A great action RPG, with really satisfying combat and fun exploration. Wrapped around a really interesting world with a strong atmosphere and incredible presentation - beit visual or audible.
All making for a fun, colorful - yet moody, and chill time. Would highly recommend!

However I do think it's a bit short, I didn't expect it to end this quickly (Though I did take a long break before the final boss and that might have caused that feeling...) still it's an excellent game
I should mention that I felt the game flew by really fast for me, and not in the good sense. The game felt really short (That might be because of a long break I took before the final boss tho). What is here is excellent, but it feels like it ends mid-way... Still, play it - but be aware of its length.

*review taken from my steam account.

WHY DO I FEEL LIKE I AM THE ONLY PERSON EVER TALKING ABOUT THE GAME.

As far as I understand this game is a crowdfunded project and the main guy behind it apparently suffered from various heart conditions, which is why the studio is called Heart Machine and why the heart is such a heavily featured motive in the game.

I just love this game. I love how, after a brief tutorial, the game throws you into this stunningly beautiful pixel art world and from that point onwards refuses to communicate with you with words, instead using pictures. I love how you are left to your own devices and have to learn on your own what to do and how to play. But I also love how this game succeeds at teaching you this by intuitive means. For example: you quickly learn that large square with another smaller square inside of it means "secret" or "hidden passage". The game doesn't tell you that, you yourself learned that intuitively by observing the world around you. Satisfaction.

The story is likewise only communicated to the player through pictures and the exposition/beginning cut scene at the start of the game. Although you likely won't understand the entire extent of the story, you'll still get the most important points.

I also really love the gameplay. The combat system is really well balanced, with a nice mix of melee-sword and ranged-gun options to choose from to stylishly dispose of your enemies. These options work best if used in tandem to extent sword combos by switching to your gun and vice-versa.

I often read people complaining about how the late game rooms get really difficult. I'd actually argue the opposite. If you fully master the combat system and unlock the better guns and abilities, you will quickly notice how easy the game can get with you just mowing through even the tankiest enemies. This requires quick thinking and appropriate execution. But the result, if you pull it off, is so satisfying, making this aspect of the game one of the strongest and most captivating. Also, if you die you respawn closeby only ten seconds later. So no frustration there.

The environment is littered with smaller and bigger secrets. Exploration is really worth it and almost every secret is marked with a small symbol marking most secret passages. The sheer number of secrets also had the side effect of me becoming paranoid whenever there wasn't a secret. I also checked every wall just in case. This is why I don't trust walls anymore (although Dark Souls did it's part too). The gearbits you find throughout your exploration are used to purchase abillities and weapon upgrades. But in comparison to most games, these upgrades are really really useful and make the game a lot easier. This compels you to go out of your way and go exploring.

In conclusion: play Hyper Light Drifter.
If you already have: recommend it to your friends or use CIA torture techniques to force them.

❤️/5 for a game I backlogged for over two years. Looking forward to playing Solar Ash and Hyper Light Breaker.

The music and the atmosphere is top notch, no doubt...
In an artistic standpoint this game is genius. The feelings I got through playing the game was phenomenal. I felt so lonely in a dead and empty world. I loved it, the game felt grand and undiscovered in the best way possible. The level design was good also.

So... yeah, why just 3/5. The game for me, sometimes played like dark souls 2 (and that's not a complement xd), sh*t was unfair and cheap at times. Like why does every boss has minions? Its like a cheap difficulty bump, not to talk about the character controller. Clunky, the game is clunky sometimes. Inputs didn't register or I got stuck in an animation when hitting or dashing. Maybe this is the right game, but in the wrong time... :(( (or at least that's what my girlfriend said to me :(( ) I wanted to love this game, 'cuz its somewhat of a classic, but it just didn't aged well tbh. The way the game sometimes wants you to beat the same enemy 20 times in a room and calls it a gameplay piece... yeah. Times it was frustrating.

Dejadme que empiece diciendo que tenía este juego en el backlog desde hace unos años ya y me alegro de por fin haber podido jugarlo. La presentación del juego es increíble, con una banda sonora a la que me veo volviendo cuando tenga que ponerme algo de fondo mientras trabajo o estudio. Dicho todo eso, las mecánicas me parecen... ¿poco refinadas? Me gusta cómo se siente el dash al principio, pero el ritmo para encadenar varios de ellos y el lag que hay tras cada uno que te impide atacar al terminar el dash hace que algunos enfrentamientos sean más complicados de lo que deberían ser, aunque quizás esto es más culpa mía.

En general, un simple y directo jueguito que dura exactamente lo que tiene que durar y no se pasa de ahí. Escopeta my beloved.

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Let me start by saying I had this game on my backlog for a couple of years now and that I'm glad to have finally gotten around playing it. The game's presentation is top notch, with a soundtrack I can see myself coming back to have as background noise. That said, I feel like the mechanics were a bit... unpolished? I liked dashing on it's own, but the chaining rythm and the large amount of landing lag after each dash made trying to maneuver around certain enemies to strike quite difficult, but that may just be a me problem.

Overall, a tight and nice little experience that didn't overstay it's welcome. Shotgun my beloved.

everything from the art to the music to the combat to the exploration is perfect to me. i think i first played this in 2019 after watching my brother play it and listening to the soundtrack when doing homework lol (extra shoutout to the music it definitely has my favorite soundtrack to any game). super fun and tight gameplay, tons of little secrets spread around everywhere, and such a cool fucking aesthetic. theres like 50 other things i love about it too but im gonna sound lame if i keep listing them so instead you should just play the game

It's a really aesthetically pleasing game. I feel like it doesn't try to do anything extremely different from others of the same genre but its visual artstyle and combat make it worth playing. I didn't reallt care for the story but it seemed okay. I didn't like how they give you no real tutorial for what the purpose of the game is or how to upgrade your character. Enemy variety is okay and the world and levels are fine but at times tedious to traverse. Overall a really nice game with great OST and visuals.

O que mais chama atenção nesse jogo é o seu estilo de arte que é incrível, criando ambientes aconchegantes e grandes cenários, além de uma mecânica de combate muito boa, intercalando o uso de espada com armas de longa distância, algo que me atrai muito em jogos. Porém alguns detalhes acabaram me incomodando um pouco como a falta de diálogos (não existe nada escrito no jogo, só algumas poucas imagens) ou explicações bem feitas, terminei o jogo sem ter a mínima ideia da história, o que acabou por tirar um pouco da imersão, além do combate travar alguns momentos, mas nada que incomode muito. Mesmo assim, é um ótimo jogo