Hyper Light Breaker, Heart Machine's 3D follow-up to moody action-adventure Hyper Light Drifter, smashed into Steam early access earlier this month. But the initial response to it has been less than stellar, with players complaining about specific issues like frame rate drops, lack of keybinding, and problems with the parry system, while generally being divided over its unforgiving combat and lack of in-game direction.
All of this has led to Hyper Light Breaker garnering a mixed reception on Steam. But developer Heart Machine has taken these criticisms in stride, responding last week that it accepted the "risk of negative early reviews" and agreed many of the community's complaints are "extremely reasonable". It also promised to address the problems as quickly as it could.
After issuing a quick hotfix last week, Heart Machine has now released a second, more substantial update that targets several of the community's biggest bugbears, some of which have been worked through with the assistance of said community. "We made Hyper Light Breaker with Early Access in mind to have it grow and evolve with our community," wrote lead producer Michael Clark in the update's accompanying Steam post. "Today's patch represents that as we made some pretty big changes".
Primarily, the hotfix patches up Hyper Light Breaker's medkits. Following the game's launch, many players complained it was far too stingy when dishing out health items. This hotfix makes several changes to in-game healthcare, firstly ensuring players now start off with a medkit. In addition, medkits now "auto-refill on launch of run, up to max capacity". So, if you upgrade your medkit capacity beyond one, you'll start a new run with the upgraded number of medkits in your inventory. Alongside medkits, the update adjusts how harvestable medigems are used and consumed, which all appear to be geared toward ensuring maintaining your health bar is a little easier.
While healing is the hotfix's main concern, the update also makes several adjustments to Hyper Light Breaker's enemies. For starters, "projectiles from weak enemies no longer hit-stun the player", a sensible change considering how annoying I find the mere idea of having my flow broken constantly by puny foes. Enemy aggro distance has also been reduced, which likewise makes sense given how many negative Steam reviews complain about being swarmed. Finally, at the behest of the community, the update removed "the tech croc brute and white dirks from the extraction spawn table". Having not played Hyper Light Breaker, this reads like gobbledegook to me, but I presume Hyper-Light heads will recognise its significance.
Clark states this will be the last hotfix for Hyper Light Breaker "for the time being" as the team shifts onto the "first planned Minor Update", which will presumably be more comprehensive. Heart Machine also planned to release the early access content roadmap this week, but Clark admits the studio needs "just a little more time to flesh it out and incorporate changes to it based on player suggestions".
It's worth noting that, while Hyper Light Breaker may have its issues, the general consensus on Steam skews 62% toward the positive. Indeed, our own Ted Litchfield had a grand time with it when he recently tested the early access version, stating, "Everything I've seen, experienced, or been told is exciting and encouraging," though he added the caveat that it's "going to take some time with the game in the wild to see if its long game has what it takes to offer the 'infinite replayability' Heart Machine is going for."
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