Hyper Light Breaker Early Impressions: Hazadously Laden Balance

Booting up Hyper Light Breaker for the first time, I had lofty expectations, even though it's a roguelite shooter launching into the competitive market of a genre that lacks neither diversity nor volume. Still, Hyper Light Breaker will ignite the interest of a good amount of indie-gaming enthusiasts. The first game from the studio, Hyper Light Drifter, was a hard-hitter in the pixel-art microniche in 2016 (which, admittedly, has become equally saturated as a subgenre these days) — and that amplified my expectations strongly.

In effect, what I found was a sparsely inked template with only occasional riffs of Hyper Light Drifter's brilliance. I should preface everything by saying that it's a (very) Early Access game, and nowhere near a functional 1.0. This precisely might as well be the tl;dr of the experience: this gem is far from the final bruting.

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Hyper Light Breaker Early Access demonstrates the risk of cutting your rainy day fund too hard

Hyper Light drifting into the sunset (Image via Heart Machine)

Audio-Visuals

As a 3D game, Hyper Light Breaker shares a lot of visual affinity with Solar Ash (Heart Machine's second game that I never played). It has the same purple blocky grass and minimally textured terrain tipped with the hallmark psychedelic hues all of Heart Machine's games are known for. I believe that it worked best with Hyper Light Drifter's 16-bit world. In the 3D games, it goes in the direction of a more off-kilter Risk of Rain 2—if you can believe that.

The lighting is somehow very flat on an otherwise well-conceptualized hub town. Once you ascend to the open-world play area, though, the environments look great at times. Sadly, there's not much environment to see here... yet. Call it the provisional white-space experience that comes with an Early Access, or a limitation imposed by its reliance on procgen.

While it fails to introduce visual variety on repeat runs, I'll admit that the procgen is quite good at creating functional worlds. Despite the otherwise questionable technical state of the day-one Hyper Light Breaker Early Access patch, the procgen never once had me clip through the terrain or bait me with rewardless dead-end inlets tucked behind a cliff. It's one aspect of technical chops where the game inspires confidence, and admittedly, it's an important one for a roguelike game.

Another staple for the series, the heavy-synth music returns with Hyper Light Breaker and does not disappoint. For me, it has always pulled the most weight in the audio-visual identity of Heart Machine's games. This time around, there's less glitchcore dissonance, in a turn away from Hyper Light Drifter's moody melancholy, which feels quite deliberate.

But most will probably not be here for a nostalgic comparison with the old 2D 16-bit action-adventure. The more important question for new players is, of course, how tall it stands on its own. The answer would be quite tall if it didn't shoot itself in the foot with some questionable design decisions.

Gameplay and Structure

The special attacks feel good when you manage to connect unpunished (Image via Heart Machine)

Being a former Risk of Rain andy, I found Hyper Light Breaker's trailer to call on some obvious comparisons to Risk of Rain 2. It's a 3D action roguelite with similar optics. I was very wrong to draw that parallel. Mere minutes into gameplay, I found Hades to be a more accurate frame of reference.

Much like Hades, there are two charges of dash that you can spam quite freely, and there's a heavy emphasis on melee gameplay. That's not to say there's no variety in guns; it's just that the gun controls are very unfriendly towards mouse sensitivity. Add to that the RNG involved in getting the right kind of gun and the ammo problem, and it's quite clear the game wanted me to go melee till I figured out my build.

Build variety is done by lucking out with guns, melee, and mods that synergize with one or the other. You will need help here, too. The chalice of the god-run in Hyper Light Breaker's part of the roguelite town is a far-fetched urban legend.

Combat is no joke in Hyper Light Breaker. Overcommit in one fight and the majority of your health pool gets chunked by trash mobs. The attack timings are just slow enough that you cannot risk a full combo if you don't want to get hit, and there's a lot of stuff on the screen to hit you.

With bosses, this hardcore nature is accentuated even further. The balance here is so askew that you'll need to get some form of powerful synergy online—especially if you're solo. Co-op at least lets you split the boss aggro, which presents many more windows of opportunity than you'd get alone. Regardless, it's still a good idea to get your build going.

The game gives you four lives per cycle (i.e. before the world resets), and each death will damage the 'durability' of your salvaged gear, and once that's fully depleted, they disappear. However, you can stash gear in town, safeguarding it from durability damage. This essentially turns any enterprising attempt at beating the game into an Extraction game, where you go on farming runs to find and stash good gear, and when you have a set that synergizes, you start playing in earnest.

The Problem(s)

While it does not make for a free-flowing roguelite structure, this phenomenon is still fine in and of itself. The problem arises with enemy tuning. You drop health all too easily just trying to get a fun combo off due to how fast and reactive enemies are, and there's very little you can do to sustain health initially. There's a medkit system that's locked behind a skill tree upgrade, and until you get there, it's not the pain train - it's the pain terminus. Together, these elements punish experimentation rather than reward it.

This is exacerbated by the game's lack of tutorialization. Hyper Light Drifter was a mute game, but its signage and level design informed its internal language to lead you. Hyper Light Breaker tries to do something similar, only haphazardly, and to the effect of detriment rather than merit.

When you peel back these problematic layers of balance, though, the game has a solid mechanical core. Combat and movement are swift and satisfactory when you're not overwhelmed with ambushing hordes, and the trifecta of gun, sword, and tech sachets have the makings of a good roguelite. I only hope Hyper Light Breaker can unearth that core before 1.0.

Reviewed on: PC (Code provided by Heart Machine)

Early Access Release Date: January 14, 2025

Developer: Heart Machine

Publisher: Arc Games