Hillthorn - Demo
A downloadable game for Windows
A new case has arrived
Another missing person case reaches your desk. It's time to head to Hillthorn.
Investigate by combining clues
Use Actions in combination with Clues to interact with the world around you.
Make sense of the madness
Organize your thoughts freely on the board.
Solve the mystery before midnight
Every investigation takes time, but this one's taking you for a loop.
Features
- Combine concepts, actions and clues.
- Explore a strange mountain and its community.
- Knowledge as progression.
- Card-based investigation with no dialogue.
- Time Management.
An early peek...
In this demo, you'll be able to explore an early part of the game and start solving the mystery of Olivia's disappearance. This is still early and contains unfinished art assets, sounds and feedbacks, but please feel free to give feedback below as I am looking improve the early game as much as possible!
Thank you for your time, and good luck!
Download
Install instructions
Download the files, unzip them and start Hillthorn.exe!
Comments
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Hillthorn looks like an interesting mystery to solve! Btw, if you're up for a fun challenge, I'd love to see what you come up with for the WowCube Game Jam: https://itch.io/jam/wowcube-game-jam They have a very interesting platform and are even offering prizes lol
Thanks! I’ll check it out but it’s on short notice so I’m not sure I’ll be free that week!
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❤️
I can see, hear, feel, smell and taste that this had a lot of inspiration from Cultist Simulator, which is also a great game, so i have my hopes up
Weather Factory’s games are definitely an inspiration! Glad you liked it!
Hello! Just played the demo, I must say I really like the concept and found the gameplay to be really enjoyable. The lack of dialogue and the fact that you find everything out through cards really makes you feel involved, since you have to constantly make conclusions about what's going on. Some ideas that came to mind that might be cool:
--> A map of Hillthorn, although idk if that would maybe break the immersion of going through everything in your mind (I really liked how we had to walk to the village using the cards, very cool!)
--> A separate notebook for personal notes (e.g., writing down our own ideas, what cards we've already used... Though I'm not sure how useful it would be)
--> A pop-up window after you click or move over a card that tells you how much time an action takes.
--> Do you plan on adding any music? I like the background noises when you're at the village, so maybe some light background music would be nice.
That's all I got so far. Good luck with the development, I will be following your progress :)
For the map, I’d rather it stays in the player’s head than it is directly represented, but I’m interested in exploring concepts for some kind of notebook!
The time an action takes is also a good idea, I’m sure I can fit that in somewhere without crowding the UI.
I would like to add some more ambiance and music in some places. The plan is also for the music to adapt with the time of day in the future!
Thanks for the feedback!
played it on a boring ahh lesson in school. good job, go on!!
Thanks!
太喜欢了，除了有时候卡片太多有点难整理外没什么可抱怨的，请问什么时候能玩到完整版？
I like it very much. I have no complaints except that sometimes there are too many cards and it is a bit difficult to organize. When can I play the full version?
谢谢! I want to make it easier to organize cards. In your case, what made it difficult to organize?
Maybe it's because of the card size. It looks crowded when there are a lot of them, but I later found a setting to reduce the card size. Another reason may be that I need to iterate through all the combinations, which sometimes makes me forget which ones have been verified. I don't know if this is useful: Maybe when clicking on the card slot, all the corresponding cards will show two states?
It is useful, thanks for the feedback!
Fun demo! Found stuff pretty intuitive, and the 'voiceless' storytelling engaging. Colors and orientation of the cards was a great way to show what goes where, and the auto-fill was very nice when clicking a card. Can't wait to see more
Thanks for trying it! Let’s say the full version is laid, what would you like to see in it pr what would you like improved?
Great game with unique mechanics, looking forward to playing more!
Things I noticed when playing:
-I love the story telling, which is not an easy thing to accomplish without dialogue. I truly felt myself imagining the world setting and it's characters.
-I didn't understand what the relevance of time was in the game until I went back and read this itch page.
-The bed card in the inn is missing it's icon
-I wish the cards stayed where I put them when exploring a new location. Found myself reorganizing them whenever I explored somewhere new.
I will be on the look out for when this game releases! Great work :)
Thanks! Time will be more relevant in the full game, but I also didn’t want to remove it completely for this.
Noted for the Bed Card!
I left all tutorials out on purpose to really test how intuitive everything is. Your comment about the cards is really helpful because I think it highlights that it’s unclear that you only keep the cards with the golden border when changing scene 😅
Thanks again :)
Ohhh I was wondering what the gold border meant!
But what I was talking about it when you change scenes the actual locations of the boards on the board/screen sometimes move. It would be nice if the ones that are meant to keep, stay in the same location. As im sure players will be organizing their cards in a specific way as they gain more info.
Excited to play more, keep up the great work :)
Ah, thanks for the clarification. Indeed the goal will be to let players organize as much as they want!
Welcome to Hillthorn, your feedback is needed!
If you’ve finished exploring Hillthorn, please let me know about your experience! I’m currently working hard to polish the game flow, story and UX!
Any help is appreciated 🙏