Hyper Light Breaker is starting early access on the right foot

By Tomas Franzese Published January 13, 2025

Hyper Light Breaker finally enters early access later this week, and the future is already looking bright for it. Ahead of its January 14 release, I played Heart Machine’s new co-op game with its developers and saw its game loop in action. The bones of a fantastic action-roguelike are here, setting the stage for a true Risk of Rain 2 rival. I could see it becoming the next roguelike I lose dozens of hours to as I’m already eager to do just one more run.

I see room for Hyper Light Breaker to grow too as Heart Machine continues to balance and polish it in early access by adding more gear and variety in its open world. I’m already comfortable recommending Hyper Light Breaker as it enters early access, and I can’t wait to see where it ends up a year from now as we approach its 1.0 release.

While 2016’s critically acclaimed Hyper Light Drifter was a single-player Zelda-like action game, Hyper Light Breaker (which is technically a prequel) is much more ambitious. Players are thrown into a procedurally generated open-world called The Overgrowth, which is populated with various nooks to explore, enemies to fight, and Prisms to collect. Those Prisms open the gates to boss fights against bosses called Crowns.

A successful campaign in the final game will see players defeating those Crowns to unlock a fight with the final boss: the Abyss King. Right now, runs will end after players defeat two Crowns. The goal is to do that before running out of Charges. If players pull that off, The Overgrowth will reset, and they’ll have to start the whole process over while exploring a new frontier generated for them.

It’s unlikely that players will be able to finish Hyper Light Breaker on their first attempt; instead, the best strategy is to break the journey down into smaller sets of runs. Between each one, players can upgrade their character and abilities in a hub before heading back out to fight and loot more. That process of exploring, fighting, and then extracting already feels well-polished on all fronts.

The exhilarating combat of Hyper Light Drifter translates well to 3D, and there’s a lot of potential to mess around with different character builds to alter my playstyle. I focused on melee builds during my playtime, but I want to see what a more ranged-focused build could do. Solar Ash‘s slick movement can be felt here too; I enjoy hoverboarding and gliding around Hyper Light Breaker’s open world, and the procedural generation means I’m always curious to see what I can find next.

Teleporting away from the Overgrowth mid-run causes climaxes, as I’d have to successfully defeat waves of incoming enemies before being able to leave. This structure also allows players to create smaller bite-sized sessions within a larger run, which is a good fit for a co-op game. Other game designs also smartly accommodate co-op play, like how each player’s loot is instanced so there isn’t any fighting over what drops and how difficulty scales depending on the number of players in The Overgrowth.

Hyper Light Breaker has a lot of space to grow during early access. There’s enemy balance to refine and bugs to fix, but that’s to be expected of any early access release. I’m more intrigued to discover how Heart Machine continues to flesh out the variety of what’s on offer. This experience will only continue to improve as we get more playable characters, weapons, gear, biomes for The Overgrowth, bosses, and more.

While games always improve throughout the early access process, seeing a strong foundation at the beginning of that journey is important. Other early access success stories like Hades and Baldur’s Gate 3 started on a similarly strong foot, so I hope Hyper Light Breaker yields all the same benefits by going this early access route. We could already be looking at one of the best co-op games of 2025 — even over the likes of Elden Ring: Nightreign.

Hyper Light Breaker launches for PC on January 14, and Heart Machine currently plans to keep it in early access for “about a year.”