This game is a 2D action adventure genre that a drifter hero goes on adventures to the world that have been destroyed by Giant Soldiers.
I was most impressed with the world of beautiful colors and a concise combat system, and it was interesting.
The world reminded me of the Ghibli's the Castle in the Sky. And, I also came up with Gainax’s Neon Genesis Evangelion because of the design and color of the Giant Soldiers.
In the intro, the world was destroyed by the Giant Soldiers. And, player becomes a drifter and has to find something. It is not sure if it is a journey to heal his pain or it is a mission for save the world. You just have to explore the world and solve the mystery.
Personally, the main feature of this game is no text. It only communicates a narrative with images in the cut scenes or events. It even expresses all dialogues of NPC as images. So, player has to guess and interpret the story oneself. It has to gather and gather such pieces and understand this world.
If you are a player who loves to guess and interpret it, it would be interesting element. From the personal experience, I think translation work is not easy for the indie game developer in terms of cost and quality. By the way, they were able to pass through it without experiencing it. So, I looked it very good :D
Instead, I guess they would have experienced other trouble. I could roughly guess what the trouble was, and I think it is very challenging and difficult. The reason is that if it communicates the narrative with no text in the game, I think that all narrative elements (cut scene, events, gameplay, etc) should be focused to communicate the core story and message. It is easy to say but very very difficult.
Although the Hyper Light Drifter is an indie game, there were also many great cut scenes, and the events were simple and cute.
However, most of the cut scenes were very vague and ambiguous to make guesses. Also, some events were difficult to guess and understand properly. So, I could not clearly grasp the whole story flow and unfortunately, I could not immerse myself in the main character.
In summary, there were a lot of elements to guess, but overall there was lack of association and detail to drive immersion. I think this challenge is very cool. It is a challenge that they can do because they are indie. And I would like to challenge if I have a chance in the future.
The immersion feeling of combat was excellent. I could feel that the developer had very pondered on the combat system. Briefly describing the actions, Basically, you can use a dash to quickly move and avoid. And, you can attack enemies with a short ranges weapon and with guns and bombs.
I felt the depth of the combat system. Because of I felt that the developer intended the player to experience tension and speedy combat in limited actions. In more detail, short range weapon was limited to a maximum of 3 combos, and guns and bombs limited ammo. In other words, the player must use guns and bombs in a crucial situation. In addition, the player must attack to 3 combos with a short ranges weapon in consideration of enemy patterns. And all of these actions should attack by avoiding enemy attacks with dash. Of course, the dash also consumes the stamina, so it should only be used when appropriate. To summarize, player have to use the dash quickly and carefully, choose one of three weapons quickly depending on the situation, and attack the enemies. I think I was able to experience tension and speedy combat thank to this rule. In particular, this rule shone more in the boss combat than the field combat. Field combat has a HACK&SLASH feel, and boos combat has fun to find own strategy within limited actions. So, I think this game is worth playing just enough for the combat system.
I hope new game will be released soon by this developer.
