Hyper Light Breaker Gets New Release Window

At long last, Hyper Light Breaker, the sequel to 2016's Hyper Light Drifter, finally has a launch window. Nearly two years ago, developer Heart Machine announced that it was working on Hyper Light Breaker, much to the excitement of numerous fans. At the time of this announcement, it was said that the game would be targeting a release via early access in early 2023. One delay then turned into another, which eventually saw this arrival of Hyper Light Breaker delayed out of 2023 entirely. Fortunately, after a period of silence, Heart Machine has now returned and has shared more news on the sequel's early access date. 

Shared in a report from IGN, Heart Machine announced that it's going to release Hyper Light Breaker in early access on PC in summer 2024. A more well-defined date within this window has yet to be shared, but this will begin a period of roughly one year in which Heart Machine anticipates Hyper Light Breaker being in early access. After this time, the game will reach its 1.0 phase and will surely see a ton of additional content rolled out. 

"We are essentially inventing and defining this subgenre of 'open world rogue-lite,' and feel strongly that openness and responsiveness to player feedback will be critical to this ambitious process," Heart Machine says of why it's entering early access. "The community will be instrumental in helping us to balance the experience, evolve the designs and make a better, more performant, versatile and complete game ultimately. By going into early access we can showcase and talk about our game openly, invite the audience in to see how it's made and participate in helping to make it better. Additionally, it is important to us as developers that we find the healthiest ways to make games."

For the time being, Heart Machine hasn't announced any such plans for Hyper Light Breaker to come to consoles. Given that these platforms often aren't synonymous with early access, though, it's likely that the studio is simply prioritizing PC for this phase of development. Historically, the studio has a history of bringing its games to consoles as both Hyper Light Drifter and Solar Ash launched across PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch platforms alongside PC.