Over the years of working together we also realized that we all feel that many of our favorite moments in games are starting new characters, or setting out in a fresh unknown land, and Hinterland focuses on this by keeping the scale of items, resources and characters very intimate… almost humble. A strong farmer could be an invaluable asset in early combat encounters, but losing him could be disastrous when it comes time to feed your people. In fact, to ensure that this experience is as fun as possible, when you have started to peak out, you win and are encouraged to play again! To support this we ensure you can’t exploit load and saving, the games are fairly short (under 6 hours) but very, very random in terms of replayabilty.
We also were so tired of going to E3 and seeing 'some chick with a massive sword' running around. What happened to the roots of fantasy and folklore and why not explore some of that space visually?
With third party development tools getting better and better (and more affordable), as well as new means of digital distribution opening up, developers are finally able to bring high quality, innovative, original games to the audience themselves, in relatively short development cycles, without having to focus on chasing the killer screenshot. AAA big budget games are great - we love them, we've made them, we play them - but there are also a lot of other great games out there, and finally the independent games scene is being taken seriously.
