You maneuver around enemies, foretell their simple attack patterns, get a few hits in, dash, and then possibly hit them from afar with a shoddily aimed gunshot, as you often lack the time for precision. Thankfully, the core gameplay, that of a simplified overhead, character action game with an emphasis on mobility and exploration, is enough to hold a game on its own.

Yet it is so cryptic and vague that I simply lost interest in whatever story Hyper Light Drifter had to tell as time went on. It clearly has a deeper story hidden inside it, one made from very subtle hints, its own alphabet, and plenty of inferences for the player to make. What’s there does paint a desolate image of a cruel and unforgiving world, one filled with magic, mysticism, and splendor to some degree, but one I honestly didn’t care about. There is no dialog, no exposition, and everything is explained to you using visuals, including occasional snapshots of characters’ lives. I think save the world or some such thing. You play as a swordsman with a nifty cape who has some sort of premonition about his own death and an apocalypse before he is sent on a journey to recover sixteen triangles scattered around the outskirts of a small town in order to do… something. Normally I begin these things with a general plot and concept summary, but I barely have a clue what Hyper Light Drifter is actually about. Yeah, after going through this game, trying to find everything without a guide, I never want to play it again. While I would love to do the same, I genuinely cannot say I like Hyper Light Drifter. Then, with a week’s notice, the game came out, and everybody proceeded to announce their adoration of it. I’m one of those few thousand people who threw a few bucks at Hyper Light Drifter during its Kickstarter, as the project looked interesting, and I would surely check it out after release.

Hyper light drifter capes