If ever there was a game that embodied the maxim of “Show, don’t tell,” it’s Hyper Light Drifter. The 2D action RPG developed by indie studio Heart Machine launched to critical acclaim back in 2016, buoyed by the strength of fast and frenetic gameplay, its evocative score, and a successful Kickstarter campaign during the heyday of the crowdfunding platform. Nearly a decade later, Heart Machine has returned with a prequel to its breakout hit: an open-world roguelike set in a vibrant world teeming with dangers and secrets aplenty.
Hyper Light Breaker’s design feels heavily indebted to the likes of Risk of Rain 2, as it translates the simplified art style and moment-to-moment combat of its 2D forebear into a procedurally generated 3D setting. Players assume the role of a “Breaker,” a treasure-hunting warrior tasked with rebuilding the world in the wake of a terrible cataclysm. As a Breaker, you’re dispatched into the Overgrowth, a wasteland ruled by the “Abyss King,” a mysterious antagonist with the power to reshape the environment at his whim.
To progress, players must traverse the Overgrowth collecting “prisms” to unlock the arena of one of the “Crowns,” the Abyss King’s lieutenants. These arenas can be found scattered throughout the world, either secreted away in one of the Overgrowth’s many dungeons or held by a particularly powerful enemy that must be defeated. That’s not all you’ll find, as the world is rich with a variety of powerful weapons, monoliths that offer lore about the history leading up to the game’s events, and a dizzying multitude of collectibles and currencies that, I’ll be totally honest, I haven’t quite sussed out all the uses for yet.
Strip away all that proper noun-laden lore and those byzantine skill trees and you have a fairly competent, challenging roguelike experience with satisfying combat and traversal mechanics. I couldn’t tell you to what extent the story of Hyper Light Breaker relates to the events of Hyper Light Drifter because sincerely, at this point in the game’s early access release, there’s not much in the way of a story to be gleaned. The monoliths scattered throughout the Overgrowth can be decoded back at the Cursed Outpost, your base of operations, which in turn unlocks textless comic slideshows that reveal more about the background of the Crowns and their role in the Abyss King’s conquest. Anything else is pure inference.
Where the game excels most is in its visual and sound design, taking the touchstones of Heart Machine’s original game and updating them. There were many moments during my initial playthrough where I found myself pausing before shrines reminiscent of the ones I encountered in Hyper Light Drifter, or gliding across a neon plain atop my hoverboard as a melancholic synth track poured in through my headphones. Hyper Light Breaker may not have quite the same retro “vibe” as its predecessor, but it is most certainly a mood. To put it another way: As Hyper Light Breaker signals the franchise’s move from out of the shadow of its aesthetic debt to The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past or Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, it feels as though it is becoming more and more like a proper, self-contained universe itself, rife with surprises and potential that were previously constrained by a deference to the past.
That may not be enough for some fans of Hyper Light Drifter to hang their hopes on. Speaking for myself, however, I’ve enjoyed the handful of hours I’ve spent fighting through the Overgrowth and acclimating to Hyper Light Breaker’s steep yet gratifying difficulty curve. I’ve seen and played enough so far that, while I’m not entirely sold on the game as it stands now, I’m confident enough in Hyper Light Breaker’s foundation to believe that Heart Machine can iterate and build on this initial release to create a worthy successor to its pixelated namesake.
