Hinterland: Orc Lords

By: Chris Vosler

Thursday June 11, 2009

It’s part RPG, part SimCity, but it adds up to a pretty enjoyable, casual adventure game.  The premise couldn’t be much simpler.  The local king has a plot of land that he’d like cleared of riff raff and he has enlisted your help to do it.  He has given you enough material to build an outpost and a little bit of gold to get started and from there it’s up to you to not only clear the king’s land, but also build a functioning village.

There are three key factors that need to be monitored and controlled.  As with most games of this type, gold is always a top concern.  With gold, you can lure visitors to settle in your village by building them a place to stay and you can also upgrade village buildings to make them more valuable.  The more powerful a potential resident is, the more gold it will take to convince them to stay.  Similarly, the greater benefit a village improvement will provide, the more it will cost.

In addition to gold, you must also keep a close eye on the food supply.  Each resident needs one food a day and if you allow the food supply to dwindle long enough, the game will end due to your untimely starvation.  In the early stages of most games, getting control of the food situation is going to be a top priority.  Fortunately, many potential residents are food providers and they usually are among the cheapest residents to bring on board.  For instance, a farmer early in the game generally costs less than 10 gold, but even at base levels he provides 2 food per day.  That alone is enough to keep the two of you fed for good.  With some fairly inexpensive upgrades to the farm and some found items like fertilizer that can be equipped to your farmer, they can provide enough food per turn to satisfy multiple residents while still adding to the food stockpile.  A couple of farmers along with a hunter or herder can provide enough food pretty quickly to really allow your town to grow.

Finally, a good king’s servant must always be concerned with their fame level.  Fame is sort of a measure of your popularity as a leader.  As you go into battle and clear areas your fame will rise.  It will also rise by fulfilling periodic requests from the king.  On the flip side, should you die in battle or fail to fulfill a king’s request, your fame will fall.  Your fame is important as some visitors will not agree to settle in your town until your fame is high enough.  Also, if your fame falls below zero, the king will give you a short time to get it back up and if you fail, he will fire you and it’s game over.

Most of the game is spent managing these three values.  Gold is a constant concern as you want to be able to grow your town and attract powerful residents such as craftsmen, merchants, and priests.  The best way to keep advancing is to do as the king has asked and clear the land.  Depending on what length of game you’ve chosen, you will have 20, 35, or 50 sites on the map that need to be cleared.  The further away from town you get the more powerful the enemies get, but the stronger enemies also drop better weapons, armor, and items.  Many of the sites also give you access to a resource that is very beneficial to your town.  For instance, securing a site with iron will allow you to upgrade your craftsmen to blacksmiths and from there they can be further upgraded to produce better weapons or armor.  Similarly, access to fresh water will allow you to upgrade your farms to plantations so that more food can be produced from one farmer.

As you clear areas out and start encountering tougher enemies, it will quickly become apparent that you can use some help.  This is one of the cool aspects of the game.  While back in your town, you can ask one of your residents to stop what they’re doing and join you adventuring.  You’ll lose whatever benefit they were providing to the town, so you have to think carefully about abandoning a farm or workshop, but it will be necessary to have allies in your adventure party, especially on the higher levels.  You can outfit your party with weapons and armor found along the way and if you choose to bring along a priest or other cast capable resident, they can act as a healer for your party.


While the setup is similar for every game, there’s enough variability to keep it interesting for several replays.  For one, you can choose from multiple races to use as a starting character.  Each has their own pros and cons and a varying degree of difficulty.  For instance, the knight is strong in combat and starts with good equipment, but is poor at running the town so it costs more gold for buildings and upgrades.  There are also a few rare items scattered throughout the boards that are necessary to be able to use some of the elite characters.  They don’t pop up in every game so you can’t get stuck on one strategy.  As an example, if you find a dragon egg, you can bring it back to town and upgrade your herder to a dragon herder.  The egg will hatch and if you add the herder to your adventure party he will bring along his dragon.  The ability to bring out a level 30 dragon can really help make the end game a little easier.

Hinterland: Orc Lords is a fun game for the casual type player.  Hardcore RPGers aren’t going to like the lack of depth, but for me, being able to knock out a game in a couple of hours was nice.  There’s enough of a chance to build without things becoming so unwieldy and involving a lot of micromanagement.  The basic premise is the same, but the ability to play different sized maps with different characters and at different difficulties really adds to the replay value.  And you can’t beat the price as a value title at around $20.