Games

Heart Machine Details Upcoming Hyper Light Breaker Plans

Published

6 minutes ago

January 20, 2025

Christoph Rediske

Summary

Table of Contents

Hyper Light Breaker devs are focused on fixing performance and gameplay issues based on community feedback.
Heart Machine plans monthly updates for minor content and quarterly drops for major updates.
A new patch includes optimizations, more control options, bug fixes, and other improvements.

Hyper Light Breaker has received its first array of fixes following its early access launch on January 14, and along with its patch come plans from Heart Machine to improve the overall product for its eventual full release. Hyper Light Breaker seems to have some work cut out for it, but the community has responded to the developer’s diligence with excitement.

Hyper Light Drifter fans expressed apprehension about Heart Machine’s ambitious plans to change things up in Hyper Light Breaker. While many players appear to believe the game offers a solid enough experience to return to, many have provided feedback identifying key issues with the current release in hopes that the final product matches the impressions other Heart Machine games have left gamers with.

How Hyper Light Breaker Builds on the Franchise’s Lore

Hyper Light Breaker will be changing a lot compared to its predecessor, Hyper Light Drifter, and that includes the world and story.

Hyper Light Breaker lead producer Michael Clark released a post on the game’s Steam community page detailing the planned updates for the game going forward. In addition to thanking fans for deciding to play the early access build of Hyper Light Breaker, the Heart Machine developer team noted the importance of fixing the game’s overall performance, optimization settings, and ironing out gameplay difficulty and mechanics. These plans come in addition to a patch full of bug fixes, gameplay fine-tuning, and customization options.

Clark explains that Heart Machine’s current priority is improving performance with a focus on lower-end hardware, including ensuring the game performs well enough to run on the Steam Deck. Although a hotfix has been issued, more changes are planned. New toggles for visual effects have been introduced, allowing players to tweak graphics to their liking. In the same vein of customization, remappable control options along with mouse and analog stick sensitivity settings have been improved. Following these updates, Heart Machine’s team zeroed in on the feedback surrounding the gameplay loop of Hyper Light Breaker.

Hyper Light Breaker players appear to echo the sentiment that aspects of the game should be more approachable. Heart Machine is focusing its efforts on making Hyper Light Breaker easier to learn, figuring out how to better implement tutorials, and ensuring that gameplay difficulty is tuned to fit all playstyles—including solo play, which fans have criticized for being too difficult. Clark states that in addition to more commonly occurring hotfixes, monthly minor updates will occur that incorporate fan feedback, balance the game, and add smaller content like enemies and gear. Finally, major content drops are set for a quarterly schedule, adding bosses, assassins, newer gameplay features, and more. Hyper Light Breaker‘s team appears eager to improve on this title in every possible way before its full release.

Hyper Light Breaker v0.5.1.107947 Patch Notes

Performance Optimization & Control Changes

COMMUNITY SUGGESTION: Performance Optimization
Updated Steam Deck Settings defaults
Added Low/Med/High/Maximum default settings
Fixed bugs causing Foliage slider to not affect all Foliage
Improved Foliage LODs (Level of Detail models)
Fixed Distance Culling issues
Fixed an issue with destructible objects not culling, and rendering their expensive destruction meshes while not destroyed.
Optimization pass on the Hub’s environment assets
Added new Performance and Quality Settings:
VSync Enable/Disable
Screen Render Percentage
Prop Detail
Ambient Occlusion
Film Effects
Film Grain
Chromatic Aberration
COMMUNITY SUGGESTION: Added Mouse Sensitivity and Analog Sensitivity Settings.
COMMUNITY SUGGESTION: Added additional Control Bindings for Keyboard+Mouse and Controller.
Note – you will need to rebind custom controls.
Features and Changes
COMMUNITY SUGGESTION: Increased base health for all SyComs by 15, except for the Tank, which was buffed by 5 health.
COMMUNITY SUGGESTION: Added default Rails to all characters.
Added World Seed info below the version info in the HUD to aid in community reports of specific procedural generation issues.
Bug Fixes
COMMUNITY ASSIST: Fixed an issue where the camera invert setting did not work for the Rail Aim camera.
COMMUNITY ASSIST: Fixed an issue where Holobytes would be lost if attempting to exchange holobytes with keyboard+mouse controls with a full loadout.
COMMUNITY ASSIST: Fixed an issue where a combination of character and EXE unlocks could cause equipped Blades to be lost on return to the Hub.
COMMUNITY ASSIST: Fixed an issue where steam cloud saves would not transfer from Steamdeck to PC and vice versa. Note – your save games have moved. The game should automatically relocate your save file. The old save file can by default be found in UsersAppDataLocalBreakerSaved .bsf. In case of an error with automatically transferring the save data, this file can manually be moved to UsersAppDataLocalBreakersteam savegames.bsf. Note that the User folder can be different depending on settings.
COMMUNITY ASSIST: Fixed an issue where blade special bonuses would persist if you activated them and swapped weapons before the bonus expired.
COMMUNITY ASSIST: Fixed an issue where having the Refined Blades EXE equipped, with multiple characters unlocked, without each character having a weapon equipped, would cause players to lose their equipped blades on exiting a run.
COMMUNITY ASSIST: Fixed an issue where some points of Interest could overlap extraction pads, potentially trapping enemies.
Fixed an issue where spawned slimes would sometimes be invisible to clients in multiplayer.
Fixed Dirk Rifle Aim VFX not tracking verticality of client players.
COMMUNITY ASSIST: Fixed the Desert Biome Train loot spawns not always being collectable
Fixed locked doors on the Crystal Biome Research Hub
Fixed an issue that could cause Charge Beetles to not be targetable in multiplayer
Fixed an issue where you could deploy two sets of mines with the Dual Claws
COMMUNITY ASSIST: Fixed an issue that could cause UI issues if a player leaves and rejoins the same lobby
Fixed an issue that could cause a meteor to drop at the beginning of a run.
Fixed an issue with the Vault appearing blank when opened while having a locked character selected
Fixed an issue where Crown music could play twice upon entering an arena
Fixed an issue where exiting the loadout in certain configurations could cause input loss
Fixed an issue where the Telepad Loadout and Ready Up could share inputs
Fixed an issue where revive audio and UI could linger after reviving a player
Fixed an issue where White Melee Dirks would not use their default attack
Fixed an issue where multiplayer join confirmation was not displaying.
Fixed a large number of localization layout issues
Capped FPS on title screen to 240fps to prevent issues on very fast computers
Fixed an issue where the lobby list screen could steal focus from the lobby create screen, causing WASD to clear the password.
Fixed an issue where a disconnected Client’s hoverboard could be seen in the Host’s Hub.
Speculative Fixes for erroneous player count issues (more than 3 players in a lobby)
Note – we have been unable to reproduce issues relating to player count consistently internally, hence this is a speculative fix.
Speculative Fixes for rare issue where enemies could spawn under the extraction pad.
Note – we have been unable to reproduce this issue internally.
Fixed Incorrect Vendor Names.
Updated placeholder Abyss King image.