Something about Hyper Light Breaker just isn’t working for me. Having played about 30 minutes of the game at Summer Game Fest, I left my time with the game not really wanting to play more of it. And for a roguelike, that feels like a pretty big problem. Granted, the snippet of the game I got to play isn’t reflective of the whole experience, but if you’re going to sell me on a roguelike, you need to show me what part of the cycle is designed to incentivize me to keep playing.
2024 is looking to be a great year for roguelike’s launching in early access already with the likes of Hades II and The Rogue Prince of Persia providing plenty to play. The entire time I was playing Hyper Light Breaker, I kept thinking of those games;Hades II with its incredible story and characters that encourage me to keep playing and uncover the next chapter, and The Rogue Prince of Persia and its narrative bread crumbs that make me feel like a time looping detective. I didn’t get that from my time with Hyper Light Breaker. I didn’t get much of any story nor any indication of how the roguelike formula would inform that game’s narrative. Which is not to say that that element won’t be there in the main game, but I didn’t see it in what I played.
And without that hook, Hyper Light Breaker just feels fine. It’s a familiar loop if you’ve played a roguelike before. You start in a hub where you can purchase better gear and weapons, and then jump into a world that incorporates enough similar landmarks to familiarize yourself to the world’s layout run to run but randomizes the exact placement of enemies, items, and bosses. Your goal in the game is to find specific enemies in the world who drop keys to the arenas of the five bosses you have to defeat. The order in which you want to fight these bosses is up to you.