Four shards can then be assembled into units of currency to pay for unlockable abilities, including a charged sword attack, dashes with different properties, and room to carry more health packs at once. Many of the shards are intricately hidden behind invisible paths and false entrances, along with keys that unlock doors to side content. Shards of currency can also be found hidden around, as well as earned after finishing challenging rooms and bosses. It’s important to manage health, because Hyper Light Drifter punishes careless play. The drifter has only five hitpoints of health, but has room for three health packs, which can be found (rarely) throughout the environment, and fully refill health upon use. Firearms are unlocked later as you progress through the story, but melee combat remains essential, as striking enemies refills ammunition. At the beginning, you, as the drifter, have limited combat mechanics-a three-hit combo attack and a directional dash. Hyper Light Drifter goes to great lengths to provide a balance between simplicity in concept and depth in execution, and accomplishes much of this through its difficulty. The dialogue-free world of Hyper Light Drifter is meant to evoke the limited storytelling capacities of an NES/SNES era game, and the narrative device works in the game’s advantage. Heart Machine’s lead developer, Alex Preston, has made direct comparisons between 1991’s The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past and his intentions in developing Hyper Light Drifter. The comparison to Zelda isn’t a dismissive one. Coupled with gameplay likened to a twitch-based Zelda, Hyper Light Drifter is a joy to play a sombre-hearted action RPG that challenges and rewards in equal measure. A hero must wander an ailing kingdom to collect scattered geometries and combat dark forces-nothing in the game’s narrative is more explicit than its premise. Heart Machine’s debut, Kickstarted game, Hyper Light Drifter, is part of that camp: a gorgeous, immersive world that’s largely bereft of direct exposition. This can be also observed as a trend in video games, such as in Playdead’s Limbo or Kikiyama’s Yume Nikki-both games which illustrate abstracted, experiential narratives. “All progressions from a higher to a lower order are marked by ruins and mystery and a residue of nameless rage.”Īn increasingly common narrative device, particularly in films and novels, is the deliberate obfuscation of plot detail and direct characterization.
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