Early in my interview with Alx Preston, founder and inventive director at Heart Machine, he corrects me on an essential element about Hyper Light Breaker. I’d spent the primary jiffy referring to it as a sequel, however he clarifies, “It’s not Hyper Light Drifter 2. It’s a follow-up, meaning that it’s an installment in the franchise of Hyper Light. So it’s a different game, different protagonists, different gameplay.” After getting the prospect to be taught extra in regards to the sport and see it in motion, this distinction makes lots of sense. For me to name it a sequel was deceptive, given how totally different the video games look and play.
Breaker is a 3D rogue-lite with a robust emphasis on multiplayer. Players discover an space referred to as the Overgrowth, gather weapons and equipment, and combat off monsters. And although the primary Hyper Light sport had a set protagonist with a centered narrative, Breaker permits gamers to create and customise their very own warrior, recognized on this world as Breakers. It’s a totally new route – one the crew is clearly enthusiastic about.
“I am the type of person creatively that likes to do new things,” Preston says. “I think I would just get creatively exhausted if I was just making sequel after sequel, the same thing over and over with little differences.” He expresses admiration for Image & Form, the developer behind the SteamWorld video games, a sequence the place every new entry is wildly totally different but undeniably a part of the identical franchise. “I think for us it’s no different,” he says. “In that, we just think about what it means to exist in the world of Hyper Light.”
An Ambitious Approach
Much of Hyper Light Breaker will appear instantly acquainted, however Heart Machine has made nice strides to make this expertise really feel recent. After studying how one can construct 3D environments for Solar Ash, the crew determined to take issues a step additional and create the Overgrowth: an open world that’s totally different each run.
The design course of was lengthy and difficult, Preston says. “It’s basically designing with math at the end of the day.” Even although the world is procedurally generated, Heart Machine didn’t need it to really feel that means. “We’re still making sure that there are good sight lines, that the 3D world feels good to explore and Traverse. You still have hidden things, you still have objects and items and enemies distributed, and it feels like it is more handcrafted. And that was the intention. Can you get good level design in a procedural world? You can, you know, just it takes some effort.”
Initially, the Overgrowth was a sequence of separated biomes organized in a stage-by-stage format, however halfway via the event course of, the crew realized it may merge the levels into one. Referred to because the “Pangea Shift,” the brand new method concurrently opened up new alternatives within the stage design course of whereas additionally condensing a few of the work that will have been required to make separate levels. Biomes nonetheless exist, however now they’re interconnected in ways in which weren’t beforehand attainable.
“We’ve done something that I think is pretty special,” Preston says. “It’s one of its many unique elements. And it’s probably its most unique element.”
Build A Breaker
To discover this different world, you’ll must create and customise your Breaker. Preston clarifies that the character creation course of is not “in-depth”, but you’ll be able to pick a species and style the character how you like. Players will also be able to customize a loadout that fits their specific tastes; the gun and sword from Drifter return, but they’re one part of a much wider array of weapons to pick and choose from. “It’s nonetheless excessive vitality, nonetheless fast-paced,” Preston says. “But on the similar time, we’ve got much more element and depth to our fight programs than we’ve ever had earlier than.”
You’ll have to choose your weapons fastidiously because you’ll be battling your means via the Overgrowth. Your character’s principal purpose is to defeat massive bosses generally known as Crowns, with the last word purpose of defeating the Drift King, the primary supply of evil on this world. But to achieve any of those highly effective foes, you’ll have to seek out and activate beacons guarded by mini-bosses. While presumably not as harmful as Crowns, Preston says the mini-bosses are “still mean, mean bosses, but they’ll be more randomized throughout runs.”
Heart Machine gave us a take a look at one in every of these bosses specifically: The Last Master. As a lifeless, resurrected Breaker, they’ve the same look to participant characters however are notably taller, looming over any Breaker silly sufficient to method them.
“[The Last Master is] a reflection of the player character in a lot of ways,” Preston says. “And so, they’ll be using a lot of the same weapons and loadouts as you, but more specific and tailored to their theme.” Mini bosses additionally sprint and leap identical to participant characters and might even climb partitions to pursue should you attempt to get away. They’re designed to be as scary as they’re lethal.
“It’s really interesting to kind of teach players through death,” Preston says, ruminating on roguelikes for a second. “With single-player affairs or other games that don’t have this type of structure, you’re typically trying to safeguard players from death a lot of the time, or at least provide them outs. But with roguelikes, you’re kind of intentionally trying to kill the player in a lot of ways because you have that advantage of like, ‘Hey, runs are runs, and you’re gonna go back and inevitably have more runs.'”
That mentioned, don’t count on Dark Souls-level problem from this sport. “I don’t think we’re ever going to make an easy game, but I definitely wouldn’t say that our games are going to be, like, super hardcore,” Preston clarifies. “We want to have accessibility just as much as we want to have challenge.”
Creating A Community
Preston and the crew aren’t simply excited to make a rogue-lite due to the fight. After years of engaged on Solar Ash largely in secret, Heart Machine needs to spend extra time growing “out in the open.” With a rogue-lite construction, it is capable of put the sport into early entry, join extra with the group, and polish its product accordingly. Preston additionally says that due to this style, the sport is “more accessible in a lot of ways and has a ton of replay value.” It’s not a sport you’ll play via as soon as and put down; ideally, gamers can get along with a bunch of pals to play repeatedly.
Throughout our dialog, I discover a specific deal with the concept of group and togetherness. I ask Preston if it’s a response to the isolation the world handled at first of the pandemic, however he shakes his head and says, “Not at all. This is stuff I’ve been thinking about forever.” He says it harkens again to Glitch City, a collective of indie builders he was a founding member of again in 2013. At Glitch City, builders don’t essentially work on the identical initiatives, but it surely supplies an area for them to coexist whereas engaged on particular person initiatives. It’s inside this environment that Hyper Light Drifter was created.
Now, Preston says group is a crucial idea for Heart Machine as a complete going ahead, and the multiplayer components of Hyper Light Breaker are a transparent instance of that. The sport is playable with co-op enabled from begin to end, with multiplayer components constructed into the sport’s basis. When I ask in regards to the sport’s inspirations, I anticipated Preston to record off a bunch of indie roguelikes, however he additionally brings up extra social video games like Destiny 2 and Phantasy Star Online.
“I think there’s a lot of sentiment lately that video games are like modern golf or other ways to just hang out,” he says. “The hope is that there will be some factor right here that feels such as you’re hanging out with pals.”
Hyper Light Breaker enters Early Access subsequent yr. When I ask Preston what a profitable launch appears to be like like, he has just a few solutions. He needs to maintain the lights on, to make sufficient to permit Heart Machine to maintain making video games: each customary responses. But ultimately, he provides yet another marker for fulfillment, one which additionally appears to explain the core ethos of the sport.
“I think [the game will be successful] if it resonates and makes an audience for itself that isn’t just core Drifter fans. It brings in new people, and it starts to connect friends and strangers online to just have fun together,” Preston concludes. “You know, if players have fun online together, that’s a pretty good marker of success for this game.”
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