Hyper Light Drifter is a 2D Action RPG in the vein of the best 8-bit and 16-bit classics, with modernized mechanics and designs on a much grander scale.
Visions for this game have been fluttering in my skull for ages; something dark and fantastic, with giant forests to navigate, huge floating structures to explore, deep crumbling ruins to loot, massive throngs of enemies to rend, and behemoths both flesh and mechanical to overcome. I want it all to be as beautiful as possible, forging color with the dark and eerie wastes and intimidating landscapes. It plays like the best parts of A Link to the Past and Diablo, evolved: lightning fast combat, more mobility, an array of tactical options, more numerous and intelligent enemies, and a larger world with a twisted past to do it all in.
Rip through enemies with responsive, fun combat; engaging and brutal. Upgrade weapons, discover new equipment and trek deeper than ever.
Traverse a dark, detailed and interconnected world with alternate paths and secret loot. Miyazaki films have taught me that beautiful animation and design add life to a world. From characters to background elements, everything is lovingly crafted while I hum show-tunes and squint suspiciously at the flickering pixels until they perform as intended.
A challenge - The game is accessible and easy to pick up, but difficult to master and complete; enemies and hazards become more vicious and numerous, so players must use clever tactics to avoid death. (Some yell hurtful phrases at players simply to bring tears to the cereal bowl below.
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Last edited by prudislav on Tue, 22nd Mar 2016 15:41; edited 2 times in total
We're deep into our last stretch of development. This includes:
Getting and implementing feedback from close friends/developers digging into private playtests - this is where we find what issues may be plaguing us mechanically, story-wise, and some general bugs.
Finalizing systems - includes our Skills/upgrades, general economy balance, ironing out lingering bugs with saving/loading/warping etc.
Finalizing levels - this takes the most time, as flow and pacing is critical to the experience and requires a fair amount of play testing with others to get perfect. This also includes all the lighting, set dressing and ambiance.
Polishing the rougher/looser visual elements - e.g. there were a lot of rough frames of the Drifter with no eyes/arms etc for over a year. Some bosses had intentionaly been left sketchy in order for us to finalize the mechanics of the battles before digging our heals into the animation
Cut scenes! All the lovely little animation flourishes and sounds will find their way into these next month.
Music - Disasterpeace has been laying down supremely hot tracks throughout the process. Some are still in a rough state or missing. These final months will see all the gaps being filled and any placeholder music getting fleshed out.
Planning our hardcore QA and optimization phase - this will occur fairly soon with an experienced team we've lined up.
Focusing on Mac and Linux ports - We want to launch PC/Mac/Linux all at once, so this process has already begun with the help of an experienced and trusted developer.
Platform implementation + marketing - this includes putting the game and all the assets and achievements up on Steam and other services (a bit more complex then just putting an exe up on a sever and pressing a button), sending out builds to Streamers and press for reviews shortly before release, and getting the word out through however many channels we can.
Remaining Kickstarter rewards - this includes getting the rest of the surveys out an
d generating the required keys, goods and so on.
Final Bits
This list doesn't include everything, just some of the broader points I felt people would like to know about as we close in on release. It's exciting! And terrifying! Spring is so close, and this anxious feeling only grows larger with each passing day.
At any rate, Drifters, we'll return next month with more inside details to share. Perhaps a few new gifs as well?
It's been an incredible adventure leading up to launch. I deeply appreciate everyone who has backed us, had faith in us, had patience through this process. You have all been wonderfully supportive and kind.
We've put together an experience we are deeply proud of, pouring ourselves into it entirely, and we hope you love it.
Just played for an hour. WTF! Sorry but there isn't a lot of info as you move about the world.....no English when you run into any other forms in the world....pictures and grunts...its pretty hard (I've died a lot!!) But I suck at these games....well at least this one. Haha. I like the art style and your movement is smooth. The mechanics are quite good as you figure stuff out....how to shoot and heal and fight...must be a big learning curve as I progress slowly.
Might enjoy it more if I had more patience!! But I'm a run and gun guy and the creatures are hard to kill. Maybe after a few youtube tutorials and guides I should get better. It is a must buy and is a fair price on Steam...8/10 Time will tell as I move along......
Haha, just pay attention to the timings Zellar and encounters will become very doable since enemies all have recognizable patterns.
It is a surprisingly deep game (I initially thought it was another case of pretentious hipster pixelindie with cheap gameplay, thankfully it's not ), there's big focus on exploration, no handholding whatsoever (good!) and encounters require some minimal strategy.
Pretty interesting really, I just beat the first boss (not without sweating), but then again it's all a matter of patience. My complaints are the 30fps lock which given the fast-paced nature of the combat isn't optimal at all, and the fact that the art-style is perhaps too simplistic at times, since you can't tell whether you're going up or down (and cliffs are everywhere xD)
I absolutely adore the art style and the music, and the gameplay seems like a lot of fun from what I've played, but man, the 30 FPS cap is somehow even more jarring than usual in this game
The flow of combat is really nice here and the difficulty seems well tuned. It has that easy feeling when your in control but when shit hits the fan it becomes quite difficult. The artstyle and atmosphere is top notch.
Only thing that gets me is the dash/dodge move doesn't have any invincibility. I keep trying to dodge through attacks instinctively and the boss fight to the north kept destroying me mid dash.
I can see why it doesn't after playing a while though since you can upgrade the dash and that would make the game wayyyy to easy. Just having a multidash by itself would have made that boss fight pretty easy but without any upgrades it was a great challenge.
Wow that just pisses me off. In fact, as has been said in the thread, the animations of the characters can very well stay at 30 fps (THAT is a relatively minor issue), but the screen panning (and character movement), especially in a sharp (!) 2D game is just fucking aweful.
The only reason why movies dont >seem< to suffer as much is the ridiculous amount of motion blurring. But they absolutely do suffer a fucking ton.
Fucking peasants, seriously
edit:
It really annoys me that there are a lot of people ridiculing someone for having higher standards, just because they haven't noticed the problems >yet<. So in other words, they dont see it, hence everyone is just an exaggerating princess. The truth of the matter as far as I can tell is though, given the right examples most if not everyone would just see how stupid low framerates are (including movies). A friend of mine didnt care too much for 60 fps either, until the played mario kart 8 of all things , because in that game you get 60 fps with 1/2 players and only 30 fps with 3/4 players. It became obvious to him.
Now if you were to reduce motion blur induced by monitors the thing becomes even clearer. On my TV I would see every fucking frame of this game twice, somewhat sharply, but twice and it would stutter! That looks stupid, but still (only) arguably better than a much more blurred and still stuttery image.
I usually dont want to burden my friends with my easy to learn "abilities" to make out frame rates and other issues, but I kinda do wish that everyone would just learn it. Then every industry would have to react. Just as they have to with VR (high frame rates, motion blur reducing "low persistance" display modes)
It's the Steam forums, someone in another thread asked about the high difficulty curves and the majority of the replies ended up being variants of "Git Gud" but yeah you could probably look on every games Steam community forum by now and find a lot of flaming and trolling in general.
(Valve really should do something about that but I guess they see it as up to the developer or publisher studios to maintain those forums.)
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Funnily enough, it immediately fills 3GB of VRAM.. 
), there's big focus on exploration, no handholding whatsoever (good!) and encounters require some minimal strategy.
