Hinterland -- Download the Demo; Here's Some Advice

I strongly recommend playing the Hinterland demo if you like RPGs and city building or like the Caesar series or Children of the Nile.

In Hinterland, you are sent to an outpost in a fantasy world wilderness and will use you sword to earn gold and fame by killing the monsters of the countryside, and use that fame and gold to hire people to staff a small town or estate.

But you may need some advice to get started.

First, you choose a character. Beginners may wish to be the generic character (journeyman) or a swordfighter of some sort, from knight to mercenary to fall hero.

Your first order of business is get hire people to produce food. If you run out of food, people leave, so food is important. Farmers, hunters, and herders will generate food for the town.

Your next order of business is to hire people to generate money, and a craftsman or craftswoman to build you items.

While you can choose a variety of people to make money, you need a hostel.

Now you are focusing on improving town quality. Hire people who improve town quality, and find areas outside of town that, once cleared, provide resources for the town. Clear those areas.

Keep an eye on bandit incursions and rush back to defend the town when they happen. Also keep an eye on King Requests, which are random, but that works in this context (royal requests, generally, should be random and capricious).

Hire an acolyte to go adventuring with you. While you can take anyone with you, a farmer, for example, is likely to get killed. The acolyte will stay behind you and heal you while you do the fighting. I assume an archer might also survive battles, but have not tried this yet.

So there you are. A cheap ($20) game with a great demo. The graphics may date from 5 years ago, but the gameplay, for those who like building and simulation games, is excellent.

The demo is free. Try it!

Beware of Windows XP SP3

Many are losing sound after installing Windows XP Service Pack 3.

The problem is that the system thinks your sound device is a PCI device or even (in one case) a modem. Simply uninstall Windows SP3.

I used the hidden folder, c:\windows\$NtServicePackUninstall$\spuninst -- method two.

Took me about three hours to figure out the cause of the problem and then after you uninstall SP3, it takes another hour to reinstall the XP security updates, one of which failed to install.

Tom Wham

Tom Wham's games were entertaining. They injected whimsy into Dragon Magazine. I owned Snit's Revenge and played several other games, but my favorite was Elefant Hunt, in which you tried to obtain animals for a zoo. I have the game pieces but lost the board.

Also excellent was King of the Tabletop -- but it requires at least three serious players.

Snit's revenge, in which one player is the invading snits and the other is the creature's defence system, was finely balanced.

Gothic II

Gothic II was a very good game. Unlike many US games, this German-designed world allows you to play a key role, but only to save your village, not the whole world. The scale of the environment is believable, and you walk it back and forth several times in a way that does not feel forced.

However my internal CD failed recently and I'm using an external drive. All of my other games work but this one no longer does.

Anyone know how to make Gothic II recognize a legit CD in drive G?

Tropico rocks

The original Tropico is well worth playing.

It is set in a cheerful location, the music won some awards, and the game has a great sense of humor.

This is usually not an intense adrenalin-pumping game, but it is a serious sim and there's plenty that can go right and wrong. I have the Mucho Macho edition and enjoy getting to choose my character's abilities.

And Melissa likes it too!

What Game Replayability means to me

Just opening some virtual space here to talk about which games continue to hold my interest after years of playing.

These games are well worth the $50 payment -- I've played them for hours and even weeks' worth of time over the years.

I want to recommend good games to those who are interested and also discuss what to my mind makes these games replayable.

Cheers