Hyper Light Breaker looks like the next early access success story | Hands-on impressions
You can never truly be sure what state a game will be in when it launches in early access, but at least when it’s a sequel to a beloved title you can generally expect to have a good time. We saw this with Hades 2 last year, and this year we’re about to see it with Hyper Light Breaker. Now fully realised in 3D, this new Roguelike has a whole lot going for it, which I gleefully found out in a play session with the developers.
In Hyper Light Breaker you play as one of three breakers, who are on a mission to explore the Overgrowth to defeat the Abyss King. To do this you’ll need to power yourself up with loot and take down his Crowns, which are big nasty underling bosses. I’ll admit in the preview session that the overall story wasn’t explored a whole lot, but that’s just because we were too busy fighting a whole lot of bad guys.
There will be three Breakers available when the Hyper Light Breaker launches in early access, and in this session I was assigned Goro – a badass humanoid raccoon who I absolutely would’ve chosen regardless. Alongside me was my wonderful Editor-in-Chief, and an incredibly helpful developer of the game who held both of our hands as hordes of monsters charged at us. I’ve always loved the idea of co-operative Roguelikes, and can’t wait to get the squad together to explore more of the Overgrowth.
The loop of Hyper Light Breaker is very interesting, as instead of having a single life and instant fail state like most Roguelikes you have a collective life count as a group. This means you can fail a few times, and because of this a single run of the game is able to be much more time consuming (two hours at least as opposed to the more standard thirty minutes the genre tends to be). To save the gear you find out in the world you can also extract at any time, retreating to safety (after fending off a few waves of enemies) and keeping those lives as backup. Life as a breaker is dangerous, especially because as you take down more enemies and find more loot the difficulty of the game slowly but constantly increases, so utilising extraction and not overdoing it will be key in finally succeeding in a run and striking down the bosses.
A game like Hyper Light Breaker is only as good as its combat, and fortunately its combat is sensational. Leaning more towards character action than Elden Ring, your breaker of choice can unleash combos and special attacks based on the weapon they have equipped. There’s a handy selection of icons in the bottom right that shows you all the powerful combat abilities you have in your arsenal, all with cooldowns to keep track of and occasionally a set amount of uses. For further away enemies you’re even packing a gun, but with limited ammo it’s often worth just charging in to conserve it.
Enemies hit back just as hard as you hit them too, so you’ll need to git gud at dodging, blocking, and timing that elusive perfect parry. Now usually I’m bad at parrying and try to pretend it doesn’t exist in melee combat games, but here the window felt great and the reward for nailing it felt so worth it. Restoring health isn’t easy in Hyper Light Breaker, so the fact you get some back for blocking attacks with expert timing is wonderful.
Regular enemies are one thing, but where Hyper Light Breaker really sung was when we confronted a Crown boss. Ours was Dro, a big slightly humanoid wolf with a bad attitude and nasty attacks. In his first form he used all manner of sweeping melee attacks to dart around the battlefield and beat us senseless, and when we managed to scrape through that everything got so much worse. Firing hundreds of orbs of death around the screen, our fight became a bullet hell dance that felt as overwhelming as it did exciting. With both myself and my Editor down for the count our guide skilfully dealt with the bullets while casually mentioning that a member of the dev team can perfect block every bullet in this phase. Humbled, we continued on our quest, and checked out more of what the Overgrowth had to offer.
The gorgeous, colourful world of Hyper Light Breaker really is a joy to explore, partially because it’s so beautiful, and partially because it’s chock full of loot that’ll make you stronger. I didn’t really get to experience what the loop of finding and equipping new gear feels like in a short preview session, but I definitely found plenty of items I could’ve experimented with and will be when I get more time with the game. There’s even a hub area full of places to improve skills and buy new upgrades, which will likely drain away all my time in my quest to be the very best breaker in the Overgrowth.
There’s one more reason exploring the world feels great in this game, and that’s how you actually get around. In Hyper Light Breaker walking is for chumps, so when travelling long distances you’re much better off instantly equipping your hoverboard and riding at top speed up and down the curves of the map. As well as this gnarly method of transport you also have a glider you can use to soar through the air from higher points of elevation, and that’s just as glorious as it sounds. There may be loads of bad guys to dispatch, but at least in between fights you can have a bit of fun getting around.
To say I only got to scratch the surface of Hyper Light Breaker would be an understatement, but everything I did get to experience was sensational. I am so excited to jump back into the Overgrowth and get battered by bosses, and even without some of the content planned for the full release (which largely consists of some extra bosses and new characters from what I can tell) this is a game that’s well worth diving into. I’d put money on Hyper Light Breaker being the next early access success story, and will be playing it day one with a grin on my face and a high chance of death.
Hyper Light Breaker is out on January 14th on PC via early access.
