Hyper Light Drifter Beginner’s Guide [Spoiler Free]

Overview

A guide for the unwary, Hyper Light Drifter can easily frustrate people with subtle game mechanics and a lack of tutorial.Read this guide if:> You find the game frustrating> You don’t like Darks Souls> You are unfamiliar with early video games like Contra and Metal Slug

Basic Gameplay Premise

HEY LISTEN,

First and foremost, Hyper Light Drifter or HLD is a sprite based 2D with timing based game mechanics. No amount of button mashing will allow you to be successful at this game.

As I see it, the meat of this game is discovering the enemy attack patterns for yourself and experimenting with fighting styles. Because you are immediately thrust into the game world, you must rely on experimentation and exploration to see this game through to the end. Fortunately the game has beautiful pixel art and a good soundtrack in addition to much lore (wow!), if you don’t appreciate these, you might as well ask for a refund because these elements are intended to carry the game. Playing with the controller changes game feel. Combat and actions feel less jerky than with keyboard (but no less challenging). In the past the game had a engine bound 30 FPS cap, 60 FPS has since been patched in. I think this issue may be exacerbated by playing a 16-bit game at larger screen resolutions, the sprite composition may offer the visual system poor reference for precise motion at high speeds.

Finally, according to the developer, and in my own experience playing with a controller provides the best game feel. Make of that what you will

Combat Fundamentals

Attacks take a specific amount of time to execute and cannot be interrupted or cancelled (without advanced techniques) with controls, this is the same for you and the enemy. However your attacks can be cancelled by damage from enemies. When this happens you will take time to recover (as shown in game with animation).

Unlike many games, enemies do not flinch when they are attacked, attacking an enemy will not cancel their attack animations, but being attacked will cancel your attack animations and you will have to recover, where you are prone to more damage after a tiny period of invulnerability. This fact was the cause of many deaths.

Default characters can only do a three hit combo before a pause so it often is necessary to dash between strikes. Fortunately, enemy attack patterns are extremely basic, bosses have fairly predictable attack patterns and canon fodder (basic enemies) only one or two.

Your starting character can neither dodge continuously nor attack continuously without some kind of pause. Because your cursor, the two white diamonds radiating from the character (keyboard and mouse only), pulls double-duty as both attack director and dash direction, it takes a bit of practice to be comfortable with the idea of pointing the cursor at an enemy to attack, then pointing it in the direction you want to dodge. Learning to dash effectively takes time.

The mouse cursor in normal play can be hard to see especially with the flash effects and screen shakes. Take your time, you can neither heal easily in combat (taking damage cancels full healing), nor influence your characters recovery with key presses. Combat is more a puzzle with a set of rules than a Hotline Miami style twitch-fest. You may benefit from swapping the controls for Shoot and Dash, users have reported that this makes the game easier to play.

Your first priority in combat encounters should be to avoid taking damage. A starting character cannot block physical attacks. To avoid damage you must either dodge an enemy or be reasonably certain of the window in which an AI will not attack.

Combat Elaborated

A single enemy is easily dispatched by flanking it, assuming no area of effect attacks, or you can attack it until it prepares an attack and dodge. All enemies I have seen so far telegraph their attacks for a long enough period of time to get out of the way. As a general rule the safest time to attack an enemy is right after it has just attacked

While an enemy is in an active state it can be stunned momentarily, this only seems applicable for smaller enemies that are knocked back, bigger foes will still rek u m8.

When an enemy prepares to attack (visual cues will announce this), regardless of size nothing short of killing it will prevent it from attacking. When you combine this with the character handling expect to die if you treat HLD like just another hack’n slash.

Groups of enemies demand more finesse, as a beginner, stay away from larger groups and try to divide and conquer. I prefer to take out individuals in a group one at a time rather than just attacking the group as a whole. In this manner the job of avoiding damage becomes easier and easier.

For the purposes of this article I will identifiy 4 categories of AI states:

• Passive : AI unaware of PC
• Active : AI engaging PC
• Attacking : AI performing an attack sequence
• Recovering : AI performing a recovery sequence after attack
• Stun : AI is recovering from an attack by the PC

(I removed this section because TL;DR)

The invulnerability on damage is so brief you’re better off pretending it is not there. The solution: Get hyper with the light and drift. Avoid getting rekt by enemies.

Most every enemy can be thought of as a repeating pattern of these states. For the green trolls/ dirks for example (the basic enemy type you encounter almost everywhere):
Dirks (3HP)
Stun – .5 Sec
Attack – 1 Sec Pre-Attack 1 Sec Post
Recovery – 1 Sec

If you play well enough, you’ll start to notice in some encounters that Dirks begin to run away.

Upgrades and their Effect on Gameplay

The Drifter (the player), starts out relatively weak, unless you have mad hardcore skills, do expect to play cautiously until you familiarize yourself with gameplay and acquire upgrades. Having played the demo that was available to backers with a character that had gained several upgrades I can confidently say that gameplay is strongly affected. The upgraded drifter opens up gameplay in a way that is not easily appreciated when you start out. As you collect upgrades you will have the chance to play aggressively.

There are things that look like money, four of them make another thing you can actually use as upgrade currency. People call these things “gear bits”

Also there are shops.

Navigating the Game World

Understanding how the UI and Map affect gameplay is important for avoiding frustration.
The player map is a rough representation of the game world, your position does not translate to it exactly. Although all features of the terrain on the map are present in game, not all locations are present on the game map.

Every time you teleport or interact with a warp pad, your health packs are NOT refilled, your game is saved, most pickups, and all enemies except for bosses will respawn. If you desperately need health pickups, you can go to an area where enemies are still active, loot healthpacks and teleport back to a warp pad to prepare yourself to fight a boss.

• Shard locations are represented on the game map as purple diamonds. White diamonds signify you have already collected the shard.
• Enemies and Health respawn if you have not collected the shard at the end of the dungeon path. Go where the enemies are to progress. This is not applicable for all areas.
• If you return to an area and see the corpses of your defeated foes on the ground you have cleared the area, it never hurts to check for secrets and new routes though.
• When you are about to enter combat, your UI will display on the screen automatically, sometimes this happens before you can actually see enemies.
• The developers are particularly fond of setting ambushes and leaving hidden paths.

Protip:
Shards emit a periodic beeping that alerts you to their presence, if you hear this beeping you should be able to access the shard nearby.

Final Hints

• Don’t panic, panic reduces your reaction time, critical in a timing based game.
• If you get frustrated take a break, HLD was made to evoke an older style of game whose difficulty is meant to appeal to ye olde days before QTE.
• Ammo regenerates if you hit any destructible object, bigger objects regenerate more ammo, and enemies regenerate even more, this is particularly convenient when you have regenerating crystals around.
• Healing is not instantaneous and can be interrupted by enemy attack.
  DO NOT HEAL IN COMBAT unless you have enough time to reach a full healthbar to avoid wasting health packs.

• Chained Dashing (an ability unlocked at a shop) activates in decreasing intervals, the first dash is the slowest, the next one is shorter, etc until about 3-4 dashes at top speed.
• Added in a new update, holding the dash or attack button on respawn makes your character get up faster.

Note to the readers, if you would like to contribute screenshots and pictures, as I have none at the moment, feel free to comment below. I am currently looking for contributors, there are certainly more things that could be said.

Have fun

[Corrections: This guide has been updated to reflect the proper name for the Dirk which was innacurately called a gremlin, PC controls have the same reactions inside Central zone as gamepads, and an explanation for map diamonds has been added]