Developer Heart Machine has shared a first gameplay trailer for Hyper Light Breaker – its fully 3D rogue-lite follow-up to 2016’s acclaimed Hyper Light Drifter – alongside the news it’ll be entering Steam early access some time this autumn.
Hyper Light Breaker, which was unveiled last March, trades its predecessor’s wonderfully explorable top-down, 2D world in favour of a “vast, ever-changing” 3D landscape – blending handcrafted and procedurally generated elements – known as the Overgrowth.
Here, amid open biomes and deep labyrinths, players (working solo or with up to three friends) can deploy a mix of acrobatic abilities – wall-dashing, hoverboarding, gliding – and third-person combat as they take on monsters and bosses in an attempt to overthrow the Abyss King.
Given Hyper Light Breaker’s swerve into rogue-lite territory, it’s a goal that’ll require repeated attempts, players nudging ever-closer to victory as they unlock new weapons and items by playing, as well as new characters and permanent upgrades for their settlement between runs.
You can get an early glimpse of Hyper Light Breaker’s exploratory rogue-lite action in its first gameplay trailer above, and if your appetite is sufficiently whetted afterward, publisher Gearbox says Steam early access will now begin this autumn – a little later than the “spring” window Heart Machine was originally aiming for last year.
