Together with A recent gameplay videodeveloper Heart Machine revealed the recent early access release date Hyper Light Breakerwhich is a cooperative roguelike prequel to Hyper Light Drifter. Breaker will debut in early access on Steam on January 14.
There isn’t much in Breaker’s recent gameplay trailer that we haven’t seen before, but there are a few recent elements here. Most of the content so far has focused on the game’s protagonist, Mario, a versatile starting character who plays like the Drifter from the original game, so it’s nice to see a little action from one of the game’s other classes, a hooded, furry creature with a immense fluffy tail. We also took a look at a sample world map showing how the different biomes will connect to each other.
Hyper Light Breaker’s grand ambition – beyond translating the gameplay, look and feel of Hyper Light Drifter into full 3D – is to boost the replayability of the roguelike game with procedurally generated open-world maps that encourage exploration as much as combat and survival. I bet this was Heart Machine’s biggest challenge in shipping Breaker, causing the game to be delayed so far. Late last month GamesIndustry.biz announced that Heart Machine has laid off an unspecified number of employees.
However, the core gameplay of Hyper Light Breaker is solid. PC Gamer News writer Joshua Wolens and I tried out the Breaker demo and loved it. The game has a similar tension between exploration and time warp as Risk of Rain, but with the more precise melee/dodge-focused combat you’d expect from a Hyper Light game. And the Artorias-flavored first boss of Breaker is a real horror, ending an experience that I had previously found extremely tough.
I can’t wait to dive into Hyper Light Breaker and we won’t have to wait long. I’m also keeping my fingers crossed that the studio’s second project, the 2D action game Possessor(s) presented during this year’s Summer Game Fest, will still be in development despite the recent challenges from Heart Machine.
