During Summer Games Fest, we got to go hands on with Heart Machine’s upcoming game Hyper Light Breaker. We got to spend about twenty minutes with the game and experience how the world works as well as fighting one of the game’s bosses. The first thing you’ll notice is, unlike its predecessor, Hyper Light Breaker is a 3D open world roguelike game instead of a 2D action game. However, the game is still as colorful and vibrant with neon pinks and blues flooding throughout the procedurally generated world.
Unfortunately, we didn’t get to experience much of the roguelike elements as we always spawned in the same spot in the world. However, in the full release you will be spawned in random locations on the map each time you need to respawn. Then, the world doesn’t reset immediately upon death like it would in many other roguelikes. This game gives you five lives to explore and interact with the world and make progress prior to giving you a differently generated world map.
The main loop of Hyper Light Breaker like any good roguelike is to explore around the environment and find weapons, buffs, items, etc. that will help you make it further and further into the run before dying. The world itself is easy enough to get around in as you can dash around and hop on your hoverboard to move a bit faster. There are also jump pads and a glider akin to the recent Zelda games that make traversing longer distances easier.
Finally, there’s the combat. Combat is a mix of melee and gun based combat and you easily switch between the two as well as having a few additional powers to use against enemies such as a grenade or shield. There are plenty of enemies to engage with and tougher enemies, called “Elites”, are placed throughout the map. When you encounter an Elite, it’s usually covered with a host of another enemies with it and makes for way more challenging event. However, once an Elite is defeated, they drop a key to unlock the door to a boss, so you must deal with these Elites to progress. Bosses are gated behind doors and need a corresponding number of keys to get to. Thus, you must go around and defeat all the Elites to encounter all the bosses. Let me tell you, bosses are no joke either as we were basically annihilated almost immediately each time we got to the boss arena until we learned his patterns and were able to parry his attacks.
Thus, if you’re into challenging yet vibrant roguelikes, be on the look out for Hyper Light Breaker when it releases later this.