Game Review: Hyper Light Drifter

(Note: mild spoilers; also, when I use the word "language," I refer specifically to the use of words in writing and speech)

Inspired by classic 8-bit and 16-bit games, Hyper Light Drifter sends the player on a journey through a ruined but beautiful world with a mysterious history, where you encounter inhabitants both friendly and hostile. The game is a 2D pixel action RPG, with an emphasis on combat and exploring its visually stunning, thoughtfully sound-designed world. You play as a nameless, blue-skinned humanoid with an unknown illness, known widely by fans as the Drifter. A significant feature of Hyper Light Drifter is that the entire game, save for a coded language and essential instructions on how to use the controls, does not contain any text or speech. Your objectives are uncertain; instead of instructions, the player is shown symbols and structures throughout the world and interface that indicate tasks that need completion. The story is told through a few cutscenes, clues in the environment, and the tales of NPCs given only in a short series of images; the rest is up to you to piece together.

The aesthetics of Hyper Light Drifter are nothing short of stunning.

Hyper Light Drifter quite literally opens with a bang; the introduction cutscene shows an glowing white emblem floating over the world in a blue sky, followed by a flash and a noise, revealing that the sky and emblem have turned a menacing dark pink. When you awaken in the world, you are taught the basic controls on how to explore, kill enemies, and heal. The combat mechanics of Hyper Light Drifter, while being a fairly standard hack and slash, are fast-paced and fun; left click is for a sword swing, right click is for shooting your gun, each option with their variations. The enemy AIs are deliberately designed so that the player can use strategy as well as reflexes to get past certain enemies and combinations of enemies. The Drifter’s signature move is the dash, which can be done in a satisfyingly long chain with the proper timing, for combat, fast travel, jumping over gaps, and just plain fun.

Fun, fast-paced combat! (But you need good reflexes ... I had to get my brother to do some of the bosses for me even on easy mode).

Save for how to use new features, like the grenades, the game doesn’t tell you another word. Story, world, and character information are communicated to the player only through visuals and, arguably less importantly, sounds. The art is lineless and clean, featuring a variety of colorful landscapes that engage the player even if you’re just passing through an area without enemies. Clues to the world’s mysterious past are scattered around: a ubiquitous square diamond motif, creatures encased in crystals, dead bodies floating in water, the vivid, tragic tales given by non-hostile NPCs in a series of three pictures each.

The lack of any sort of written objectives, text, or speech successfully disrupts the idea of language as the default, or at least extremely common, way of communication, e.g. talking, most movies, novels, and the majority of games and films with plotlines. Hyper Light Drifter posits two ways to interpret the exclusion of language: firstly, an engaging, emotional experience can be mediated without the use of language because pictures can communicate directly in ways words cannot, and do not have the same ambiguities words do. The game speaks for itself by showing us images evocative of certain feelings; for example, in one cutscene, the Drifter is being taken care of by a friendly character commonly called the Guardian, who then takes you to their home in the world’s central town. Later, you find that they have the same illness as the Drifter, and was the only one in their family to survive it. Towards the end of the game, you witness the  Guardian’s fate, and after hours of developing a fondness for this person that was kind to to you and shared your experiences, I found it very affecting. Another character you interact with is a bird on a hidden cliff. They speak of their hatchery being burned by zealots, and escaping with a few eggs and children. You notice that there are some baby birds in the hut behind them, a bittersweet indication that, though not all, at least some of them survived. Such character relationships and feelings regarding the Drifter and other NPCs are formed without need for text.

Stories told by the NPCs - this was part of an archive I created for this game previous to this review.

The other aspect of having no language is how it complicates our understanding and interpretation of the game’s world, leaving the world of Hyper Light Drifter ambiguous, and perhaps as a result, intentionally frustrating. Shop signs and indicate that a language exists in-universe, but you cannot understand it (since you have decode it yourself or look online); there are no voices either, aside from the variety of short animal noises made by the NPCs. While it’s unknown what the Drifter’s place in the world is or what they are understanding, the player’s viewpoint is directly that of a foreigner who must understand communication and history without being able to use language. The coded language written over shop signs means nothing to the player—you only know their merchandise because they might have an icon  of a sword or the omnipresent plus sign representing health. You have to navigate the world by pictures and symbols, which can be be both universally understood and irreconcilably ambiguous.

There are completionism aspects, since there is an option to collect all of the in-game currency and activate all of the mysterious modules, but the experience is very complete without them. The video game medium punctuates that it’s up to the player to make the choices on how much to explore, how much to interpret. These elements of Hyper Light Drifter, in a way, gives the player ownership of the story. All over the internet, people interpret and discuss the story for the fun of it, and none of these people are technically wrong or correct. In my opinion, it’s worth a play for the breathtaking visuals and fun mechanics alone. It’s full of charming details too: the sounds of friendly NPCs, the little fluffy shoulders of the Guardian’s cloak flapping in the wind, the way the Drifter tumbles to the ground if you dash into a wall. The most memorable part of Hyper Light Drifter, though, was the role of historian and storyteller given to me. None of the amazing characters, experiences, landscapes, and sounds use language to tell a tale, leaving ambiguities where players can fill in the blanks and make the story their own.