Hyper Light Drifter

Hyper Light Drifter is a 2D action role-playing game fashioned after The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, rendered in a pixel art style. The player controls the Drifter, a character that has access to technology that has long been forgotten by the inhabitants of the game's world and is suffering from an unspecified illness. The story concept was inspired by lead developer Alx Preston's heart disease, and has been likened by others to Studio Ghibli's Castle in the Sky, while Preston cites the studio's Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind as inspiration for the game's world.

The Drifter is equipped with a phase-shifted hard light energy sword and can gain access to other modules that expand their weapon and ability arsenal. These often require power from rare batteries scattered around the world. Weaponry includes long-range guns and area attacks. Rather than scavenging ammunition from the game world to load the player's guns, the player's ammunition instead charges when hitting enemies and objects with the energy sword.

Hyper Light Drifter is primarily based on the vision of its key developer Alx Preston. Preston had been born with congenital heart disease, and throughout his life has been hospitalized with digestive and immune-system issues relating to this condition. While in college, Preston had used the mediums of painting and film to illustrate his experiences with frail health and near-death conditions.

Preston envisioned Hyper Light Drifter as a video game as a means "to tell a story [he] can identify with, expressing something personal to a larger audience, so [he feels] more connected and have an outlet for the many emotions that crop up around life-altering issues". Further, he had yearned to develop a game that combined the best elements of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past and Diablo for many years, which would feature world exploration and combat that required some strategy by the player, depending on foes they faced. After several years of being an animator, he felt he could do so in 2013. The theme and story for the game, featuring a protagonist suffering from a terminal disease, is meant as a simile for his own health.

Hyper Light Drifter received "generally favorable reviews", according to the review aggregator platform Metacritic. Praise was given to the game's visuals, sound design and combat mechanics, while criticism was directed towards the difficult boss fights. Kyle Hilliard of Game Informer wrote that the game "has already positioned itself as one of the best experiences of the year." Brandin Tyrrel of IGN called the game a "gorgeous, trendy hunk of stylish old-school sensibilities mated with the iconic hues of pixelated indie charm." Christian Donlan of Eurogamer praised the game's "intoxicating" atmosphere, as well as Disasterpeace's "typical delight" of a soundtrack.

Kevin VanOrd of GameSpot cites the game's art direction as "rich and thoughtful," and comments on its "fluid, demanding, and fair" combat system. TouchArcade liked the mobile port's use of haptic feedback, writing, "I don't think I've played a game that has implemented haptic vibration this well on iOS". Wired praised the themes of the story, "the drifter's lonely journey is equal parts Robert Heinlein and Akira Kurosawa". Destructoid enjoyed the stylized pixel art, writing, "The visual presentation of Hyper Light Drifter is second to none".

Heart Machine's next game, Solar Ash (originally announced as Solar Ash Kingdom), was announced in March 2019, and is set in the same universe as Hyper Light Drifter though not as a direct sequel. The game was published by Annapurna Interactive and was released on PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, and Microsoft Windows in December 2021.

In March 2022, another follow-up game that was set in the same universe as the other games but is also not a sequel titled Hyper Light Breaker was announced. The game is published by Gearbox Publishing and has been released in early access in January 2025. The game features single-player and cooperative online multiplayer gameplay set in a 3D world.