Hyper Light Breaker, the newest entry in the Hyper Light universe following 2016’s Hyper Light Drifter, is preparing to release into Early Access. This open-world roguelike game encourages players to team up to save the procedurally generated Overgrowth from the looming threat of the Abyss King. Hyper Light Breaker’s developers, Heart Machine, have worked closely with the fan community throughout the game’s development process. Following the Early Access launch, the team intends to continue to keep open dialogue with fans, communicate regularly about planned updates, and celebrate players’ experiences in the world of Hyper Light.
In a conversation with Game Rant, the Hyper Light Breaker development team, including lead producer Michael Clark and community/PR manager Yiyi Zhang, discussed the importance of the Hyper Light community. They discussed plans for maintaining communication after launch, short- and long-term plans during the game’s Early Access period, and how they plan to celebrate Hyper Light Breaker’s launch. This transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.
The Heart Machine team sees maintaining a real relationship with their fans and players as key. They look forward to receiving fan feedback that will help Hyper Light Breaker develop as it begins its journey in Early Access. Yiyi Zhang also highlighted the team’s plans to continue openly communicating with the players as new bosses, biomes, upgrades, and other features are added throughout the Early Access period.
Q: Heart Machine is known for closely engaging with its community by taking feedback and providing steady updates. What are some of the advantages (or disadvantages) to this more transparent approach?
Clark: The major advantage is fostering a real relationship with our fans – they’re not metrics, KPIs, demographics, “market share” or whatever – they’re people. Likewise, the more we interact with them, the more they know us as people, as artists, designers – creators, and not as a faceless corporation. We’re people, making games for people, and interacting with our community as people keeps that in everyone’s minds. The major disadvantage is that the more available you are, the more people expect you to be available, and we’re a small team with a lot of game to make, so we can’t be available to everyone.
Zhang: Community has always been core to our success. Given our studio’s grassroots beginnings as a small Kickstarter launched by a group of artists operating out of Alx’s garage, we know we wouldn’t be where we are today without the support of our fans and industry colleagues.
Keeping an ongoing dialogue with our players enables us to make informed design choices that really resonate with our audience. Our supporters become stakeholders in our projects because they’re able to feel the impact they’ve individually made to the games we’re making. And as stakeholders, they feel excited to share our games with their communities. The relationship we have with our player base gives us a huge advantage in this increasingly competitive market, and will ultimately be critical to our post-Early Access launch plans.
Q: As an Early Access game, what can you say about the team’s current plans to continue its development after this launch? What are the biggest priorities?
Clark: 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 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.
Q: What should players expect regarding communication after this Early Access launch?
Clark: Players should expect frequent updates of varying sizes – some updates will be small, with large updates every few months.
Honoring Themes And Taking Time To Celebrate
Although Hyper Light Breaker is neither a sequel nor a prequel to Hyper Light Drifter, it takes place in the same world as the 2016 game. Hyper Light Drifter featured a major theme of living with a potentially terminal illness, a story inspired by Heart Machine founder Alx Preston’s own experiences with heart disease. The Hyper Light Breaker team has confirmed that this theme will appear in some context in the new game, although they did not share details. They also confirmed that they will celebrate the game’s launch by playing the game themselves, observing fan streams and reactions, and, of course, taking some well-deserved time to relax.
Q: One of the key things about Hyper Light Drifter is that the Drifter is sick and is a representation of people with chronic illnesses who really speaks on a beautiful, profound level to people going through similar stuff in the real world. Is this referenced or reflected in any way in Breaker? Does the Breaker “represent” anything like this? Do we see any other characters experiencing the Drifter’s illness or references to it?
CLARK: I don’t believe we could remove illness as a theme from Hyper Light.
Q: Can you talk about your plans for launch day? How is the team celebrating?
CLARK: Most of the team will be spending the day watching folks stream and play and frantically refreshing and sharing community feedback. A large number of us are looking forward to playing the game with our families and friends.
[END]
- Franchise
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Hyper Light
- Developer(s)
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Heart Machine
- Publisher(s)
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Arc Games
- Multiplayer
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Online Co-Op
- Early Access Release
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January 14, 2025