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For over a year now, Hyper Light Breaker has topped the list of open-world games I simply cannot wait to try. The latest game from Hyper Light Drifter and Solar Ash developer Heart Machine, and the first game to loudly declare Hyper Light to be a whole universe, it promises a mix of open-world navigation, roguelike progression (roguelite, specifically, for those who care), and action combat held to a high standard. It's always looked and sounded great, doubly so in our chat with director Alx Preson earlier this year, but I've sadly missed its few hands-on opportunities. Thankfully, Summer Game Fest gave me 30 minutes with the game, which was enough time to get my butt kicked by an early boss and confirm that, yep, this is exactly what I wanted.
A whole new world, and then another
My session began with an extremely brief tour of Hyper Light Breaker's hub area, a city-like settlement filled with characters offering various items and upgrade services. I didn't have much time to waste, so I speedran the NPCs and headed to the teleporter which shoots you out into the Overgrowth, the procedurally generated world you'll be exploring. I only stopped to assemble a loadout, chopping and changing weapons, two cooldown-based abilities called Holobytes – in my case, a slashing combo and a grenade – as well as passive Holobytes for stat bumps and other effects. It soon becomes clear that you'll amass a lot of stuff, including higher-rarity versions of items, so the room for customization is huge.
It's equally obvious that Hyper Light Breaker is going to have a huge roster of playable characters. I went with the default girl, Lapis, both to get the most straightforward impression and because she's my favorite so far. A glance at the full cast, which will grow throughout the game's Early Access journey, gets my mind racing. Coupled with the three-player co-op, I'm getting more Risk of Rain 2 vibes than I expected, which is always exciting.
Once I'm dropped into the Overgrowth, beginning my journey in a fluorescent biome that echoes the game's love of pink and cyan, the loop and feel of Hyper Light Breaker start to come into focus. This is the first time Hyper Light Breaker has shown off a procedural world, and the variety of environments is fabulous. Within seconds, I'm wall-dashing up boulders, gliding over rivers, and pulling out my hoverboard every chance I get (which I hope is upgradeable, because it feels to me like it could be a little faster). The Breakers feel great to control, though my experience was somewhat hampered by the SGF demo setup plopping a big-ol' honkin' screen what felt like six inches from my face.
Each map, I gather, has several bosses graded in difficulty by the number of keys you need to access them. With each expedition, you set out to defeat elite mobs, claim their keys, and then topple the corresponding bosses. Along the way, you chart your own course through the map to hit points of interest for upgrades and materials, following your own waypoints like guiding stars. You don't have to go for the hardest bosses in every run, either. In fact, it seems like slowly working your way up over multiple excursions may often be the better option. Because once you run out of lives, the world will reset and you'll be back to square one, though plenty of permanent upgrades, some tied to sharing resources with the hub settlement, carry over between runs.
The kicker is the Danger Meter, which fills up as you defeat enemies – golems, bats, bestial warriors, wizards, swordmasters, snipers, and plenty more. Once it's full, something, well, dangerous happens, often in the form of enemies or mini-bosses sent to kill you. This puts another element on the scale of risk and reward. You need to set your own goals each time you enter the Overgrowth, and move without wasting too much time and making things harder for yourself. Heart Machine stresses that combat isn't actually the focus of Hyper Light Breaker, though it is how you'll spend a lot of time. The best players, it appears, will not only parry and combo their hearts out, but also intuit and navigate what the partly random, partly handcrafted worlds throw at you.
Tools of the trade
Combat is, of course, unsurprisingly satisfying, the zippiness of Hyper Light Drifter elevated by Breaker's more varied arsenal. Normal attacks, charged attacks, dodges, blocks, careful parries, enemy staggers – Heart Machine's reading of the classic third-person melee book is spot-on. There's a more tactical rhythm to engagements, especially against larger groups. Spamming light attacks will get you nowhere fast – nowhere but the respawn point, anyway.
Dash in with a heavily emphasized dodge attack, back out to launch an AoE ability, circle around to avoid ranged attacks and pick off stragglers, then prep a charged attack for your next opener. I sampled daggers, claws, swords, ammo-hungry guns mostly replenished with enemy drops, and abilities like Diablo-grade corpse explosions or AoE arrow rain. Ultimate abilities called Amps punch combat up further, and you'll unlock more of everything as you play. It's a good thing there's a loadout system; builds are going to be all over the place in this game in the best way.
Frankly I'm relieved that the first boss, a boxer-like bruiser named Exus, beat the crap out of me. Weaker enemies spawned throughout the fight, Exus' gap-closing punches tore through my allotted healing items, and fiery ranged attacks slowly reduced me to cinders. I performed a little better on follow-up attempts, but between the brief demo and, in hindsight, my naively short rush to the boss arena, I wasn't able to beat Exus. That's item number one on the to-do list for Hyper Light Breaker's Early Access launch later this summer, then.
Hyper Light Breaker is set to release for PC via Steam Early Access in late summer 2024. If you can't wait, however, you can always check out our ranking of the best roguelikes to play right now.
