For over a year, Hyper Light Breaker has Topped the list of open world games I can’t wait to try it out. Hyper Light Drifter and Ashes of the Sun Developer Heart Machine’s game is the first to make the big Hyper Light universe-wide announcement, promising a combination of open-world navigation, roguelike progression (especially roguelikes), and high-caliber action combat. That was also the case when I spoke with manager Arkus Presson earlier this year.Unfortunately, I missed out on the chance to actually play it. Thankfully, I was able to get 30 minutes to play the game at Summer Game Fest, during which time I was defeated by an early boss and knew “yes, this is what I’ve been looking for.”
A whole new world, and yet another world
My session started with a very short tour of Hyperlight Breaker’s hub area, a city-like settlement filled with characters offering various items and upgrades. Not wanting to waste too much time, I speed-ran through some NPCs and headed to a teleporter that would fly you into Overgrowth, the procedurally generated world you’ll get to explore. I only stopped off to assemble my loadout, chop and modify my weapons, and assemble two cooldown-based abilities called Holobytes (in my case, a slash combo and a grenade), as well as passive Holobytes for stat boosts and other effects. Soon, it becomes clear that you’ll be accumulating: a lot With a wide variety of items available, including rarer versions of items, there’s a lot of room for customization.
It’s also clear that Hyper Light Breaker will feature a ton of playable characters. I picked the default girl, Lapis, because she gives the most obvious impression and she’s my favorite so far. One look at the entire cast, which will grow over the course of the game’s Early Access, is enough to blow your mind. Combined with the three-player co-op, it’s got more Risk of Rain 2 vibes than I expected, which is always exciting.
Once you’re dropped into the Overgrowth and begin your journey through a fluorescent biome that reflects the game’s love of pink and cyan, Hyper Light Breaker starts to feel loopy and clear. This is the first time Hyper Light Breaker has showcased a procedural world, and the environmental variety is fantastic. Within seconds, I’m wall-dashing up rocks, gliding through rivers, and pulling out my hoverboard every chance I get (hopefully it’s upgradable, as it feels like it could be a bit faster). The Breaker feels great, though the SGF demo setup placed a giant screen about six inches from my face, which hindered my experience somewhat.
Each map seems to have several bosses with a gradation of difficulty depending on the number of keys required to access them. In each expedition, you kill elite mobs, obtain keys, and defeat the corresponding boss. Along the way, you set your own course on the map, reaching points of interest for upgrades and materials, and following your own waypoints like a guiding star. You don’t have to beat the hardest boss on every run either. In fact, slowly improving over multiple expeditions seems like a better option in many cases, since when you run out of lives, the world resets and you’re back to square one. However, many permanent upgrades, such as those related to sharing resources with hub settlements, carry over between runs.
The kicker is the danger meter, which fills up as you kill enemies: golems, bats, beastly warriors, wizards, swordsmen, snipers, and more. When it’s full, dangerous A lot of that happens, often in the form of enemies or mini-bosses sent to kill the player. This adds another element to the risk-reward scale. You have to set your own goals every time you enter Overgrowth and act to not waste time or get into difficulty. Heart Machine stresses that combat isn’t really the focus of Hyper Light Breaker, but you’ll end up spending a lot of time there. The best players seem to intuit and navigate what the partly random, partly handcrafted world throws at them, rather than just parrying and unleashing combos with all their might.
Combat is unsurprisingly satisfying, with the Hyper Light Drifter’s agility enhanced by the Breaker’s greater arsenal of variety. Standard attacks, charged attacks, dodges, blocks, careful parries, staggering enemies – Heart Machine’s interpretation of classic third-person melee combat is spot on. There’s a tactical rhythm to engagements, especially in large group fights. Spamming light attacks quickly becomes a stalemate – and you’re stuck anywhere but at a respawn point, anyway.
Charge in with a heavy emphasis on evasive attacks, fall back to activate AoE abilities, circle around to avoid ranged attacks and target stragglers, and prepare a charge attack for your next opener. I tried daggers, claws, swords, ammo-hungry guns that are mostly replenished by enemy drops, and abilities like Diablo-level corpse explosions and AoE arrow hails. An ultimate ability called Amp spices up combat even more, and everything unlocks more as you play. It’s good to have a loadout system; builds are all over the place in this game, in the best way possible.
To be honest, I was relieved to get thrashed by the first boss, the boxer-like heavy hitter Exus. Weaker opponents kept appearing throughout the fight, Exus’s exploitative punches ate through my allotted healing items, and his ranged fiery attacks slowly pulverized me. I did a little better on subsequent attempts, but the short demo and, in retrospect, my innocent rush to get to the boss arena kept me from beating Exus. So that’s number one on my to-do list for Hyper Light Breaker’s Early Access release later this summer.
Hyper Light Breaker is scheduled to release for PC via Steam Early Access in late summer 2024, but if you can’t wait you can always check out our rankings. Best roguelike Play now.