As soon as I discovered I could take out smaller enemies from afar with my gun between rounds of sword slashing, I found a pace that got me through that room quickly. Fortunately, whenever I was defeated, I was placed right back at the start of the room to try again. One room took more than a half hour for me to clear because there were so many enemies and I had to play near-perfectly to survive. Luckily the enemies give some indication about how they’re going to attack, so combat in this game is like a dance, or sometimes a bull-fight, where you dash toward and away from enemies, hitting them with a small combination of melee attacks when there’s an opening. My strategy was to whittle down each group of bad guys one at a time while avoiding incoming attacks. These kill rooms can be dangerous places with all of the enemies trying to attack me all at once. When playing, I often encountered a room or area where I would fight a wave of enemies all at once. You can use your gun by holding the ZL button, aiming in your intended direction with the left stick, and firing with the ZR button. You dash around and slash enemies and breakable objects in the environment, which has the added benefit of charging your gun. The environment has the appearance of some techno-ruins, which have been overtaken by vegetation. You play as a mysterious cloaked character with some unknown illness, equipped with a sword and a gun. Similarly, Hyper Light Drifter is a throwback to retro games, and then some. It was a time when players were asking for 3D games, but because these two games came later and took advantage of newer hardware, they had some of the best visuals and gameplay for their time. I think it’s similar to the situation which surrounded some of the best 2D games on the original PlayStation: Alundra, and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. It’s 2D, but it has the controls, sound, and developed presentation of a game that could only have come after years of outstanding 2D and 3D retro games before it. In this way, Hyper Light Drifter is like an evolved retro game. These games, of course, end up having some 3D elements, or many 2D ones, which aren’t necessarily pixel art. A lot of other games today are made with Unity, which means they use a lot of 3D tricks, even if they appear to be 2D to the player. It stands out as one of the best-looking games to be developed in the 2D-centric GameMaker Studio.

It has been available for PC, OS X, Linux, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One since 2016. Hyper Light Drifter is a 2D top-down action-adventure game with challenging combat, and a memorable, dream-like atmosphere, accomplished through its cool color palette, ambient music, and successful omission of written or spoken dialogue.

Hyper light drifter sprite animations