Heart Machine Outlines Hyper Light Breaker’s Early Access Plans

Posted by By our-little-miss-is-home January 6, 2025 20 Views 5 Min Read
Heart Machine Outlines Hyper Light Breaker's Early Access Plans



A good Early Access period can define a game long after its release, especially when that game is taking some big swings like Hyper Light Breaker. Tackling a complex subgenre by marrying roguelike mechanics with an open world, development studio Heart Machine has laid out how it plans to take full advantage of the Early Access period.

For Game Rant Advance, Hyper Light Breaker lead producer Michael Clark spoke in detail about the studio’s Early Access plans. Heart Machine has always maintained a good line of communication with its community and that will continue. For the game, fans can expect the content size to double, if not triple, during the Early Access period.

Hyper Light Breaker Breaks in to Early Access

Rather than a reiteration of Hyper Light Drifter’s formula, Hyper Light Breaker is shifting focus in a new direction and taking on the open-world 3D roguelike formula. The core gameplay loop is represented by Cycles and Runs. Each Cycle generates a new world that players can repeat Runs through, with the Cycle ending when players either defeat or lose to the 3 available Crowns (boss fights). Defeating these Crowns will lead to the Abyss King, who will not be available at the Early Access launch. On day one of this period, fans will be able to tackle 2 possible Crowns, check out the world, and engage with its various progression systems.

As this content expands, Heart Machine is going to be looking to what its community desires. As Clark said,

Early Access is a way for developers to include their fans in the development process, and we want to take full advantage of the amazing community we have … Players should expect frequent updates of varying sizes – some updates will be small, with large updates every few months.

These frequent updates can help fine-tune the experience of Hyper Light Breaker. Furthermore, the team at Heart Machine has built time into its schedule to specifically look into and account for fan input. As for what updates will focus on, Clark revealed content will be king and expanded throughout the Early Access period. When asked about top priorities for its Early Access launch, Clark said,

Our top priorities for the game after Early Access Launch on January 14th are pretty straightforward: First, we’re focused on adding a lot more content (we want to double-to-triple most types of content, like player characters, gear, boss fights, narrative systems, etc). Next, we’re adding more variety and depth to the world and gameplay (we want more to change between runs in the same cycle, add end-game difficulty systems, add more unlocks and progression mechanics). Finally, we’ve protected time in our schedule to account for fan input, expecting that our audience will have feedback, suggestions, and improvements that we’ll want to incorporate into our game.

Early Access in general has had a major positive influence on some titles and has, in turn, been more popular with titles going into 2025. For instance, GreedFall 2 has taken a slow, pin-pointed approach to Early Access, while Nightingale‘s Early Access period led to a quick overhaul of the game based on fan feedback. The use of Early Access to fine-tune a game before full release is a common reason to make use of the custom, in addition a plethora of other benefits.

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