Hyper Light Breaker is odd.
But its strangeness tended to fit with the format.
Hyper Light Drifter - and Solar Ash, which I always see as being a sequel of sorts?
These were single-player games with fixed campaigns and carefully constructed worlds.
Hyper Light Breaker
Hyper Light Breaker is a procedural run-based game you play with friends.
Just a little less lovely.
Setting myself on fire (still don’t know how I did that)?
Paying a load of currency for a cool weapon that disappeared forever when I died?
I wish I’d known in advance that this was how the game rolled.
Here is the gist of things anyway.
And that’s the point, in a way.
And what I saw was often kind of brilliant, even if it was often tinged with frustration.
Case in point: slimes.
Low-level enemies -popcorn enemies, to use the memorable term of a developer I spoke to recently.
Anyway: not much to worry about.
Also, enemies that cast shields on other enemies forcing you to prioritise more distant enemies.
I think of that constantly while playing Hyper Light Breaker.
Here’s the final thing for now, I think.
Hyper Light Breaker is really, really punishing.
In the end I got around this by leaping into a game with strangers.
It’s beautiful here, as detailed and specific as anything in a Hyper Light game.
It felt familiar - like it was part of the series I already know and love.
Why can’t it be more of what I already know?
But over time, I started to change my mind, and another thought crept in.
Code for Hyper Light Breaker was provided by the publisher.
