Something I found interesting about Hillthorn was how quickly the dots connected for me. I had two elements in my head. Firstly, the knowledge that I had a lit torch at my disposal. Ostensibly for lighting spaces up, but fire has its… other uses. The second element was the fact that all the members of the local cult gathered in a church at the same time. A wooden church. I knew that all I needed was a spark in the right place. Sounds like an obvious deduction – and perhaps it is – but the beauty of something like Hillthorn is that it allows you to act on these deductions. You can see a solution from the start, now you’ve got to find the pieces.
It’s an approach to game design I like a lot. Rather than a linear walk from beginning to end, it plops you into a space and lets you figure out the ending on your own terms. It’s reminiscent of old adventure games – or text adventures, which is where I first encountered it – where the joy is in figuring things out for yourself. The fact that there are multiple endings, each perfectly canon, makes it more interesting. While the format that Hillthorn chose to explore this story does come with a few limitations, it’s a game that’s stuck in my head for days after putting it down.
The Game Is Afoot
Hillthorn opens with our detective, who looked distinctly Sherlockian in my case, getting a visit from a strange woman. She spins a tale about a missing daughter, and the ruffian she was involved with. All the signs point to a secluded community, near a strange mountain. So of course, off we go. As is usual for this sort of thing, we quickly find out that things are even worse than expected. The village is in the grips of a strange, mask-wearing cult, who won’t shy away from murdering you. Stranger still, once the time hits midnight, everything resets back to 2pm, and the loop begins anew.
Through it all, we’re given one singular objective: save Olivia. In fact, you’ll probably stumble on Olivia very early on. The thing is, Hillthorn requires you to set things up perfectly in order to win. The first time I tried to rescue Olivia, I was set upon by the cult when leaving the hiding place. I couldn’t fight back, so I had to leave her there and scarper. For the next loop, I knew I had to think of something different. That’s Hillthorn‘s greatest strength in my view. The end goals of the different paths you can take are usually clear from the beginning. It’s about putting the pieces together, and doing so quickly so you don’t hit midnight. It rewards clever thinking, and pattern recognition, without requiring any massive leaps in logic.
It handles the gameplay in an interesting way too. Everything is done through the medium of cards on a table. So if we meet an NPC, we’ll get a little card of them. Then we can use the ‘TALK’ action to say hello, and bring up any of our other cards. They might give you another topic, or give you a description of their reaction. There’s no specific dialogue, so it’s an interesting way of dealing with things. To solve puzzles, we’re essentially putting the right card in the right place. Sometimes, just experimenting with different cards can give you an idea of what to do. For a game so intensely time focused, it’s a clever way of getting us to burn through different ideas quickly. I rather liked it, and it’s complemented by some more classic puzzles, like figuring out code locks.
Tabling Some Ideas
That said, the choice to do everything through cards does lead to a couple of issues. Firstly, the lack of any dialogue or set dressing does make the characters a little flat. There is some background story telling, like finding a positive pregnancy test, but no real chance to dig into things. These cult members are all interesting; both terrifying and yet seemingly normal at the same time. I would’ve loved to hear more about them. Same with the principal characters, Olivia and Jeremiah. We get glimpses into these peoples lives, but I was left wanting more. Perhaps I just don’t like it when characterisation is put aside for gameplay. Problem with being a writer, I suppose.
Secondly, the choice to use cards means that our good detective’s head is angled down the entire time. We’re basically just arranging cards on a variety of wooden tables, which kills some of the magic of the setting for me. We’re in a dangerous and secluded mountain town, it should be dripping with sinister notes. As it is, we mainly look down at tables and floors, with little more than lighting changes to signify things. A sacrifice to fit the format, perhaps. But keeping with the card theme, I’d have liked to be angled up. Perhaps we could be laying these cards down on a table, and seeing the world in front of us (in our heads or reality) change as we play them. Something to give it a bit of life.
Still, given that our heads are looking down, Hillthorn has done a lot to bring in the atmosphere. For one thing, I very much enjoyed the soundtrack. It’s perfect at eliciting hope and despair in equal measure. The song over the credits has especially wormed its way into my ear. There are little touches in the cards too, that stop things from feeling too static. Certain character cards will move around the table, to signify that the character is drunkenly stumbling about, for instance. At one point, you fight someone with an axe and their card will dart around, trying to prevent you from clicking them. It brings a little of the more classic gameplay into proceedings, which was appreciated.
Hillthorn – A Multi-Layered Mystery
I’d seen all of Hillthorn after about six hours, and I came away feeling satisfied. Some of the endings go to some pretty nuts places, and it was great fun seeing how characters’ reactions change depending on certain events. That said, once the story was over, I was left with a profound feeling of wanting more. What Hillthorn feels like is a story platform, rather than one singular story. I can see these mechanics being used to tell a variety of different detective stories. That’s not to say the story in Hillthorn feels sparse, it’s a nice tale, if not amazingly original. But I liked how it plopped us in the middle of it, and wanted more of that feeling.
I’d say that’s a positive for Hillthorn. If the developers did want to continue it on with another story, even a completely unrelated one, then I would definitely come back. For all the oddness of the central mechanic, it’s a very accessible way of getting to grips with a story. While it prevented me from digging too deeply into the characters, it made replaying the story all the easier. It’s very trying to tell things through gameplay alone, so the decision is admirable. Hillthorn‘s story, and the way it immerses us in it, made for an intriguing time and I genuinely hope this is just the beginning.
