Hyper Light Drifter

Hyper Light Drifter arrived on PlayStation 4 in 2018 as a visually distinctive tribute to classic action-adventures in the style of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. The player controls the mysterious Drifter, afflicted by an unknown illness, who moves through a decayed world full of remnants of an ancient, advanced civilization, searching for a cure through technological artifacts. The story is told almost entirely through images and short, silent memories, without a single spoken word, leaving the reader plenty of room for their own interpretation of events and of the Drifter's relationship to his deceased companions, who appear only in fragments of dreamlike memories.

Combat is built on fast, precise movement — dash dodges, combinations of ranged and melee attacks, and careful timing are necessary to survive against enemies who show no mercy for mistakes, and the game demands a level of skill comparable to more demanding action titles even though it outwardly looks like a leisurely platformer. Pixel-art graphics with a striking color palette and neon accents create a melancholic, almost dreamlike atmosphere, underscored by an ambient electronic soundtrack composed by Disasterpeace. The level design is non-linear and encourages personal exploration, with individual areas of the world unlocking further abilities and weapons needed for progress, and the player chooses for themselves the order in which to explore the four main areas.

Hyper Light Drifter was very well received critically and became a frequently cited example of how strong an impression a game can leave when built purely on atmosphere, visuals and pure gameplay without any textual exposition. To this day it ranks among the titles held up as a model of aesthetically consistent and mechanically tense indie design, and its influence can be seen in a number of later action platformers with similarly stylized graphics.

Why play it: For fans of atmospheric action platformers where the story is told only through visuals and music — an aesthetically tight and mechanically tense experience that inspired a number of later indie titles.