Heart Machine, the team behind the indie darling that raked in nearly $650,000 dollars on kickstarter last year, has taken to the Playstation Blog to talk more about the game and how its core mechanics and storytelling work. Their main goals with Hyper Light Drifter were to create a unique experience that sets the game apart from others within the genre, and to build an extremely well balanced and well crafted game.
Hyper Light Drifter is dialing back to the classic action/adventure games of old, while also enhancing classic mechanics for a new generation. For one, enemies will give dramatically visible feedback and sound cues when hit, which is part of what Heart Machine hopes will make players feel empowered in combat. Instead of making enemies like typical “cannon fodder,” they’ve created tough and challenging A.I. that will require some true thinking to take down.
Studio head Alex Preston added:
“To hell with bulletsponges, witless drones and unfair scenarios. We spend a great deal of time tuning our systems, adding meaningful feedback in the controls, visuals, and audio design so they feel responsive and satisfying each time you lop an enemy in half, blow something up, or wipe out entire packs of ravenous creatures.”
Check out a new trailer for the game below:
Lastly, Heart Machine is preparing to tell a narrative that’s “not explicit,” with no handholding of any kind, meaning the player will be able to explore and reveal more of the story at their own pace. For example, some elements of the user interface that aren’t directly integrated into the world will not be always shown. Coming from this, there will be no text or voice overs, allowing the player to totally focus on the environment and their surroundings.
Preston also talked about the iconic visuals in the game:
“The visuals will be the other major factor in forging the tone and intention of the spaces. Each environment uses a striking and specific palette to highlight landmarks, and they’re littered with touches like reactive wildlife and intricate architecture. The world is long past its era of great carnage, but remnants are everywhere: craters from battles fought, wreckage from hulking machines grownover, bones from mammoth creatures, tubes of rotting experiments in ancient labs.”
Hyper Light Drifter was successfully funded as mentioned before, and is set to be released later this year for Playstation 4, Playstation Vita, Mac, Linux, and PC.
