Hyper Light Breaker is odd. This is probably to be expected – the Hyper Light series up until now has been charmingly strange in a number of ways. 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. They made you work for information but they moved at a pace at which working for information could be part of the fun.
Hyper Light BreakerPublisher: Arc GamesDeveloper: Heart MachinePlatform: Played on PCAvailability: Out now on PC in early access.
Hyper Light Breaker is a procedural run-based game you play with friends. It’s about gathering loot and becoming more powerful when you have a good run, and it’s about the pain of losing stuff when a run goes bad. Because it’s something akin to a sport, in a way, I’m tempted to say that the series’ deep inscrutability becomes more of a problem than it has been before. This is a world of different currencies, unusual nomenclature and a sense that everything you see is just the tip of some vast submerged work of the imagination. All lovely – well, not the currency part but at least it’s in-game currency – yet when all you want to do is orient yourself and team up with pals? Just a little less lovely.
So my first few hours were filled with slight frustrations – some of them, granted, tempered by the fact they were hilarious. Setting myself on fire (still don’t know how I did that)? Hilarious. 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. You and maybe a few friends or strangers choose classes (I’ve still only gotten one unlocked) and then spawn in a procedural wilderness. There are a bunch of boss baddies that you have to take down and then beat it to the exit, and the basic idea is that you’re running around, getting in low-level scraps, finding currency and upgrades and the odd brilliant weapon, and you’re really just trying to get more and more powerful so you can kill bigger things, get bigger loot, and survive a bit longer in this place that really wants you dead.