Its landscapes, filled with prison forests, mountainous archives and underground robot factories, all hint at rich depths, aeons in which nature and technology have twisted themselves together, and little of this is initially exposed to the player. It hints at a basic narrative - you play a stranger in a ruined land, searching through the rubble of a long-gone civilisation for some kind of cure to a blight that has afflicted you - but it doesn't fill in the blanks particularly willingly. One of the strengths of this game is that it explains almost nothing. A moment to simply enjoy the beauty of Hyper Light Drifter without the attendant carnage. But for now - only for a minute or two - it was me and the wind and the ancient bookshelves. Up ahead there was more of what I'd left behind. I knew the nods towards secret areas by now, and I sounded them all out: health packs in a shuttered reading room where a skeleton sat at a desk, money out on a spar of rock overlooking an endless drop and a rosy horizon. Sunlight angled in through shattered rafters. And then I found my way here: to row after row of documents, scattered papers on the floor, shelves creaking and broken-backed. Crows attacked - huge things in robes, capable of violent magic. The journey up the mountain had been hard, past frosted willows and over ancient tumbledown staircases.

In a library at the top of the world, I found a few moments of peace. To mark the occasion we're republishing our original review, which first went live in May. Heart Machine's slash-'em-up is punishing and precise - and incredibly beautiful.Įditor's note: Hyper Light Drifter comes to Xbox One and PS4 today, complete with the two-player co-op mode added since the game's release on PC.

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