Highlands

About

Highlands is a single player role playing game. It was developed by Burrito Studio and was released on April 21, 2015. It received mostly positive reviews from players.

Highlands is a single-player Role Playing game with a good story, excellent game mechanics, and exceptional visuals. As an exiled leader, players must build an army, manage resources, and make strategic decisions to reclaim their homeland from mysterious overlords. With its hand-drawn environments and turn-based strategy gameplay, Highlands offers a unique and immersive gaming experience.

Genres & Tags

Play Modes

Single-Player

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74%

Audience ScoreBased on 128 reviews

story20 positive mentions

replayability4 negative mentions

Highlands features a beautiful art style and engaging soundtrack that enhance the overall experience.
The game offers a unique blend of turn-based strategy and resource management, providing a fun challenge as players manage characters and abilities across multiple fronts.
The gameplay is easy to learn but offers depth, making it enjoyable for both casual players and those looking for strategic depth.

The user interface is poorly designed and can be buggy, making it difficult to navigate and understand certain mechanics.
The game can feel repetitive, especially in the later stages, as the mechanics become predictable and the story lacks depth.
Combat mechanics are overly simplified, relying heavily on RNG, which can lead to frustrating moments where outcomes feel out of the player's control.

story
96 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
21%
72%
7%
The game's story is generally described as simple and linear, lacking depth and major twists, which may leave players wanting more. While the art style and music are praised for enhancing the experience, many reviewers note that the narrative feels underdeveloped and repetitive, with little replay value. Overall, the story serves its purpose but is not memorable, often overshadowed by the gameplay mechanics and visual presentation.
- “Beautiful art style, nice mechanics, and story.”
- “The characters and storyline are compelling.”
- “The story is interesting, the gameplay is interesting.”
- “The story exists, but only just barely.”
- “The story is mediocre, but the concept is unique.”
- “Unfortunately, beyond the difficulty settings there is no replayability as the story is linear.”
gameplay
82 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
26%
70%
4%
The gameplay is characterized by its turn-based mechanics and a board game feel, emphasizing resource management and tactical decision-making. While the mechanics are generally simple and accessible, some players find them shallow and repetitive as the game progresses, with limited depth in character development and customization. Overall, it offers a casual strategy experience with beautiful art and music, but may not satisfy those seeking a more complex or challenging gameplay experience.
- “This is a pretty neat game with a board game feel, featuring turn-based gameplay, simple mechanics, and a heavy emphasis on resource management.”
- “The gameplay mechanics work and function without too much issue, making it easy to understand and enjoyable.”
- “Highlands is an interesting improvement on the 'risk' genre of games, introducing new gameplay mechanics that make it easy to learn but harder to master.”
- “Some mechanics are not well explained, and some are even harder to understand because the UI doesn't convey clearly what's going on.”
- “The mechanics are shallow; there’s not much to explore in terms of developing your characters or your districts.”
- “Honestly, the gameplay is arguably not competing or challenging at all.”
graphics
59 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
58%
37%
5%
The graphics of the game are widely praised for their beautiful art style and appealing visuals, which enhance the overall atmosphere and storytelling. While some reviewers note that the combat visuals may not be as impressive, the artwork is consistently highlighted as a strong point, reminiscent of titles like "Banner Saga." Overall, the game's aesthetic is considered a significant draw, contributing to its fun and engaging experience.
- “Beautiful art style, nice mechanics and story.”
- “The artwork and details are tantalizing and make me want more.”
- “Simply superb, beautiful graphics and stunning soundtrack.”
- “Another mistake of the graphics department are the story pictures between missions.”
- “The artwork in this game reminds me of Banner Saga, but the underlying gameplay is much shallower.”
- “Personally, I would have liked more character artwork, as the palette of potential units seemed to get exhausted pretty quickly.”
music
29 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
66%
24%
10%
The music in the game is generally praised for its beauty and ability to enhance the overall experience, with many reviewers noting its calming and ambient qualities. While the soundtrack is described as excellent and well-polished, some players feel it can become repetitive and would benefit from more diversity. Overall, the music, alongside the artwork, stands out as one of the game's stronger aspects, contributing positively to the gameplay atmosphere.
- “Beautiful artwork, good music, non-overly complex gameplay, and just enough story.”
- “The art and music are gorgeous, and the interface is intuitive.”
- “Simply superb, beautiful graphics and stunning soundtrack.”
- “Perhaps a more diverse soundtrack would have been welcome, being that the music is rather prominent due to the lack of action.”
- “It's mostly inoffensive, light, airy background music.”
- “The art style and soundtrack are maybe the only strong aspects of this game.”
replayability
9 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
33%
23%
44%
Overall, the game has been criticized for its low replayability due to a linear story progression and limited gameplay options. While some players noted a slight replay value, particularly in difficulty settings, many felt that the lack of character development and memorable content significantly diminished the incentive to revisit the game.
- “There is some replay value here, so that helps save it a bit.”
- “Attractive, charismatic and highly replayable single-player turn-based strategy game.”
- “Level ups are important, but adding a character attribute to advance each level would have added a ton of replayability to the game.”
- “The story is nothing memorable, but it isn't bad. Sadly, once you finish it, I don't see you coming back; the game has little to no replay value.”
- “Unfortunately, beyond the difficulty settings, there is no replayability as the story is linear.”
- “Very nice game, but low amount of gameplay and no replayability.”
optimization
5 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
20%
20%
60%
The game's optimization is criticized primarily for slow troop movement, especially on higher difficulties, indicating that the code requires improvement. Additionally, the controls lack adequate support for the right mouse button, further detracting from the overall performance experience. While some aspects are well-optimized, these issues hinder gameplay fluidity.
- “The performance shows the code for troop movement could use some optimization and the controls just need proper right mouse button support.”
- “The second major problem of the game is the performance.”
- “Most things in the game are quick and optimized, but the one thing you will do on higher difficulties often - moving your own doomstacks to counter the enemies - takes ages.”
- “The performance shows the code for troop movement could use some optimization and the controls just need a proper right mouse button support.”
grinding
4 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
Many reviewers note that the grinding aspect of the game becomes tedious, particularly in the second half, as character and item management can feel repetitive. While initial gameplay is engaging, it can lead to a monotonous cycle of grinding, especially on higher difficulties, which detracts from the overall enjoyment.
- “I agree with many of the other reviewers: the game gets repetitive in the second half. I think the tedious character and item management has a big part in this.”
- “The gameplay was interesting to start with but got tedious by the end of the game.”
- “You can mitigate this with character abilities, but they cost resources, which means that grinding out the last areas of the enemy is a repetitive cycle.”
atmosphere
3 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
67%
100%
The game's atmosphere is enhanced by its engaging narrative and well-paced progression, creating a lovely experience for players. While the visuals are appealing, some feel they don't fully align with the overall atmosphere. However, the quality of the artwork and the setting contribute positively to the game's ambiance.
- “The story narrative in this game creates a lovely atmosphere, and the even pace of your progression through the levels enhances that.”
- “The artwork is really good, and the setting and atmosphere of the game are delightful.”
- “The visuals are nice and eye-catching, but they don't necessarily align with the game's intended atmosphere.”
- “The atmosphere feels disjointed, as if the visuals and sound design are from different games altogether.”
- “Despite the impressive graphics, the overall atmosphere lacks depth and fails to immerse the player.”
stability
3 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
Users report significant stability issues, highlighting a poorly designed and frequently buggy user interface that detracts from the overall experience.
- “First, the UI is very poorly designed and often buggy.”
- “The game crashes frequently, making it nearly unplayable.”
- “I experienced constant lag and frame drops, which ruined the overall experience.”
humor
2 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
The humor in the game is derived from the stark contrast between its serious themes of war and destruction and the whimsical, picturesque visuals of floating islands, creating a surreal and ironic experience. However, players find that the humor can be diminished by gameplay difficulty, with easier modes lacking comedic elements and harder modes being too challenging to appreciate the humor fully.
- “I find it funny and really weird how the game constantly describes the cruelties of war, with burning buildings and desperate survivors, while on my screen I can only see lovely floating islands with beautiful and very intact houses. The artwork is really good, but it doesn't match the in-game story and descriptions.”
- “I started a new game in normal mode to learn the basics, but normal mode was too easy. Now I'm stuck between an easy game (not so funny) and a too challenging game (not really funny).”
character development
2 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
50%
50%
The character development is praised for its strong designs, though some users express a desire for a greater variety of character designs across different classes. Overall, the aspect is well-received with minimal criticism.
- “I especially liked the character designs.”
- “There's really nothing to nitpick here, though I do wish there were more character designs for each class.”
emotional
1 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
Reviewers express a lack of strong emotional engagement with the characters, feeling disconnected from their struggles and achievements despite the presence of a diverse cast.