When the calendar rolled over to July and I started looking at what was dropping for the month it quickly became clear there was a lot of games coming. Some big publishers like Capcom and EA had games lined up and there was a seemingly limitless supply of indie games, many of which were dropping on Xbox Game Pass. It was a jam packed month and it would be tough to stand out.

And while for the most part all of those games from July turned out well and had their moments in the spotlight there was one indie that really stood out from the pack for fans and critics alike. Dungeons Of Hinterberg from Microbird Games managed to do that and more when it launched on July 18th on Xbox and PC and day 1 on Xbox Game Pass.

From the moment I started reviewing Dungeons Of Hinterberg I knew it was going to be special. It was full of great content and was well designed. It was everything I wanted in a game and more. I couldn't believe that a developer that had as many developers as I have fingers could pack this much into a game and do it so well. My biggest gripe was that it was under embargo and I couldn't talk about it!

Once it did release I was shouting from the rooftops to anyone that would listen they need to play Dungeons Of Hinterberg. Thankfully I wasn't the only one as quickly social media was filled with gamers diving into the wonderful world of Hinterberg and the groundswell of support came. It's honestly one of the few great things about social media these days. Seeing all these gamers suddenly enjoying the same thing and talking about a game they are enjoying.

The other great thing about social media is seeing the developers get to be proud about their work and fans give them their well deserved flowers. In a place so filled with negativity the positivity is refreshing and needed.

With all that said I wanted to get in touch with the team and discuss the success and the game. Often times we see a lot of press and interviews in the lead up to games to promote it, but rarely do we get to hear from the teams after launch on what it's all felt like.

I was able to speak with Philipp Seifried, technical director and co-founder of Microbird Games to do just that to get a little bit of insight on how the studio is feeling after launch, what it was like working with Xbox and much more.

Dungeons Of Hinterberg has been out a couple of weeks now and it's been receiving a lot of rave reviews from both critics and gamers alike. What has the feeling been like at the studio to have your debut game get such a strong reaction in such a positive way? 

It's been everything we could have hoped for! Some people on our team spent four years on this game, and I think we're all really emotionally invested in it. It's a strange situation when you work on something for so long and then there's this point in time when it's suddenly out in the world. You just can't be sure if what you're making is going to resonate with players, and there's a lot of anxiety around that leading up to launch, because it's so very important to you. When the game came out and the reviews were overwhelmingly good, I felt like a huge weight was suddenly gone. Since then I've been spending way too much time looking at people's reactions on social media.

Was there any nerves from the team launching the week it did? I'm sure there's always nerves launching a game, especially your debut game, but to launch in such a crowded space. That week was one of the busiest weeks we've seen in gaming for releases, even on Game Pass itself with 6 games launching on the service. For you to not only launch at that time but really stand out amongst some great games must have felt great.

In the beginning of July we started noticing journalists writing about how big this month was going to be for gaming, and I think that's when we started realizing just how crowded our launch window would be. But it's not like the rest of the year was all that quiet either. There was a big wave of game projects being started and getting funded during the pandemic, and so you see a lot of them coming out now. For players that's great, for developers it is noticeably harder to get attention at the moment. It was a huge relief to see so much resonance both from the media and from players, I do think it was anything but a given.

Speaking of Xbox Game Pass, how has that partnership been for your studio and the game? We've heard many developers praise the service and others criticize it. Can you talk about how it came to be and how it affected your ability to create Dungeons Of Hinterberg?

I think Game Pass was a really good decision for us. As a consumer, I really like the service because it lets me try a ton of games without having to think about whether the purchase would be worth it and without any regret if it turns out a game wasn't for me. And as a developer, that means we get a huge amount of players playing our game that otherwise might not have tried it. 

For a new studio, Game Pass is also a great way to reduce risk. There's always an element of luck in game development, no matter how good your game is – imagine launching your title in a week where something like "Hades 2" drops out of nowhere! That goes double if you don't have an audience of fans of your previous titles yet, so a subscription service is a good way of covering your financial bases.

We started working with Xbox quite early. I can't go into too much detail, but I think it's no secret that they have excellent scouts. We put out some initial screenshots and videos of Dungeons of Hinterberg on Twitter back in late 2020 that attracted a lot of attention, and that's how they found us.

One piece of feedback from gamers I've seen a lot is how cool the dungeons would have been to do in co-op. Was that ever in consideration at any point during development? Now that the game has released and you've perhaps had time to reflect on it is there any other features you wished to implement but for whatever reason couldn't? 

We're a really tiny team, compared to the scope of our project. At our biggest, we were 10 people, right now we're 8. The reality is that any sort of multiplayer would have easily added a year or two of development time, so that was never a consideration.

There are quite a few features that we would have liked to add... We're still actively working on some of them. 🙂

Having 25 dungeons is quite a lot! It was quite amazing how you were able to do so many and make them all feel fresh and new. Was there a particular dungeon or perhaps just a specific section of the world that was your favourite to work on? Kolmstein and its dungeons were my personal favourites.

It's a lot of content for sure. I think this is actually something where our small team size helped us a lot. We only had three programmers on the project, so each one of them understood a large part of the code base, which gave us a lot of flexibility to try out ideas and get them into production quickly. A small unit of generalists that can wear several different hats can really help minimize all the overhead and the rigid processes that are necessary in larger teams. It allowed us to create levels like the "Bizarre Towers" dungeon – one of my favorites – where we completely change the perspective to isometric and have the player deal with variable gravity at the same time. That came out of a programmer thinking about what we can do with our existing tech, rather than a game designer having to convince a team to build new technology to implement their ideas.

Without spoiling too much for those who haven't completed it yet, it seemed to at least be implied that there could be more Dungeons Of Hinterberg in our future. Is there any plans for post launch content of any kind? Would you like to continue to work on the IP or is this expected to be a more one and done situation? 

I think everybody on the team would love to keep working on the world of Hinterberg. We're still in the process of planning our next steps, so it's too early to talk about them. But it's a world that's dear to us, and telling more stories that are set in it would be lovely.