Hyper Mild Breaker is a hoverboard sim. Technically, it’s a third-person roguelite journey set in a luminous fantasy-cyberpunk universe, however after enjoying a 30-minute preview, it’s clear to me that Hyper Mild Breaker is all in regards to the hoverboard. Vicious beasts, secret alcoves and glossy weapons are secondary to the sensation of gliding over inexperienced hills and shallow waters on my glowing blue slab, discovering pleasure in narrowly avoiding enemy encounters.
Deliberately skipping battles was most likely the alternative of what lead animator Chris Bullock needed me to do in the course of the first public hands-on alternative with Hyper Mild Breaker — but when that have been the case, then he shouldn’t have advised me in regards to the hoverboard.
Hyper Mild Breaker is ready to go dwell in early entry on Steam this summer time, full with three-player on-line co-op. Builders at Coronary heart Machine are letting folks play it for the primary time at Day of the Devs: San Francisco Version, which is held together with GDC this week. I performed a distant preview of the sport at dwelling, solo model, whereas Bullock watched on Discord (and doubtless cringed an entire lot).
Breaker is an open-world recreation with a hub station known as the Cursed Outpost, a futuristic strip mall with retailers, improve stations and NPCs. I briefly explored the outpost, however the bulk of the sport performs out within the Overgrowth, a panorama of ever-shifting biomes, and I centered on diving into these. Biomes within the Overgrowth are constructed with hand-crafted and procedurally generated parts in order that gamers won’t ever enter the identical realm twice, and each has a boss to defeat known as a Crown. Regardless of my need to peacefully hoverboard by way of the half-hour demo, I messed round with two loadouts, took out just a few slime hordes and twice tried to slay a kind of Crowns — an enormous bipedal wolf warrior with a golden sword named Dro.
In each of my battles with Dro, she began attacking immediately and with unimaginable power, swinging her blade wildly as she leapt in an enormous arc throughout a temple and instantly onto my head. I dodged and tried to replenish her stagger meter by touchdown fundamental assaults with my sword and firearm, however the wolf was relentless, particularly in contrast with the essential enemies I simply dispatched across the biome.
Dro defeated me twice. On the finish of every battle, I heard the sport’s siren track luring me in, making me imagine I might beat the large dangerous wolf subsequent time, if I simply employed an up to date technique. Parrying was key on this battle, in response to Bullock.
“Her first opening attack, you immediately went for the parry on that,” Bullock mentioned as I ready to battle the boss once more. “I love that you picked that up right away; that was the intention on that one.”
The parry had been an accident on my half, however I’d instantly observed how efficient it was, giving me a half-second on the very starting of the encounter to step again and strategize. What I’d skilled with the parry was a fury assault, Bullock defined. Some beasts in Hyper Mild Breaker glow crimson after which carry out huge strikes that need to be completely parried with a purpose to cancel out the harm, reverse a projectile or stun the enemy. With a fury assault, a non-perfect parry will mitigate some harm solely.
“That is definitely the design goal, to make the combat clear, know when you’re doing something well,” Bullock mentioned.
These moments of tactical readability are precisely what makes a roguelike or roguelite addictive. I can see find out how to beat the boss; now I simply need to get adequate on the recreation to implement these strikes earlier than I am killed.
There’s no dialogue in Hyper Mild Breaker, very like its predecessor, Hyper Mild Drifter. Drifter was an extremely trendy 2D motion RPG that got here out in 2016 after just a few years of crowdfunding and vital hype, and it solidified Coronary heart Machine’s popularity as a stellar indie studio. Hyper Mild Breaker is technically a prequel to Drifter, because it’s set 15 years earlier than the occasions of that recreation.
Drifter co-designer Teddy Dief went on to discovered Workforce OFK and launch the musical visible novel We Are OFK, whereas lead developer Alx Preston caught with Coronary heart Machine and launched Photo voltaic Ash in 2021. Very like Breaker, Photo voltaic Ash is ready in the identical normal universe as Hyper Mild Drifter, but it surely’s a vastly totally different recreation and it’s not a direct sequel. Photo voltaic Ash is a third-person motion platformer constructed round an extremely satisfying glide-step mechanic, and its world is full of alien environments, large monsters and vaguely threatening deities.
“Hyper Light was a way for me to get started, it was a way for me to be more grounded and put together a crew and understand, can I do this? Can I actually make games?” Preston advised me in 2021, in the course of the lead-up to Photo voltaic Ash’s launch. “And so having answered that question, then the natural next step for me was something in 3D. Can I put something out there that really opens up the world and makes you feel like you can truly escape into something, a creation that is otherworldly, that you otherwise wouldn’t have the experience of? A lot of my childhood was spent escaping into those bigger experiences.”
Breaker seems like the right amalgamation of Hyper Mild Drifter and Photo voltaic Ash. Substitute the Photo voltaic Ash ice skates with a hoverboard, add some associates and also you’re set. Builders at Coronary heart Machine plan to maintain Hyper Mild Breaker in early entry for a couple of 12 months, although they famous that this timeline may change with participant suggestions.
The total launch of Hyper Mild Breaker will assist as much as three gamers in on-line co-op, and it’ll have a handful of characters to select from, every with customizable loadouts. I attempted out a fundamental, slashy blade and a hefty buster sword, plus an ordinary rifle and a shotgun-type firearm, they usually every carried out effectively, although I ran out of ammo rapidly and sometimes. The heavy sword was slower than the easy blade, but it surely moved easily and hit exhausting. Within the Cursed Outpost earlier than loading up a brand new biome, I used to be additionally capable of choose 4 skills known as Holobytes from a couple of dozen choices, corresponding to elevated armor or sooner therapeutic. My favourite trait was the blooming corpse seed, which planted an exploding AOE flower on the our bodies of slain enemies.
However as soon as Bullock advised me that hoverboarding was an possibility, it was all I needed to do. I spent a great chunk of my Hyper Mild Breaker demo time gliding alongside the intense inexperienced grass, touchdown small jumps and sometimes falling right into a pond. I’m nonetheless itching to search out Dro once more and fine-tune my parrying skills throughout a variety of weapons (and corpse flowers). Principally although, I’ll be dreaming of that vivid blue board till Hyper Mild Breaker hits early entry this summer time.