It’s been the better part of a decade since Hyper Light Drifter was released, but the prequel, Hyper Light Breaker, finally made it into early access this week after a nearly two-year delay. Players on Steam have left some unflattering reviews about the game’s bugs at this stage, but developer Heart Machine is promising that fixes are on the way.
In a post on social media, Heart Machine apologized for the issues with the game and noted that it is “pushing out performance improvements ASAP.” In a separate post, Heart Machine invited players to share their dxdiag info on Discord if they’re having problems on a machine that meets or exceeds the game’s system requirements.
🛑Apologies for anyone experiencing issues!🛑 We’re pushing out performance improvements ASAP.
We’re adding a vsync toggle, but for now, you can add this launch option in Steam to enable vsync “-ExecCmds=”r.vsync 1″”
We’ll also roll out mouse sensitivity settings ASAP! pic.twitter.com/V2sTGHDPle— Hyper Light Breaker – Early Access NOW LIVE! (@HLBreaker) January 14, 2025
The early reviews on Steam are mostly negative, with common complaints about the lack of sensitivity settings, stiff movement and combat, the inability to rebind command keys, and a largely non-existant story compared to the first game. A few of the reviews have good things to say about the combat in this roguelike game, but the general consensus is that Hyper Light Breaker lacks polish even at this stage in its development. Heart Machine has replied to some of the negative reviews and said it will address the issues that were brought up.
Hyper Light Breaker is currently available at a discounted price of $27 on Steam, which will rise to $30 once that promotion ends. Additionally, Fanatical is offering an even better deal for a Steam key for $23.39. For now, it’s too soon to say if Heart Machine’s fixes will turn around the early response to this game.
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