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In the competitive arena of early access roguelikes, Hades 2 and Windblown have been my champions this year, but only because Hyper Light Breaker struck me as a game I'd enjoy a lot more after a few patches. Now, developer Heart Machine may have cooked up just the patch to get me properly stuck in: a game-changing pass to resources and difficulty said to make the open-world roguelike "easier to get into, but harder to master."
The "Buried Below" update, Hyper Light Breaker's first major content update, is due April 29, Heart Machine announced today. It folds in months of player feedback to smooth down a few pain points and expand some of the game's best ideas.
The headliner is a rework to how Hyper Light Breaker – previously billed as a pseudo-extraction game – handles runs. Instead of the old energy-based system that let you die and retry a map a few times before it was wiped, Breaker will now wipe your inventory and reset the Overgrowth world map if you die a single time.
"We know this is a big change," says lead producer Michael Clark. "We've made this change to balance the game around a more traditional roguelite experience, turning each run into a more consistent zero-to-hero journey.
"This allows us to better adjust difficulty and make the game easier to get into, but harder to master, and addresses much of the feedback we've received from players since early access launch."
To offset this change, you can now extract out of the Overgrowth from any shrine without needing to fight through waves of enemies at the teleporter. This makes it easier to get in and get out while slowly accumulating power in the build-up to boss fights.
"This change will make it so players can extract more often, making the game easier as a result, which was one of the main requests from players to change the game's difficulty," a press release reads.
It's a fascinating design concession that seems to target conflict between the game's extraction DNA and the classic roguelike vehicle.
When you die, you'll now lose everything in your inventory and Vault apart from Golden Rations, which are Breaker's main meta-progression system. Vendors have also been adjusted to account for this, with Bright Blood now spent at Overgrowth vendors or containers and shrines, and materials used at the Cursed Outpost to modify gear.
The Buried Below update will also introduce a new Crown boss, a dragon queen named Maw, as well as cave areas for players to explore. There's a new enemy type, two new weapons, and fresh Sycom gadgets that are now more class-like with assigned Breakers, but multiple available specs that support different play styles. One of those Breakers is the new fighter Rondo, who can lean into dodging or parrying.
Another big pain point addressed in Buried Below is the "lack of proper onboarding in the game," which was something we discussed with Heart Machine earlier this year when the studio was busily correcting the game's wobbly launch. This update adds a proper tutorial which will play the first time you launch the game after the patch.
Hyper Light Breaker enraptured me at reveal and eviscerated me at launch, but it's always had a kernel of something that's kept me coming back. Here's hoping this patch makes that something shine brighter.
