When veritable indie darling Hyper Light Drifter stole its way into our collective hearts in March 2016, it redefined what we expected from the independent game development scene. Here was a thunderous action adventure RPG that harkened back to the finest 16-bit classics, paying ample homage to such legendary fare as The Legend of Zelda and Diablo, while also wearing its aesthetic Studio Ghibli influences proudly on its digital sleeve. Hyper Light Drifter was one of the very best titles to emerge that year and remains an essential must-play even today.
With nearly a decade spanning the divide between Hyper Light Drifter and Hyper Light Breaker, you might well be wondering just what the successor to Hyper Light Drifter does differently and, well, the answer is a whole lot.
Hyper Light Breaker Is Neither A Sequel Or A Prequel To Hyper Light Drifter
Though Hyper Light Breaker is billed as the ‘successor’ to Hyper Light Drifter, it is neither a narrative prequel or sequel to the events which unfolded in the 2016 title. Instead, Hyper Light Breaker takes place in the broader ‘Hyper Light’ universe and tells an entirely new story in a fresh setting. Neatly, this also has the nice side effect of allowing folks who never played Hyper Light Drifter (shame on you), to get stuck right into Hyper Light Breaker without any experience of the former.

The 16-bit Inspired Pixel Art Is Gone – Say Hello To Fully Three-Dimensional Worlds
Ostensibly even today, Hyper Light Drifter is an attractive effort that masterfully blends pixel art and a classic 16-bit aesthetic to create a wholly unique presentation. For Hyper Light Breaker however, developer Heart Machine has unleashed its substantial artistic talents in all three dimensions, underpinning the shift into the third axis with a gorgeously vibrant, anime-esque art style that looks set to make Hyper Light Breaker one of the most eye-opening offerings of the year.
Say Hello To A New Roguelite Adventure, Wave Goodbye To Top Down RPG Shenanigans
Arguably the biggest departure that Hyper Light Breaker makes from its beloved predecessor is the shift to becoming a roguelite, open-world action RPG. Bolstered by the move into fully three-dimensional environments, Hyper Light Breaker unfurls its action from an elevated third-person perspective, rather than the top-down, bird’s-eye viewpoint that was adopted in Hyper Light Drifter.
While the hand-crafted worlds of Hyper Light Drifter have gone, Heart Machine is keen to impress on players how this change of approach appeals to Hyper Light Breaker. With each playthrough yielding new environments, freshly placed enemies, new loot and new secrets, though Hyper Light Breaker very much subscribes to roguelite design, it does so in an innovative way.

Rather than just fighting your way through one run after another, Hyper Light Breaker instead breaks things down into runs and cycles. Cycles cause the map to roll over, resulting in an entirely new map filled with all new enemies and treasures to discover, but the kicker here is that players can do as many runs as they like within a single cycle. That is, however, until they ever beat or get beaten by the double-hard Crown bosses who guard that particular map, resulting in an all-new cycle and, you guessed it, an all-new map to boot.
When you’re not carving your way through the vicious hordes of the Overgrowth, you’ll be building up your hub settlement, The Cursed Outpost. Here, you’ll unlock new structures, new NPCs to talk to and new objectives to tackle in the Overgrowth itself. The Cursed Outpost also acts as a sanctuary of sorts for your Breaker to be extracted in the middle of any given cycle as well.

New Dimensions Deliver Additional Traversal And Combat Options
Much more than just a surface consideration, the shift into three dimensions has also informed how Hyper Light Breaker plays, as players (or ‘Breakers’ as they’re affectionately known in the game) can explore the gorgeously rendered, sprawling 3D world of the Overgrowth by running, climbing, wall-dashing, gliding and using hoverboards to name just a few of the available traversal methods.
Supplementing its newfound three-dimensional exploration and traversal are the combat mechanics that form the backbone of Hyper Light Breaker. Hyper Light Breaker has its titular heroes tangling with the various denizens of the Overgrowth, a corrupted covenant of flora and fauna, as they attempt to smash their way through to the Crowns who are the grand defenders of the Overgrowth and the protectors of the Abyss King – the seeming root of all evil in the world – though he will appear later during Hyper Light Breaker’s stint in Early Access.

The combat in Hyper Light Breaker is much more sophisticated than what we have seen previously in Hyper Light Drifter. For a start, not only can players choose from very different Breakers in Vermillion and Lapis for example, but each of those Breakers has unique load-outs. The hulking and robust Vermillion boasts Gunslinger and Tank load-outs that allow him to switch between damage-soaking and ranged firearm attack capabilities, while the agile Lapis can switch between the restorative Lightweaver and aggressive Warrior load-outs. Even better still, developer Heart Machine has promised that as Hyper Light Breaker makes its way through Early Access, more and more Breakers will be made available along with new load-outs to match, providing a kaleidoscope of different playstyles for players to get stuck into.
No Longer Just A Solo Affair
As part of its love letter to the incredible 16-bit RPGs of old, Hyper Light Drifter was an invariably single-player, and thus somewhat suitably lonely, affair. Hyper Light Breaker, however, is looking to do things a little differently in that regard by allowing multiple players to form a team to tackle the Overgrowth and the fiendish Crowns that lurk within. At this point, Hyper Light Breaker’s cooperative play is currently limited to online only, with local couch co-op not on the table as things stand according to Heart Machine’s development roadmap. But this is the thing, with Hyper Light Breaker right at the beginning of its Early Access journey and with months and maybe years left on the clock until release, don’t be at all surprised if Heart Machine builds upon this already solid foundation with a range of new features that further separate Hyper Light Breaker from its iconic 2016 predecessor.
