Hyper Light Breaker is odd. This may be expected – the Hyper Light series so far has been interestingly strange in many ways. But it’s unusual to fit in with the pattern. Hyper Light Drifter – and Solar Ash, which I always saw as a sequel of sorts? These are single-player games with solid plots and carefully designed worlds. They’ve made you work for information but they’ve moved on from working for information to be part of the fun.
Hyper Light Breaker is a strategy based game that you play with friends. It’s about collecting loot and getting stronger when you run well, and it’s about the pain of losing things when you run poorly. Because it’s something like a sport, in a way, I’m tempted to say that the series’ deep unease becomes more problematic than it was before. This is a world of different values, strange names and the sense that everything you see is just the meaning of some great work of thought. Everyone’s cute – well, not a bonus but at least it’s a bonus in the game – isn’t it when all you want to do is point yourself and hang out with friends? Just a little cute.
So my first few hours were a little stressful – some of them, granted, angered by the fact that they were fun. Set myself on fire (still don’t know what I’m doing)? Very funny. Paying money for a cool weapon that disappears forever when I die? I wish I knew ahead of time how this is a rolling game.
Here is the meaning of everything. You and maybe a few friends or strangers choose the class (I still only got one lock) and then put it in the jungle process. There are a bunch of bad bosses that you have to get rid of and then beat it to the exit, and the main idea is that you are running around, getting low-level items, finding money and upgrade and rack up pretty cool weapons, and you’re just trying to get more powerful so you can shoot bigger things, earn more money, and survive a little longer in this place that want you to die.
All good, although the game has a habit of couching this in instructions like, “Collect Prisms to conquer Crowns,” which sounds, to me, not like instructions in the game and more than Ariel from The Tempest had worked for. the follow-up to Full Fathom Five. These are the pearls of his eyes – inevitably I just talked myself around being a fan of this way of doing things, but at least I can admit it maybe not for everyone.
And that’s the point, in a way. Even though I was frustrated, my love for this movie and its surprise was so strong that I was willing to stick with it. So I spent the morning spawning, dying, having to pay in-game for things I didn’t think I should have to pay in-game for, and slowly seeing more of the world. And what I see often seems bright, even if it is often tinged with anxiety.
Case in point: slimes. Low Enemy – Popcorn enemyuse the theme memory of the developer that I mentioned recently. However: don’t worry too much. But embedded in each slime, and knocked white when you kill them, is the slime’s honeyed skull. Loved that. Also, enemies that cast shields on other enemies force you to watch out for enemies further away. I don’t like this in the game, but here the enemy defender is encased in a clear box of lasery plastic, as if they were packed for delivery at the 5th Avenue store boutique. All is forgiven.
Moving to the outside and the game I find myself thinking about more and more is not one of the Hyper Light games, but Fortnite. Fortnite back in the early days of Battle Royale when there weren’t many distractions and legends and battles were over and you pretty much had to just play Battle Royale or get out. I think about that constantly while playing Hyper Light Breaker. It’s there in the mountains, where there are mountains and cliffs and forests, even if they’re strange colors Topshop and even if I can call light-based snowboard to them. He has in mind that, when you move to this world, every second will be your last. I was searching, and occasionally stumbling across a kind of disco Cathedral I wanted to take a picture, but the sick can come down at any time – death is always very exciting.
And it is there, in the wild-eyed scavenging state that I lapse into because of the environment and very dangerous in it at all times, that I become hyper focused. I write everything I come across because who knows when I will need it, and when there is a choice of items – a sword or that, a perk or that? – I usually decide before I have time to read the description, partly because the beautiful text they use is not special – agree, I see as long as a few types of text especially – and partly because early on I died and lost a burden that I didn’t want to lose, just because I stopped trying and kept a cool gun.
That’s the end for now, I think. Hyper Light Breaker is really, really punishing. It is a punishment in a way that I understand, because it is probably equal to multiplayer and because this is probably a small group of people who do not have to endlessly feed the new products into the maw process, and therefore they need players to take their time with what is there. But it makes for an incredible presentation if you are a fan of the series and you love these games for their lonely beauty.
I finally got around this by jumping into games with strangers. What a difference! Suddenly I was successful, got a big reward, and helped with the boss battle – or at least didn’t interfere too much. The community, while small, seems friendly and accommodating, and it is already riddled with experts who seem to understand every system and every strange idea in the world.
And here’s the thing – fun like this is, when the run is over, or when I’m in the middle of the race, I’m back in the jar, which is the cross of a beautiful downtown location and boutique hotel. It’s beautiful here, as detailed and unique as anything in a Hyper Light game. It’s familiar – like it’s part of the movie I already know and love. At first when I landed back here I felt a little wistfulness: why is the rest of the game like this? Why can’t he do more of what I already know? But over time, I began to change my mind, and other thoughts entered. This is familiar, I know, but the game beyond this hub is new and interesting – and that’s something for me to celebrate.
Code for Hyper Light Breaker is provided by the publisher.
