The game studio Heart Machine, which broke into the video game market with their action-adventure RPG Hyper Light Drifter, is returning to the neon science fantasy setting of their original hit with the sequel Hyper Light Breaker. Like classic franchises such as Legend of Zelda or Risk of Rain, the Hyper Light franchise will shift from top-down 8-Bit 2D graphics to a simple yet colorful 3D animated world, as seen in recent Hyper Light Breaker trailers. The gameplay of Hyper Light Breaker also seems to draw inspiration from Heart Machine's most recent game Solar Ash, and innovative open worlds like Breath of the Wild.
The founder of Heart Machine, Alyx Preston named the studio after the congenital heart disease he was born with and the pacemaker he had surgically implanted. In interviews, Alyx has stated the protagonist of Hyper Light Drifter, a wandering warrior seeking a cure for their terminal illness, is a metaphor for his own struggles with bad health and extended hospital stays. Indeed, the gameplay footage for the Hyper Light Breaker continues to evolve the motif shared by all Heart Machine games to date; wanderers searching for salvation in worlds that are colorful, beautiful, and deadly.
Hyper Light Breaker Takes Place In Hyper Light Drifter's Post-Apocalyptic Science Fantasy World
The story of Hyper Lighter Drifter is told purely through visual details. Outside the main menu and a few tutorial prompts, there are no spoken words or written language in the game world or player interface. Instead, friendly NPCs communicate with strange chirps and dialogue bubbles filled with comic strip images. As a result, players of Hyper Lighter Drifter have to reconstruct the story and objectives of the game world, interpreting the strange dreams and visions the Drifter PC has and carefully observing the strange ruins they discover in order to decipher their purpose, their history, and their makers.
Personal interpretations aside, the setting of Hyper Light Drifter is almost certainly a science fiction world that's gone through a truly terrifying apocalypse or war, filled to the brim with the wreckage of titanic robots, underground research facilities, and teleportation networks. Between the hostile stretches of monster-infested wilds, settlements of different alien lifeforms scavenge ruins for useful technology such as the blasters and energy sword that the player also uses. This setting aesthetic is definitively making a return in Hyper Light Breaker, judging by screen captures and gameplay trailers.
Game Devs Are Trying To Make Hyper Light Breaker's Story/Gameplay More Accessible
The early access version of Hyper Light Breaker, set to be released this fall according to the Heart Machine website, will be a larger game than Hyper Light Drifter in every sense of the word. It will feature a truly 3D open world, new weapons, gear, and character customization options, and even an online co-op mode similar to that of Elden Ring and other FromSoftware RPGs. This expanded scope and size of this game world would make it hard for developers at Heart Machine to tell Hyper Light Breaker's game story in the same way Hyper Light Drifter did; which may be why Hyper Light Breaker has a less ambiguous narrative premise and more straightforward, spelled-out gameplay objectives.
According to Heart Machine's press kits, players of Hyper Light Breakers will take on the role of Breakers, high-tech mercenaries enlisted by an unnamed polity to establish and protect settlements in a frontier land known as the Overgrowth. While pursuing this mission and uncovering the truths of the Hyper Light Drifter world, the Breakers will come into conflict with hostile entities called Crowns and the Abyss King who commands them. Alongside these fairly clear plot-lines, developers at Heart Machine seem to be introducing travel features to help players explore, such as hoverboards for rapidly traversing the open world like in Solar Ash, hang gliders like in Breath of the Wild, and so on. With a few months still to wait, there's plenty more to be revealed for the world of Hyper Light Breakers before early access begins.
Sources: IGN - YouTube, Heart Machine
