initiating connection ritual" "looking up control magic spell or something.

Can’t wait till I can return to my little community tomorrow!

[Nenjin]

So after about 3 hours of play I left the game on pause and took an hour nap or so. When I came back to the game and unpaused, it was running pretty choppy and I had some black texture shearing going on even while paused. Hadn't seen any of that while I was actually playing it. Memory leak? I attached my Dxdiag.

I was also kind of thinking the game could benefit from a break down of the currency into silver and copper as well. Would give the money more play, ya know?

[Diviance]

The UI resizing based on the resolution would be nice, too. Having a UI take up so much space at 1920x1200 is like being back in the late 90's, early EQ and all that.

Oh, and being able to zoom out. Good lord would i love to be able to zoom out some.

[kichigai_inu]

Map creation/game load times were quick for me. First visitor was a farmer I hired to make 2 food a day. Second visitor was a trapper I hired to make 2 food a day. Using the region map and the key, I saw that the nearest location was marked with only one dot, indicating that it was low danger. So I headed my hero off alone to clear out the nest of spiders. I was able to engage them one or two at a time and had no problems clearing it out without using more than a couple healing potions. I also cleared out the adjacent spring, which was only one dot danger level and full of spiders as well. I went back to town and gave the farmer a hoe I had found and the trapper a snare. I then hired a herder to make 2 more food a day, since it is quality meat it also gave the town +1 luxury level. I then hired a craftmen to make weapons and armor. During all this the town was attacked twice by bandits. Both times my hero was near enough to run back when the warning came and fend them off alone, leaving my townsfolk to keep working. That is as far as I got in the 15 min I played.

[bshock]

My initial impressions are quite favorable, but I have a lot of complaints. First of all, it takes far too long to load the game. It will hang on a grey screen from anywhere to 30-45 seconds before I even reach the menu. The game also runs quite choppy on my system which exceeds the requirements.

Combat is a bit too basic for my liking. It would be nice to at least have a right click skill you can obtain from collecting scrolls or something. As it stands, combat consists entirely of holding the left mouse button over a monster until its dead while drinking a potion if needed.

There doesn't appear to be much depth to the game at all, but it's strangely addicting. Whether or not that will last after the completion of a couple of games remains to be seen, but I don't regret purchasing it and expect the game to improve greatly with content patches.

[Diviance]

You devs may want to consider imposing some kind of limit on exactly how high level the pet dragon can get. Running around with a lvl 60+ pet dragon and some lvl 20 skeletons (from the necromancer) makes things a bit.... easy to put it lightly.

To put it a bit more bluntly, it is hilariously broken to be able to one shot anything in the game without actually doing anything yourself.

[JuliaSet]

Congrats on the dragon. I see you let him grow at home for quite a while? Or, did you take him out for hunting exercise? I got mine to level 76.

The weak link is getting the dragoneer killed or injured.

[mrj]

The initial load is quite long, but the game is perfectly speedy beyond that for me. I'm having a blast, kudos to the team.

I have a feeling that someone on it has been playing Dwarf Fortress!

[Diviance]

Originally Posted by JuliaSet

Congrats on the dragon. I see you let him grow at home for quite a while? Or, did you take him out for hunting exercise? I got mine to level 76.

The weak link is getting the dragoneer killed or injured.

I built up a bunch of defenses in the town (more than enough to take on any raiding party) and left for a few hours. Forgot I had built the dragoneer about 2 hours before that, so I came back to an overleveled dragonand a pile of like 100 bodies by the guards.

[mrj]

Originally Posted by Diviance

I built up a bunch of defenses in the town (more than enough to take on any raiding party) and left for a few hours. Forgot I had built the dragoneer about 2 hours before that, so I came back to an overleveled dragonand a pile of like 100 bodies by the guards.

Hahaha, that's awesome.

[Solice]

Originally Posted by Nenjin

So after about 3 hours of play I left the game on pause and took an hour nap or so. When I came back to the game and unpaused, it was running pretty choppy and I had some black texture shearing going on even while paused. Hadn't seen any of that while I was actually playing it. Memory leak? I attached my Dxdiag.

I was also kind of thinking the game could benefit from a break down of the currency into silver and copper as well. Would give the money more play, ya know?

I glanced at your dxdiag. Nice rig