A game on Steam awakens conflicting emotions in me: the more fun it is, the less I want to play it.
On January 14, 2025, Hyper Light Breaker entered Early Access. A game I fell in love with since I saw the first trailer. I immediately liked the style and the shown hack’n’slash combat system of the roguelite. Additionally, you can zip through the open world on a hoverboard or jump off cliffs with a glider – genius.
The goal of Hyper Light Breaker is quite simple: of course, you have to save the world – what else?
To do this, you take on the role of different Breakers. These are the characters you plunge into battle with. At first, only one Breaker named Vermillion is available. However, you unlock more as the game progresses.
While a Roguelike must meet certain criteria such as permadeath and turn-based gameplay, Roguelites only need to include some components of the original. Many roguelites like Hades, Cult of the Lamb, or Dead Cells often offer the opportunity to achieve permanent progress in the form of levels, new weapons, or abilities.
Only a flawless fighter can save the world
In Hyper Light Breaker, the world – a planet called World of Light – is threatened by the powerful Abyss King. It is up to you to stop the dreaded ruler and his minions to save the land.
To overthrow the Abyss King, you must collect keys in a region overrun by nasty creatures to be able to face the so-called Crowns. These boss enemies, as minions of the king, are the first real hurdle you must confront. Each boss has its own fighting style. You must learn their attack patterns and adjust your build to defeat them. However, this may take several attempts, as these fights also challenge experienced roguelite players.
Overall, you need to take down three Crowns, with one of these enemies being stronger than the previous ones. If you fail four times against the Crowns – or elsewhere lose your life – the game resets you in the fight against the Abyss King. The game world as you know it is lost, and a new cycle begins. With each new cycle, you receive a new game world, and every Crown you have already defeated is back to full vitality. For the salvation of the world, you only have 4 attempts.
A roguelite that stands out from the rest of the genre
The principle of defeating each boss in a single run without defeat is known to genre fans from games like Hades or the new coop game Sworn. However, Hyper Light Breaker differentiates itself through the open world and gameplay loop.
You don’t simply progress from level to level or room to room in a run. Instead, you travel through a procedurally generated open world. The game also employs individual mechanics of an extraction shooter. So while you start each cycle with a standard loadout, you must find the really good weapons and armor in the open world. Alternatively, you can collect various resources and trade them at merchants in the social hub for valuable equipment.
However, the equipment has a kind of durability. For example, a sword can only be taken into a run 2-3 times before it loses durability when you fall in battle – regardless of the fact that a cycle ends after 4 defeats anyway. So you must take good care of your equipment because you don’t want to lose the extremely useful armor with fire resistance to an insignificant minion before you’ve defeated the boss who is complicating your life with fire attacks.
As a roguelite, Hyper Light Breaker also offers you ways to achieve permanent progress in the form of upgrades, even if you fail in a cycle. For example, you can unlock a medkit for regenerating health points or improve your Breaker’s attributes.
It’s fun, but I’m afraid to continue playing
The major weakness of Hyper Light Breaker is its current state of development. It is in Early Access, and you can definitely tell. There are some missing contents that the game simply needs – foremost a proper tutorial, which, according to the latest roadmap, is set to come during the year. The missing tutorial made the first hours a bit of a puzzle game, figuring out what I needed which resources for, how to get the medkit, or how to unlock a new Breaker. Nevertheless, I enjoy the gameplay loop.
Hyper Light Breaker has actually been really fun for me so far. I played it in coop mode with MeinMMO editor Lydia, who has completed quite a few roguelites and carries me through the tricky boss fights – dodging and parrying are not my greatest strengths; I need proper firearms to make any difference.
What Lydia thinks of Hyper Light Breaker can be read here:
Lydia’s impression of Hyper Light Breaker
Roguelites in all shapes and colors are my great gaming love. I have defeated all bosses in Moonlighter with a broom, fought my way out of the underworld in Hades, slaughtered tens of thousands of enemies in Vampire Survivors, and already earned several gold stickers in Balatro. Consequently, I have a tolerance for frustration that I would consider above average: where others rage quit, the fun of the game only begins for me.
Nevertheless, I have yet to experience that “just one more round” effect in Hyper Light Breaker. Instead, I feel like I don’t even want to start a round if I haven’t slept at least 8 hours and done warm-up exercises so I can react lightning-fast to enemies jumping me from off-screen. While I dive into the fray again and again in other genre representatives to make just a tiny bit of progress each time, I catch myself hesitating here – after all, I don’t want to die due to a tiny lapse in concentration and lose my beloved dual blades.
I think the responsible factors are not only the durability system of the weapons but also the absence of any easily quantifiable progression that gives me the feeling: If I made it this far, I can go even further.
That’s a pity because zipping through the open world on the hoverboard, dismantling enemies, and picking up hidden loot around every corner is actually so much fun. I also find it exciting that the game demands trade-offs from me: Do I take the detour to pick up a new weapon? Or do I head straight to the extraction point to secure my current loot? And when I finally manage to evacuate and can admire my achievements, I do feel a satisfying sense that I have snatched some treasures from a merciless, hostile world – only to lose them again all too quickly when the next Crown expertly dismantles me.
In short: I would love Hyper Light Breaker if only it would let me.
In the meantime, Hyper Light Breaker has won me over as a fan, and I absolutely want to keep playing it despite the various weaknesses the game currently has. However, I always have the fear that I might lose my beloved gear – or even the entire game world along with my progress against the Crowns. This currently prevents me from playing it regularly.
When I’m very tired after a long day at work and feel that my reaction time is considerably affected, I think to myself: “Hm, I should probably play something else today. Don’t want to lose my gear.” The more fun I have with my current gear, the greater my fear of losing it. So, before me lies a game I want to play but don’t play.
Hyper Light Breaker wants you to start a cycle and fail. It wants you to lose your equipment and have to start anew. It wants you to take some defeats before you defeat the Crowns and the mighty Abyss King and save the world. However, I first have to get used to that.
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