The pixel artwork, sounds and tragic themes blend together to make a compelling looking game. One such situation, below, is how I found Hyper Light Drifter:Ĭraig: Hey Adam, have you seen Hyper Light Drifter yet?Ĭraig: Yeah, it’s totally awesome! Check it out.Ĭraig pulls out his phone and shows me the intro to the game. It’s a really great experience and makes finding good games a lot easier. Every now and then, you get to meet individuals who light up because they want to talk about a game they’ve recently played, and also to see if they can find the next game they want to play. Another time my wife ducked into T2 (tea company) and I chatted to the sales consultant for 15 minutes about games and then got the elbow to hurry up. Let’s hope the guys supervisor didn’t listen to that call.

Then spent the next 25 minutes talking about games. It led to great service from a top bloke. Similarly, my last conversation with my insurance company’s representative led to a mutual interest in games. I respond with, “I just met him, his name’s Jack, he likes games”. Ultimately, though, what will keep you coming back to Hyper Light Drifter even when it kicks you in the backside repeatedly is its beautifully rendered world.My wife finds it amusing that I will occasionally disappear at a shopping centre, only to find me chatting to someone. You'll get better and better at surviving this world, just as your mysterious character does. The fact that the world is carefully hand-crafted and can be tackled in a variety of ways also helps mitigate the challenge. If you die - WHEN you die - you'll simply return to the beginning of the current section, which tends to not be too big a setback. This is no perma-death roguelike experience like Enter The Gungeon or Dead Cells. Hyper Light Drifter is a punishing, awkward game to master, but that shouldn't put you off. Fine-aiming with the ZL button is very tricky in the middle of a scrap - particularly as it renders you temporarily immobile. Mastering the game's firearms is a tricky but rewarding exercise in itself. Your sword is your main wrecking instrument here, but it's also the way in which you recoup ammunition for your punchy armoury of guns. It's imperative that you master the game's dash move, mapped to the B button, which is also essential for negotiating the crumbling overworld. When these enemies start stacking up in threes and sixes, you'll find that button mashing simply won't cut it.

Your sickly protagonist can only take a few hits at the outset, and even the lowliest of grunts comes at you hard and fast. Making progress through Hyper Light Drifter is all about mastering its precarious scraps. Despite the adventurous setting, this is seriously combat-heavy stuff - and that combat exhibits a deadly-sharp edge. That extends to the hostile encounters that make up so much of the game. You'll need to stick with Hyper Light Drifter during its opening stretch, as there's precious little hand-holding to be found. This can actually prove to be quite an obstacle to progress early on in the game. Everything is communicated by way of symbols and pictographs, whether it's the lamentations of a downtrodden NPC or a simple tutorial for a new special move. In a world filled with tales of loss, hardship and heroism, however, there isn't a single piece of written text to be found. Its devastated fantasy world is rendered with a striking neon palette and accompanied by a hauntingly beautiful synth soundtrack. Hyper Light Drifter is a triumph of world creation as much as anything else. A whole new world (don't you dare close your eyes)

Indeed, the world of Hyper Light Drifter itself is one big enigma you'll long to crack. There's a semi-open world to explore, bosses to fight, weapon upgrades to be obtained, simple lock-and-key puzzles to negotiate, and stacks of secrets to discover. This is a top-down action-RPG with four sprawling dungeons, which can be tackled in more or less any order. That said, at least a few of them seem to have been borrowed and repurposed from the early Zelda playbook. Heart Machine's game is a brilliantly self-contained experience, and one that seems to play by its own rules. And not just because it predates all of those aforementioned games. To call Hyper Light Drifter derivative would be to do it a grave disservice though. It's got a little of Enter The Gungeon's balletic top-down shooting, a smidgen of of Hollow Knight's weighty swordplay, and a light-footed ninja protagonist worthy of Dead Cells. Now there's another to add to the list in Hyper Light Drifter. Switch owners have been rather spoiled for brilliant indie action-adventures with crunchy combat of late.

Hyper light drifter review