Hyper Light Breaker Buried Below Update Addresses Several Major Complaints As Dev Works to Salvage Roguelike

Hyper Light Breaker received some significant criticism immediately after launch, largely for clunky combat, insubstantial progression, and a lack of world-building. Some community feedback is to be expected, since Hyper Light Breaker is still in Steam Early Access, but the community backlash was unexpected, given the success that the game’s predecessor, Hyper Light Drifter, garnered. The first major content update aimed at addressing much of the criticism has just dropped on Steam, and many of the changes seem to be welcome by the community.

Some of the biggest changes to Hyper Light Breaker introduced in the Buried Below update include changes to character progression, weapon synergies, and the overall gameplay loop itself. Heart Machine also introduced a new playable character, Rondo, two new melee weapons, a new mini boss—a Crown called Maw—with its own player perks, and new areas for players to explore. Heart Machine also says it has streamlined the game’s onboarding process, and that the changes to the game should make the game easier to get into for new players but more difficult to master. In terms of the gameplay loop, the new update reduces player lives from four per run to one per run, making things much less forgiving, however, players will also now always spawn in one of two locations, making the start of a new run more predictable. There are also a number of improvements to the enemy AI that should make encounters and battles somewhat more challenging and interesting. Players are also locked to a single character and companion for the duration of each run, which is a substantial change from the previous system which allowed players to switch characters and Sycoms mid-run. There are a number of other balance patches and new additions, which you can read about in the full patch notes below. Overall, judging from the comments in the Steam Community discussion under the update patch notes, players seem to be tentatively excited about the majority of the changes to the gameplay loop, although some concerns remain.

Read developer’s statement regarding the Hyper Light Breaker Buried Below update and check out the update announcement trailer below:

Since launch, one of the most consistent pieces of feedback we’ve received is that the game is difficult to learn. With that in mind, we adjusted our development schedule to bring a robust tutorial to the game. Expect that this tutorial and other training features will continue to evolve over the course of Early Access.

If you’ve been playing since Launch, you may be aware that in February we put out a public, experimental beta branch with some radical changes to the way the game plays. Dubbed “the evil build” by our community on discord, even in its rough state, players were enjoying the changes – built around the core of shifting to a more traditional, one-life, one-run roguelite experience.

For a more detailed version of today’s patch notes, or to look back through the Early Access evolution of Breaker, check out this new site we’ve spun up intended to consolidate patch notes and more: https://www.notion.so/1bc3d53d664c805d8c7ff6eda77e79a5?v=1bc3d53d664c80029339000cdb9f4bd4

Today’s update introduces this radical shift in gameplay. You’ll find a variety of major changes detailed below, but it’s important to note that these changes will automatically update your save data when you launch for the first time.

If you have an existing save game, you will see your Player EXEs and SyComs reset, and your vault will be melted down into materials. You will receive meta progression currencies (Cores, Golden Rations, Abyss Stones) alongside the reset, so take the opportunity to check out the new Player EXEs and SyCom rework and upgrade your Breaker before playing!

For our veteran players, we wanted to let you know that the resources you get via the Vault conversion process may not be enough to get back to where you were at before this update. To ensure that all players were rewarded equally and due to technical limitations, we decided for the process to give a flat amount of Golden Rations, Cores and Abyss Stones per player. We apologize for the inconvenience, but know for a fact that you all will be able to get where you were at quickly!

Check out the Steam update patch notes for a more detailed breakdown.