6/17/2019

Hyper Light Drifter was a bit polarizing when I first played it, back in 2016. I got all the way to the northern boss, and still the gameplay didn't make sense and my direction felt aimless. I took a break that ended up lasting 3 years.

Now after coming back to it and being a bit more patient, I can say that the game is very good. The general design of the enemies and bosses is really fun, but if you don't know what you're doing or the game feel doesn't 'click' with you, the game can be incredibly punishing, but once I got into that flow state, it was really fun weaving in and destroying everything, especially once I got the right power-ups.

One thing I was disappointed in was how small the world actually is once you finish the game (although I haven't 100%'ed it yet, so I might be wrong). The underground sections, while fun, are also short and repetitive.

The art and world building is really well done as well, although I feel like the artistic style doesn't lend itself well to distinguishing what's a playable space and whats decoration. It also was difficult to determine the elevation of many things, since everything felt very flattened. The look of the bosses was phenomenal.

The soundtrack is good. The main theme is a favorite of mine.

I'll revise this review if I ever return to the game to finish the extra stuff.

I love so much that Hyper Light Drifter came out of a Kickstarter campaign. It's a shame the platform is such a mess now - it seems unlikely this kind of lightning could be bottled ever again. Also awesome to know the story was largely inspired by the creator's own health conditions. Exciting to see people with disability transform their experiences into high art!

Even more love to Disasterpeace, one of my very favourite composers. The OST was familiar to me long before but is so perfect in context, elevating the already incredible aesthetic into something truly mythical.

It feels passé to complain about the combat mechanics of a nearly decade-old game, but there's some clunk here that's hard to overlook. Some of the difficulty feels artificial, and the difference between life or death often comes down to whether or not the chain dodge decides to work for you.

It's also deeply obscure in its storytelling, which is not necessarily a mark against it. Clearly inspired by NES games and Soulsbornes alike, it refuses to drop exposition of any kind. That evasive narrative form only works because the art style is so utterly compelling.

A short, brutally difficult but worthy journey. Very excited to check out Solar Ash and the soon-to-be-released Hyper Light Breaker.

Let's get the major complaints out of the way - gameplay was a bit simple and upgrades were mainly superfluous; the game had its fair share of frustrating moments (like that chain dash, urgh) and the story was a pretentious pile of drivel where telling less was more but ended up too confusing to understand or empathize with.

However! That does not mean this was a bad game. Nay, it was fantastic in other regards! The world was well-balanced and designed, with a secret lying behind every corner. Sure, the actual prizes were a bit lame (except the 16-Monolith prize), but finding secrets was a joy in the world, knowing that every single corner was peppered with them.

Combat is light and fast, reminiscent of Bastion but a little more focused on combat skill and less on the upgrades. Bosses were intense and sometimes I was having quite a bit of fun with weaving through combat.

As for visuals and sound? Disasterpiece brings another gorgeous soundtrack to video games, doing a more atmospheric Vangelis-like set of tunes instead of reverting to chiptune like one might expect from someone who uses such familiar electronic beeps. The visuals, however, were the star of this one, a very pretty game with beautiful shades, vistas (them giants made no sense but they looked great being dead everywhere) and very detailed pixel art.

This game might not be the tour de force that we were expecting, but it sure came close and remains a must-have for 2D action game fans! Next time, ditch the pretentiousness and vary the combat a little bit.

The art in this game is amazing. Lots of bright, vivid colors make each of the areas in the game memorable. The music (and the ambient background audio) are also very good.

There are two types of battle outcomes in this game; the times when you barely survive with a single hit point left, and the ones where you obliterate dozens of enemies while hardly taking a hit. In both cases you feel like a badass. The combat is very fluid and the guns complement the swordplay. The upgrade system is also nice, as it allows you to customize your character to your personal play style. I preferred the pistol and shotgun.

When not in combat you'll be exploring four different areas, one for each cardinal direction. Each area feels very different from the others, both in its visuals and in the enemies you face. There are several different paths to take, and many hidden secret areas with health pickups and tokens used to upgrade weapons. This rewards exploration, since you'll want to get as many tokens as you can to upgrade your gear.

Each of the areas also has a boss. What I really liked was that each of the different enemy types in each area had attacks and behavior that, if mastered, prepare you for fighting the boss. The bosses are definitely challenging, but just the right level of difficult. You will be brutally punished for button mashing. You must take your time and study the movement and attack patterns before you begin to assemble an attack strategy.

The west boss was savagely difficult. After the first thirty attempts I gave up. I came back later with some upgrades, and it took another twenty attempts. The other bosses weren't as hard, at least for me. I was able to beat the north and east bosses in around four attempts each, and the south boss on my second try. The final boss was easier than the west boss, taking around fifteen attempts. Obviously this will vary according to the player, with some dismissing it as overly hard. Honestly, I think the difficulty is just right. I found it to be an order of magnitude easier than Dark Souls, for example.

One annoyance I had throughout the game was that many of the secret areas aren't easily visible (obviously hidden areas are, by definition, not visible). What I mean is, there were absolutely NO clues whatsoever, subtle or otherwise, to indicate the presence of a majority of the secret areas. This lead to hugging the wall of every room after I'd cleared it of enemies, just to be sure I hadn't missed an invisible passage. Just when I'd start to consider giving up this obsessive search behavior, I would find yet another completely invisible passage way, which I'd never have found any other way. That took away some of the "organic" pleasure in finding the secrets, making it instead a very mechanical process.

I also fell off the map countless times because I couldn't see what was on the screen. Sometimes it was because of the lack of depth perception in some areas; others it was because my character was obstructed from my view while I searched the edges for hidden passageways. This was particularly annoying, because falling off the map costs a full hit point.

Another minor complaint is the lack of explanation concerning how to open blocked locked doors. When approaching one of these doors, a HUD element pops up showing the number of triangles you have. Because this UI element is so prominent, I didn't look close enough at the physical door. It turns out that the door itself shows you the number of triangles required, not the panel. I ended up thinking several of the doors were broken, because I had four triangles, which filled in the UI element completely, but the door itself actually required eight. A simple UI text label with "Two more required." would have been sufficient.

Finally, I ran into one technical issue that made it nearly impossible to play the Steam version of the game on Windows; the game would rarely launch. Twenty to thirty launch attempts would be needed before the game would successfully start; sometimes even a reboot wouldn't help. The game ran fine on my MacBook, however, so the obvious and simple solution would be to transfer the save file...or so you'd think. Unfortunately, the game encodes unique data into the save that prevents you from copying a save file to a different machine. From what I can tell, the developer didn't do this on purpose; it's how the underlying engine (GameMaker) writes its save data.

Anyway, to deal with the issue, I ended up having to write my own tool so I could transfer the save onto a Mac, where I was able to finish the game. Because of this problem, I would recommend sticking to a console version for this particular game.

I really, REALLY love ambiguous narratives. Thinkin about every pixel of the environment for clues, discussing on forums about "what it all means", piecing the lore togethter... that is my jam. In those terms, Hyper Light Drifter was a success for me. The mysterious plot and amazing aesthetic —the colorful pixel art that gives life to intriguing lands and undergroung labs and the evocative music— made me love this game.

But a game is not only graphics and plot. There's also gameplay, of course. I enjoyed the combat even if It wasn't anything special. But I do have a big problem with the design of the game. Specifically how the ambiguity of the narrative "infects" the level design in a bad way.

I like exploring and discovering things in games by myself, not because the game told me to "look there" (at least, not directly). At first glance, It seemed like I was gonna like Hyper Light Drifter because of that, but that wasn't the case.

The problem was that there was no way to know how many things where hidden and what was the purpose of many of them. The map was increibly confusing and didn't really showed where I was or where could I go. The only solution was to wander the sames areas again and again, defeating the same enemies over and over hoping to find a small symbol that sometimes points to a secret, with no way to know if you already found all secrets there o not.

This was incredibly frustrating.

The weird thing is that the FromSoftware games doe very similar things with their worlds. They don't even had a map, but I Enjoyed getting lost in those games a lot more, even if my search for secrets, items and lore was fruitless. I need to thing more about why is that (I just finished this game yesterday), but if you, dear Grouveer, think you know, I'll appreciate your input. Its because the combat is better?

Anyway. I liked Hyper Light Drifter and I'm enjoying dissecting the plot a lot. But I wish the exploration was a lot better. This world is very intriguing and I want more of it, but right now, I don't have a good time forcing myself to travel through it without knowing what I'm looking for... or if there's anything to look for.

ENG

Hyper Light Drifter is a game that mixes both combat and puzzles, it's full of secret paths, fast fights and awesome bosses in a wonderful atmosphere with a soundtrack that allows you to immerse yourself in this fantastic world. So we can say that it's known for its pixelated art style and gameplay. Its great use of visuals invites the player to explore the surroundings as each area has its own peculiarities without being repetitive. At the beginning you don't really understand what's going on, since the story is told without words, but as you go on, and thanks to the details of the map, you can understand the lore. Although I enjoyed the game, some of the combats were a bit difficult because the mechanics are a bit uncomfortable. Nevertheless, it's a game that I highly recommend.

ESP

Hyper Light Drifter es un juego que mezcla el combate y los puzles, está lleno de caminos secretos, combates rápidos y jefes increíbles dentro de una ambientación maravillosa acompañada de una banda sonora que te permite sumergirte en este mundo fantástico. Por eso podemos decir que se caracteriza sobre todo por su estilo artístico pixelado y su jugabilidad. Su gran uso de lo visual invita al jugador a explorar los entornos ya que cada zona tiene sus propias peculiaridades evitando volverse repetitivo. Es cierto que al principio no entiendes muy bien que está ocurriendo, pues la historia se cuenta sin palabras, pero a medida que avanzas y gracias a los detalles del mapa vas comprendiendo el lore. Aunque disfruté del juego, algunos combates se vieron perjudicados porque el combate es un poco incómodo. Aún así es un juego que recomiendo mucho.

There hasn’t been a game I’ve played in recent memory that sets the stage so quickly. From the opening minutes of Hyper Light Drifter, I’ve witnessed a series of stylish, moody and cryptic sequences that had me absolutely hooked even before I had control. After the intro sequence it becomes fairly apparent that Hyper Light Drifter is heavily inspired by games like Dark Souls, Super Metroid and Zelda: A Link to the Past. The tight controls, numerous secrets to discover and tough battle encounters makes the game compelling enough to play through. Unfortunately Hyper Light Drifter suffers from being too evocative without explaining the gameplay mechanics nor the story very well. The game demands players to intuit everything and ultimately your experience will be determined by how much you enjoy the combat and exploration.

HLD’s story is hard to explain because there is no dialog. You play as a Drifter who needs to kill 4 bosses each guarding a giant stone that locks a great evil in the center of the world. Then there is something with 4 titans that have been vanquished in the game’s intro, a mysterious ailment that causes the Drifter to cough blood and an Anubis figure that shows up from time to time to guide the Drifter. There is more explanation available, but that requires players to reach all the secret monoliths, manually translate them and enter one specific room in the game (or you can just search everything online). I abhor this kind of story telling because only the “true hard-core” players will get the more complete story. I play games to have fun and to enjoy a good narrative, not to go decipher the Da Vinci code.

Fortunately, even if you aren’t grasped by the narrative, the combat is solid. At first glance, the controls for the Drifter will not feel responsive. There is animation priority when attacking and dodging, not dissimilar to the Dark Souls series. It’s a very start and stop combat system, and it is all about dodging the enemies’ blows then quickly getting in a three hit combo before bailing out again. There is an immensely satisfying feeling methodically fighting off monsters one by one without taking a hit. Unfortunately, once you do take a hit, things go downhill very quickly. The low recovery time makes it easy to get stun locked by a horde of baddies. In fact, I found fighting large groups of enemies in a small room the hardest encounters in the game compared to the boss fights.

Outside of combat, the other main draw of HLD is exploration. Each of the dungeons you visit is filled with secret corridors, hidden platforms and locked doors. Often completing these side tasks grants you gear bits that you can use to learn new abilities or increase the capacity of your current arsenal. While it might seem that these secret areas are placed randomly on the map, the game smartly gives you hints in the environment to help indicate areas that are perhaps worth exploring a bit more. One of my major issues is with how the game doesn’t explain the abilities. Probably one of the most common problems new players will face is understanding how to do a chain dash. The in-game video tutorial makes it look like the way to execute a chain dash is to change directions with every dash but that is not the case. The chain dash technique is based on rhythmically pressing the dash button at the right time which takes practice. Fortunately, chain dashing is not required to complete the game but is necessary to learn if you want to dig through the game’s secrets.

HLD’s other noticeable defect is its strict adherence to the flaws of the games that inspired it. The map design in HLD is almost a 1:1 design from A Link to the Past, where it is a drawing of a map with vague areas on where the objectives are. The map is poorly laid out and difficult to navigate. There is no way to keep track of unexplored areas and locked doorways. Another nitpick would be the elevator rides up and down the world. They are evocative of the elevator rides in Super Metroid. The thing is, in Super Metroid, the elevator rides were implemented to mask loading times within the game, while in HLD they only seem to be present for aesthetic purposes. To be clear HLD does carve its own niche and identity, but there are other times where it includes relics of old game design out of pure nostalgia.

Hyper Light Drifter taken solely from a gameplay perspective is wildly successful. The combat and traversal controls are nuanced enough that high level players can really take advantage of it and achieve fantastic results, like doing infinite chain dashes. It’s the other elements of Hyper Light Drifter that I’m not as big a fan of. The exploration in the game is neat and discovering all the secret passages is fun, but there is a lot of backtracking involved especially since the map is not very informative. The lack of dialogue and text really hurts the story. The dark mood and environmental storytelling can only do so much. It is hard for me to be invested in a narrative that’s left so open for interpretation. Hyper Light Drifter is not necessarily style over substance, it is more all show, no tell.

Ori will always be my first love when it comes to Metroidvanias. Moon Studios came to the brilliant realization that the genre’s inherent repetitive structure is it’s greatest strength and if you could couple it with solid movement mechanics you've got a formula a player will absolutely lose themselves in.

Heart Machine has come to the same conclusion with Hyper Light Drifter. It's a simple play on the dash mechanic, adding a timing element to it that turns the button press into this mini rhythm game as you chain one after the other. It's simple but my God did I get obsessed with it, It made moving back and forth in their pixel paradise an absolute joy. It elevated each boss fight as I weaved through attacks and timed my own. It's fucking inspired man, and I need it in every game I play after this.

It was definitely the selling point of an otherwise under baked package, the combat of Hyper Light is functional. Not bad, a combination of sword and gun play gets the job done but not much more. The world is sprawling but it's beauty is skin deep as Heart Machine sadly pulled a ‘FromSoftware’ and made their story aggressively obscure completely emotionally detaching me from the game as whole. I can't tell you a single thing about what I was doing through out it's run time and IDGAF how artsy you are, that's objectively a problem.

I had a ton of fun though, and that's all that counts really. Def recommend.

Oh also, Fuck the Map. The map in this game is dogshit and useless and they may as well not have made one in the first place. OK I'm done now. Lol