#34 Hyper Light Drifter

Yesterday I started playing Hyper Light Drifter which is the only game I bought in the summer sale. Yes, I'm a broken record that keeps repeating that. How could I know you're reading what I write?

Been wanting to play this game for a long time, so I was excited to finally explore its beautiful, cryptic world, but my expectations haven't been met unfortunately. The combat felt punishing and way too difficult, because it technically doesn't give you the finesse required to master the fights. Knowing it had four directions to go to, and discovering that each had a boss required to progress in the game, I was suprised to beat them all that fast. So the game was shorter than I thought, too.

But once I closed the game to take a break I realized I played 4 hours and later finished the game with almost 9 hours played in one day and it felt like I played way less.

The game grew on me and after a while my first impressions all have been eradicated - I begun to love the game more and more. The soundtrack is subtle and fits perfectly, ranging from lovely piano music to goregeous analogue synthesizers. The pixel art is beyond everything I have seen before, setting a new standard for what you can achieve with only pixels and a few colours. And the combat got easier after time once you know how to time your dashes and combos, making each encounter a well choreographed dance. Boss fights sometimes felt too easy, sometimes too hard, but overall it boils down to how well you can play - memorize attack patterns and behaviour, counter it with a dash and time your combos just right to make the most out of the small time windows where you can make your move.

In a lot of ways this game reminded me of Titan Souls, although both are completely different. If you wonder if Hyper Light Drifter is something you would like, then give Titan Souls a shot. Should be easy to get since it was bundled a bunch of times.