Last yr, developer Heart Machine introduced Hyper Light Breaker as a follow-up to their pixelated breakout Hyper Light Drifter, utilising a number of the 3D tech discovered of their sophomore platformer, Solar Ash. The workforce described Hyper Light Breaker as a co-op roguelike, however the game has now switched to an bold, procedurally generated open-world.
In an effort to be extra clear with the neighborhood, the workforce have been releasing a sequence of weblog posts, reside streams, and Noclip documentaries, inviting us into their dev processes. The most up-to-date blog and short documentary give us perception into the “Pangea Shift”, and the way Breaker is structured in another way from different roguelikes.
Early in improvement, Breaker was being developed as a stage-by-stage roguelike with procedural technology, so, every biome you visited would considerably change each time you died. Due to Breaker’s arsenal of traversal choices (hoverboards, gliders, wall-running), every biome was fairly massive, creating issues for the tech workforce who struggled to make every random biome attention-grabbing each time it reset.
The answer was to sew every biome (or island) collectively, Pangea-style, creating an “open world you’ll solely see as soon as.” Heart Machine’s dev weblog lays out the advantages of this shift just like the diminished workload for procedural technology, and extra assorted factors of curiosity that join the world. The Noclip doc can be a worthwhile watch because it delves into the trivialities of creating such a change.
Roguelikes have at all times hooked me with their random fight modifications, affecting my total play fashion in every run. I’d have an interest to see how altering a complete open world impacts issues, too. Will I nonetheless need to discover each nook and cranny, if it’s all gonna change after I die? With a hoverbike, the reply will most likely be “sure”.
We gained’t want to attend too lengthy to learn the way a procedural open-world works in-game since Hyper Light Breaker is releasing into early entry on Steam later this yr.