2016 was an exceptional year for indies. In just a few short months, the world was introduced to instant classics like Stardew Valley, Inside, Cuphead, Darkest Dungeon, and Firewatch, to name but a few. Amid this barrage of critical darlings, Alx Preston’s Heart Machine made a strong debut with Hyper Light Drifter. A dark fantasy homage to 16-bit RPGs, Hyper Light Drifter was the definition of a Kickstarter success story, propelled to cult status by tens of thousands of backers. Eight years later, it’s clear that Heart Machine is not content to be a one-hit wonder. Thus we come to Hyper Light Breaker, the studio’s third title and a very different beast.
In essence, Hyper Light Breaker is an extraction roguelike. As a titular Breaker, you embark into a procedurally generated, open-air dungeon to scavenge for loot, defeat bosses, and try to make it out alive. It’s not the first of its kind, but this niche remains surprisingly sparse. This gives Breaker an air of novelty that keeps it simultaneously fresh and familiar, even if its pitch has been somewhat lost in its marketing. Regardless, Breaker is a pop of color in a grimdark miasma of extraction shooters and Souls-inspired roguelike games. Its cel-shaded look isn’t a world away from its predecessor’s flat pixel palette, but it also suggests Hyper Light Breaker is less of a continuation than it is a coalescence of Heart Machine’s two most acclaimed titles: Hyper Light Drifter and Solar Ash.
Of course, we’ve also seen this transposition of a 2D universe into a 3D space before with Risk of Rain. Considering RoR2 sold one million copies in its first month of early access and accrued over three million players not long after launch, it’s not a bad act for Heart Machine to follow. It may disappoint Drifter diehards, but to me, this metamorphosis is a positive change – even necessary. Metroidvania sequels largely amount to more of the same, and Drifter’s quiet poeticism pretty much stands for itself. However, Breaker’s early access launch is devoid of even the most cursory exposition. There is no ambiguous cutscene or esoteric text to hang a narrative upon. Instead, I’m dropped into its hub with little more than a cursory controller infographic and a string of tooltips. It’s not the bluntest early access onboarding I’ve ever experienced, but it’s certainly up there.
Breaker’s UI elements and soundtrack deliver a shot of nostalgia for Drifter fans, but they’re cold comfort once I set off into the Overgrowth. Hyper Light Drifter’s frenetic combat is punctuated by moments of stillness that envelope the player in melancholic loneliness. Its world is analogous to the eponymous Drifter: afflicted by a degenerative disease and slowly but inexorably coming apart at the seams. The deluge of enemies in Hyper Light Breaker leaves no room for such ruminations. Granted, there are some glimmers of Drifter’s environmental storytelling in Breaker; a colossal skull, half-sunken in the dirt, is just one of many visual throughlines. Points of interest pull double duty as environmental storytelling, but without additional context, they only provide surface-level intrigue. Stone slabs dispense cryptic lore fragments, but the world in the eye of the beholder appears devoid of interiority, and its stratospheric spawn rates leave the impression that Heart Machine is desperate to keep you too occupied to notice it.
I’m given no reprieve, no concessions as a single player. Instead, I must somehow reckon with the same enemy density, threat meter, and loot percentages as in co-op. I have no one to pull aggro or revive me. Within minutes, my health bar is reduced to single digits as I race across the map on my hoverboard, dodging projectiles in a frenzied smash-and-grab for anything that might help me in future attempts (and believe me, there will be future attempts). My premature death is inevitable, but no less frustrating. This absolute inability to survive solo only exacerbates my struggle to gain a foothold in character progression. Any semi-powerful items I do manage to pick up break in just a few failed runs, leaving me with a scant collection of grey weapons that do little against the endless hordes of enemies nipping at my heels. This is not a challenge; this is a broken gameplay loop.
Suffice it to say, it doesn’t leave a good first impression. However, I’m not prepared to give up yet, and so I begin my next run with fellow PCGN staffer PK in tow. It’s a marked improvement, yet Hyper Light Breaker’s world is almost as ill-fitted to co-op as it is to solo play. Unlike other multiplayer games that generate a shared ‘instance’ for players to inhabit, Breaker appears to transpose individual worlds on top of each other. PK and I expend keys to unlock areas leading to vendors only one of us can see. Our equipment drops are completely different; there’s also no trade function, making for awkward situations where one of us has build-breaking loot coming out of our ears while the other is struggling on with the bare essentials. We don’t even share map markers. In aggregate, these minor dislocations form the existential veil that hangs between co-op partners. You can see each other, fight alongside each other, rescue and revive each other, but you aren’t truly occupying the same space.
Nevertheless, co-op gives me that much-needed foothold to finally succeed at the ‘extraction’ bit of this extraction roguelike. I gradually amass a colorful array of weapons in my vault, limned in the familiar blue, purple, and orange hues that denote their rarity. A Breaker’s standard arsenal consists of a melee weapon, a gun, and an amp. The first two are self-explanatory (think swords and axes, shotguns and SMGs) whereas amps are multifaceted. Some serve as flashy finishers – the massive holographic cube PK summons to squash swarms of enemies is a routine delight – while others provide temporary protective shields capable of mopping up fatal attacks dished out by deadly bosses.
My damage output rises to meet the hostile masses, and I shovel upgrade materials into my health stat until I can withstand more than a couple of hits. Most importantly, death is not the end with PK on hand to revive me. All this in mind, I cannot emphasize how much I do not relish the thought of ever fighting through Breaker’s uphill battle alone. Perhaps Heart Machine surmised that building a dedicated co-op game off the back of a single-player Metroidvania would be too much for Drifter’s existing audience to bear, but as it stands, I have no inclination to ever return to Breaker’s solo experience as it exists right now.
The Overgrowth is an ever-shifting landscape populated with enemies, treasure, and secrets. Minibosses drop keys that unlock up to three boss domains, establishing a clear routine of general exploration to prepare for boss challenges. A threat meter ticks along, divided into thresholds that trigger meteor strikes and horde-like waves of enemies. When we overstay our welcome, each colorful biome teems with the most powerful enemies Breaker has to offer as radiation fields swallow points of interest. Our expeditions are carefully planned in advance, with clear objectives. A full sweep of the map in a single round is theoretically possible, but it’d be one hell of an achievement to pull off.
Between runs, we retreat to the Cursed Outpost, a ramshackle settlement that bears a close resemblance to Drifter’s central town – it’s even got an abandoned soccer field. This space seems half-deserted right now, but it’s primed for early access expansion. I hand over resources to idle NPCs so they can set up shop as basic equipment vendors, but there are currently plenty of empty lots with no apparent purpose. I’m more or less content to wait to see how the Cursed Outpost takes shape, if not for the absence of a training area, which seems like a gross oversight on Heart Machine’s part. How am I meant to decide if I want to keep or sell all those weapons I have stashed in my vault? By dropping into my next run with them equipped and hoping for the best, apparently.
While I slowly suss out my favorites, none of these weapons can remedy Drifter’s targeting system, which needs some serious work. Heart Machine’s decision to automatically disengage target lock-on after a dash is by far its most egregious. The camera lurches wildly as it struggles to switch focus, and the sheer amount of enemies in most encounters often makes any attempt to lock back onto your target a frantic and imprecise affair. Thus we reach that same old chestnut endemic to subpar targeting: dodge blind, or give it up altogether. PK and I opt for the latter, and our chances of survival are far better for it. This lack of focus means we’re both far less inclined to rely on parrying, which strikes me as a mechanic that invites unnecessary risk more than anything else. Unlike Drifter, where a top-down perspective offers a clear overview of the battlefield, Breaker is predicated on putting space between you and everything else. Nothing puts a damper on the thrill of pulling off a perfect parry like being attacked by another enemy in the process, so dodging becomes second nature.
As we grow familiar with weapon animations and affixes, build ideas begin to take root behind our eyes. PK favors the lightning-fast wolverine claws with a stackable bleed effect, so begins to watch out for holobyte buffs to compliment his hit-and-run tactics. Meanwhile, I become smitten with the myriad affixes attached to my legendary axe and devote all my equipment points to my survivability. The only dampener on these dreams of perfect synergy is Hyper Light Breaker’s durability mechanic, which ensures all builds are consigned to oblivion. An item vault provides some relief, but its limited space denies the instincts of the RPG hoarder. The only way to reconcile this is with a change in perspective: have you lost your favorite weapon, or have you been gifted an empty equipment slot primed for opportunity? Your answer to this question might well define your experience with Breaker.
It is possible to repair and upgrade equipment, but like so much of Hyper Light Breaker, these options are buried in nested menus, their unlock conditions illustrated by symbols for esoteric items. Of course, this is all part and parcel of Drifter’s world design, which follows the same obfuscation as classic Zelda. I don’t mind – this brand of obscurity scratches my old game itch – but in a world predicated on procedural generation, it could easily prove another frustration when your discoveries are left up to chance. Nevertheless, I delve into abandoned underground laboratories and fight test-tube monsters of indeterminate purpose and return to base with… a chocolate bar. I use it to unlock a medipack. Success.
This medipack ultimately clinches our victory against the first boss, an anthropomorphic wolf with a massive sword that transitions into a bullet-hell sequence in its second phase. This battle is a nightmare, not least because we spend as much time fighting the targeting system as the boss itself thanks to the minions that endlessly spawn into the arena. When there’s so much at stake and so much working against you, framerate drops and an unruly camera during moments of heightened emotions will be a dead-cert dealbreaker. As someone accustomed to soulslike games, I take this all in stride. As someone soulslike-averse, PK is incandescent with rage.
Hyper Light Breaker has a lot of promise, but its early access launch has sent it into a death spiral of apologia patch notes, frantic hotfixes, and immediate refunds. The initial barrage of negative reviews has done little to endear it to players with a passing interest, and its dramatic departure from Hyper Light Drifter’s formula is liable to alienate fans pining for a true sequel. The jury’s still out on whether Heart Machine can course-correct in time. I hope it can. There’s a strong concept here, though its strength is diminished by its own prematurity. For as many anecdotes of frustration, I can point to moments of elation, and that quintessential urge for ‘one more run’ remains intact. Hyper Light Breaker hasn’t flatlined, but it’s nowhere near ready to be taken off life support just yet.