#HYPER LIGHT DRIFTER CHAIN DASH ROOM TRIAL#

Strategy and response are vital to Hyper Light's combat, and minding your surroundings is most often key to survival. More often are you shunted into tightly-packed arenas, left to alternate between skills to avoid getting whacked. While perfectly exploitable alone, you're rarely given the luxury of an isolated kill. The flying birds, for example, can only be slashed when diving, whilst the hulking, crystal golems will thump the ground to stick you with deadly stalagmites. Most enemies are area-specific, and carry their own quirks that demand special attention. They're remarkable in that they don't really feel monstrous more weird, addled wanderers that happen to be bigger and brawnier than you. Part-machine, part-organism, part-something else entirely, the beastly natives of Hyper Light Drifter are surprisingly eye-catching, given their minimalist design.

#HYPER LIGHT DRIFTER CHAIN DASH ROOM TRIAL#

From floor-vanishing pressure pads and fire platforms to memory-based walkways, dungeons alternate cleanly between strategy and speed, proffering just enough respite to get your head together before the next trial unfolds. Some ruins yield readiness, with towering brutes poised behind each corner, while in others you'll need to think ahead. Dungeons are distinctive, marked with recognizable elevators that lead into booby-trapped labyrinths. It's an ultimately repetitive maneuver, but the contrasting difficulty underlying each themed region ensure it's kept interesting. It helps that objectives invoke much the same premise: hunt down a collection of artifacts, unlock the boss door and activate a tower of energy. The lack of distinct markers or direct hints can take some getting used to (and it can feel downright ominous against such a sprawling world), but level design is just suggestive enough to lend a subtle direction early on.

Instead, you're plunked down in the middle of the town square and left to explore for yourself. Little else can be surmised from the beginning, as Hyper Light Drifter offers next to no explanation as to where to go or what to do next. The town serves as the player's main base, to be returned to at any time to improve weapons, moves and take a breather from getting killed. Hyper Light Drifter overlooks four main lands, each of which is connected by a central village. The darkness here is quite unmistakable, and it's invigorating to see it portrayed fluently without looking quite so glum. Some enemies will even flee in terror at the sight of their murdered comrades. You can hack the heads from giant crows amidst ribbons of pinkish gore, and leave battlegrounds scattered with the corpses of your mechanized foes. You're as lethal here as your enemies, and the crisp detail afforded to each animation ensures it's well noticed. Friendly faces are scarcer still, and no matter how far from home I travelled, each NPC I encountered appeared to be just hanging on tucked away in solitude in fear of the darkness at large.Īnd fearful they should be, for Hyper Light Drifter's prettiness is but a thin veil for its brutality. Organic life forms are something of an endangered species, instead replaced by strange, technical hybrids and machines long laid into slumber. It breathes 90's throwback without coming off as stale, committing a sharp, contemporary clarity that sucks it back into modern gaming.īut for all its cheerful polish, Hyper Light's world is a rather sombre one indeed. Palette and world design nudge A Link To The Past, while the Drifter himself reminds loosely of Terranigma's caped hero. The world itself is an ardent nod to the SNES era. It's largely a tale of conflict, both internal and external, and it's something that appears to drive this odd, fantastical place from the moment you pick up your sword. All stories are told visually, in the form of snapshot memories, leaving much of the overall plot to be informed by the player's experience.

Plagued by illness and recurring visions of conflict, our caped adventurer is soon sent sprawling through a land of ancient technologies, hunting down powerful relics to restore his lamentable state. You play as an unnamed Drifter: a caped, bluish fellow with hazy origins and a fantastic energy sword. The story is almost entirely up for debate.

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