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Hyper Light Drifter looks like Diablo took a dip in Swords and Sworcery

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Hyper Light Drifter presses all the right buttons. It’s aiming for the simple pleasure of Diablo’s combat, arming you with little more than a sword and sending you forth to slash beasties and bosses in intricate and satisfying fashion. It’s pixel art looks close to the excellence that is Swords and Sworcery. It’s full of pinks, greens, and blues, colours missing from gaming’s pallet during the last decade. And its soundtrack’s being composed by Disasterpeace, the maestro behind Fez’s tunes.

Sounds good? Wait till you see it in motion.

Hyper Light Drifter is an arcade romp through an arresting world. While there’s a story to the game, the trailer wastes no time on exposition, instead it dives right in with why we should be interested in the game. It’s clean combat and inviting mechanics.

At the core of Hyper Light Drifter is the sword combat. You’re able to upgrade your weapon and the damage you do as well as string together simple blocks and strikes. You can augment your violence by picking up weapons with limited ammo, upgrading your shield, and by developing your drone companion. The drone “manages your inventory virtually, maintains your shields, seeks out hidden paths and lights the way in the darkest of times. Functionality may be expanded with new modules.”

Hyper Light Drifter’s already smashed its $27,000 Kickstarter target and a number of stretch goals. With 28 days left on the calendar it’s raised more than $120,000. This is a game that’s going to pick up a lot more funding before the campaign ends.

The stretch goals so far haven’t expanded on the original plan for the game. A new difficulty mode’s been added, an animator and programmer have been hired, and a set of artists have been brought on board to visually develop the game’s lore. This is all deliberate on the part off developer Alex Preston. In a Kickstarter update he said “I’m not trying to bloat it up with crazy goals or anything like that. I want to make this vision the best thing I can possibly make it.

You can pledge your support over here and if you’ve no cash to back the game you can still help by supporting Hyper Light Drifter’s Greenlight campaign.

Cheers, RPS.