Hinterland - Now on Steam
 

As promised, Tilted Mill's Hinterland is now available on Steam. Here's the feature list as a reminder:
More information.

decent feature set for a $20 game, surely would benefit tremendously from MP

any takers got a quick-hit review :P

I'll be trying it later.

Quick, snap-judgement review: It sucks … even for only $20.

You tried it?

Actually, I quite enjoyed the one easy game I've completed, so far. I was completely confused first time around and restarted on easy with no raiders or requests from the king and found it entertaining.

Be careful with your expectations - it's a "lunch break" game; don't go looking for an epic campaign, a brain-straining strategy or deep simulation. I'd sort of compare it with Depths of Peril*, except it swaps the frantic faction competition for some light city-building and the RPG development is much weaker (as far as I can tell so far).

There looks to be quite a variety of potential followers, so harder/longer games might push the strategy aspect much harder. Either way, you spend most of the time exploring random areas as a lite hack'n'slash, returning to recruit visitors with different skills to the town and buy them buildings to operate from. The loot from the field pays for the buildings and upgrades and provides better equipment. You need to balance food production with more advanced stuff - I've seen farmers, herders, trappers, crafters, guards, priests, fortune-tellers (?) - I think there are lots to go.

The graphics are nice for an indie - in a simple, painted, cartoony way. Biggest disappointment is the limited (as far as I've seen) character development and skills to give the hack'n'slash part (quite a major part) more depth. I haven't really taken the townsfolk adventuring, so that might make a difference. Biggest plus is the range of professions you can recruit for the townsfolk.

*Not a very good comparison but both attempt to extend the indie hack'n'slash genre with some form of base/town aspect.

No demo, and only available on Steam? Fuck 'em.

It's actually very fun- could have been some kind of manual but you learn as you go
I like the fact some of the the recruited people depend on others- I got a craftsman and got comp[osite bows researched but no bows were appearing in inventory untill I found out you need a trader in town! You find areas that help for instance I found a mine that enabled me to turn my craftsman into a smithy to go from leather to armor-I turned off Kings requests though to make it a bit easier

I actually like that. It's probably why the game costs $20 instead of $30 or $40. When you deal with brick & mortar stores, they get a big chunk of the sell, and not only that, they force the devs to not sell it for less through other venues like download.
I believe there will be a demo, but they wanted to finish the release first (remember, we're not talking about a company with 2000 employees and millions of dollars to spare). I am definitely going to get it, the premise sounds good (and it's not yet another diablo clone or RTS) and it serves to encourage indie/small companies to continue.

Yep. Granted I didn't try it for very long (hence the "snap-judgement") but it certainly did not do much to compel me to continue.

To be fair, "hack n' slash" generally doesn't appeal to me unless it's very well done. I admit it, I'm a story guy. I'm a fan of TM (LOVE CotN) and I certainly grok what they are attempting with Hinterland. I think it will appeal to fans of action RPGs, but it felt awfully aimless to me.

But, you know, just one man's opinion — worth very little on the open market :)

It reminds me of the approach Indies often take.

Download only definitively leaves the costs for manufacturing CDs alone.
For example.

Correct, but Steam is a publisher. They certainly will demand their share of the revenue. And we're not talking about a few percent.

There is a lets play (with pictures) in rpgcodex.