Hyper Light Drifter (2016)

Without a doubt, one of the most influential series in history is The Legend of Zelda. The early top-down adventure games are immensely popular and hundreds of other games drawn inspiration from them. One of those inspired games is Hyper Light Drifter. Hyper Light Drifter is a top-down 2D action-adventure game. You shoot and slash your way through a futuristic post-apocalyptic environment. This game is brimming with fast-paced action and satisfying combat.

What originally drew me to Hyper Light Drifter was just how similar it looked to Furi, which has quickly become one of my favorite games. I absolutely adore the sci-fi samurai aesthetic. To be honest, Furi and Hyper Light Drifter are so similar in their styles that its somewhat unnerving. Both games are top-down action titles featuring a futuristic swordsman wielding a glowing blue sword, a pistol, and a red cape. Both the characters seem to have unclear goals and motivations. And both games were released within a few months of each other. Spooky. That observation aside, Furi and Hyper Light Drifter have quite a few differences in the gameplay department. Furi is a boss rush and solely focuses on perfecting each boss encounter, while Hyper Light Drifter includes more adventure, world building, exploration, and combat outside of bosses.

Hyper Light Drifter is a top-down adventure game in which you work to unlock a seal by defeating bosses and activating obelisks. There are four areas, and at the center is a town and the seal that you are attempting to open. Each area is a labyrinth with multiple layers that you must explore to unlock the boss in each area. These areas consist of ruins, landscapes, futuristic tunnels and laboratories, and a variety of secrets to unlock. You can find shortcuts that make the maze easier to navigate, new guns to use, and diligent exploration will yield tokens that can be used to purchase upgrades. These upgrades come in a myriad of options such as sword abilities, gun upgrades, additional dashing effects, and some other choices. I enjoy these upgrades as they are generally new abilities to add depth to combat rather than just strict damage or health upgrades.

The combat of Hyper Light Drifter is extremely fast-paced, and the scarcity of healing resources make even the smallest encounters challenging. This is because you can only carry a few health-packs at a time, and you have to find them scattered as you explore. This leads to you trying to avoid any and all sources of damage so you do not have to waste a health-pack. I quite like this as it makes even simple encounters more interesting because I was trying to not get hit at all. The player has a number of tools in their kit to fight enemies. The sword being the primary method of attack, and the gun being a nice long-ranged weapon to sprinkle in some damage. The gun has limited shots that refill when you hit enemies as to stop players from just shooting at enemies and forces you to get up close and personal. The dash is obviously used for evasion and to close the gap between you and distant targets. On top of the base combat, the previously mentioned upgrades add a ton of new mechanics to be utilized. All this makes for engaging and fast-paced combat as the player swiftly dodges in and out of projectiles, avoids melee attacks, and returns fire with a barrage of bullets and sword strikes.

The storytelling of Hyper Light Drifter is completely wordless, and relies entirely on visuals for the player to deduce the story. I personally like vague and cryptic styles of storytelling that let the player piece together a narrative, games like Dark Souls do it well. Unfortunately, Hyper Light Drifter is a little too vague for its own good. There’s not a lot of story, and most of it is told through quickly flashed images. It feels like the developers had a clear idea of what the plot was, but failed to portray it in a cohesive manner. With some code deciphering, the story can be interpreted, but most people will not go through the trouble.

Other than the incomprehensible storytelling, my other big issue with Hyper Light Drifter was a performance problem. Apparently, a few versions of the game (namely the Twitch and GoG clients), have a bug which makes the game unplayable after a short period of playtime. I received the game through Twitch, and after about 45 minutes, the game entered a bizarre slow-motion state. I had to restart the game after every 45 minutes to prevent this issue from occurring. Its not a big deal, but it was a pain. Especially since at first, I thought the slow-motion was an intended mechanic and I played in slow-motion for about 10 minutes before I realized that it was very obviously a bug. I’ve read that this issue does not happen on the Steam version or console versions of the game. Hopefully, the developers fix whatever is plaguing the Twitch and GoG versions.

As a whole, I really enjoyed the setting and gameplay of Hyper Light Drifter. The fast-paced action and neon-samurai feel are the absolute core of the experience. Even with the lacking story elements and technical issues I still had a blast. It is for these reasons I give Hyper Light Drifter an 8/10. Hyper Light Drifter is a quintessential top-down action game that definitely should be tried by everybody.

Human Fall Flat (2016)

Great coop games are hard to come by, sure plenty of games have optional coop campaigns, but games that were designed around the cooperative experience are few and far between. One of those games is Human Fall Flat. This goofy puzzle-platformer utilizes simple puzzles combined with tricky controls to create a lighthearted and fun-to-play experience with friends. Simply watching your friends struggle to walk from point A to point B can incite some jokes and laughs.

At the core of Human Fall Flat is its physics and controls. Most games attempt to make the controls as straightforward and fluid as possible to reduce frustration. Human Fall Flat, on the other hand, makes the controls a bit tricky and unwieldy. This works perfectly in the context of the game. The puzzles are simple, and you can often see the answer right off the bat, but the difficult part is how to actually execute the solution using the limited controls. This often leads to ingenuity or alternatively some silly moments as you and your friends flounder about trying to carry a crate up a hill.

Aside from the necessities of walking and jumping, the player can also grab onto things with each individual hand. Usually this is used for climbing, carrying objects, pressing buttons, or manipulating things around you. It can be extremely unwieldy to move the arms and grab onto things, but that’s the point. Since climbing and using your arms are essential to progression, it can be incredibly funny to watch as you and your friends figure out how to overcome even the most trivial of obstacles. The final action you can perform is to fall down. I don’t know if this serves any purpose other than being goofy, but once in a while I like to fall down in a doorway to impede my friends.

The levels in Human Fall Flat usually consist of a series of small puzzles and checkpoints, with the ultimate goal of reaching the exit where you can fall down to the next area. Each level has a basic theme such as a power plant, haunted house, or medieval castle. Its pretty obvious how to progress in each area, usually you use some object strewn about to forge a path forward. What I particularly enjoy about the puzzles is that they are fairly dynamic. While there is a clear “intended” solution, there are a variety of other ways to reach the goal. Through clever platforming or other “cheesy” methods like bringing objects from previous areas, you can often clear a section without the intended strategy.

Human Fall Flat does not have any game-ruining flaws, but a there are a few minor things of note. The game can be a little repetitive towards the end, the formula of “pick up object, bring object to goal” can only be done in so many ways. It’s a not a big deal because the game is fairly short, but levels do start to blend together as they all essentially follow the same formula. This is likely because the developers could not include more difficult puzzles as they would be immensely more difficult when using the controls of Human Fall Flat. I appreciate the fact that the developers kept it simple to make sure nobody was frustrated while trying to get their character to do what they want. After all, the game is light-hearted fun.

While Human Fall Flat is not a genuinely mind-blowing game, I don’t think it is meant to be one. It’s a cute, simple, and goofy game to play with your friends. Something you can play in groups and truly just mess around. Human Fall Flat is good, clean, stupid fun. It is for these reasons that I give Human Fall Flat a 7.5/10. It probably won’t be your favorite game of the year, but you will have plenty of fun with it anyway. Get some friends and start screwing around.