Hyper Light Heart Breaking
Troubled development cycle, more layoffs, and the end of the overgrowth
The Abyss King waiting closer than we thought
Today Heart Machine announced that they are ending development on Hyper Light Breaker and going through layoffs. It's not clear how many people are being let go but it's probably safe to assume anyone not on the 'core' team mentioned (or working on their next title, Possessors which has a still-confirmed 11/11 release date) are impacted.
Here’s the full announcement:
The obvious worst part of this is all the people who are (or are about to be) now jobless; this industry is fucking brutal enough as it is and Heart Machine had carved out a reputation of being an indie darling with Drifter's release - but it's easy to forget how that game was funded by an INCREDIBLY high profile Kickstarter campaign and was more or less made by a handful of about 10 people (Ports and further release support notwithstanding).
Watching through the NoClip documentaries about Breaker's development it's clear that the company grew significantly for the development of Solar Ash and beyond - but this is the second round of layoffs that have occurred since Breaker's development was announced (and now released into Early Access) which is not encouraging.
If it's a result of publisher insecurity (their publisher was absorbed into another org shortly before the EA launch which was the third, maybe fourth publisher change throughout that development cycle) or poor sales, whatever the cause, it's clear the money's not there and it's just so sad. Too many people have lost jobs in tech and games in the last year alone.
Breaker is...like, I like it!! I've written about my experiences with it, mostly positive!...but I think a lot of people were expecting a more polished product with the 'Hyper Light...' name and it burned a LOT of goodwill at EA launch with its incredible difficulty and not very clear gameplay loop. Not my criticisms, but the temperature from everyone I know who played it has through-lines in the above.
I also thoroughly enjoyed 2021's Solar Ash - a game I picked up day one that seemingly not a lot of people have played. Many have attributed to it having been a timed PC exclusive on the Epic store, but I can't really buy into that because EGS had very FEW barriers to entry, especially for players in the states (Foreign currencies and blockers there are a problem but I'm not able to speak to them) and I think it was more people upset that the game wasn't on steam for almost a year. Once it WAS on Steam (it's $14 USD on sale right now fwiw) people just didn't show up for it I guess? Almost 1200 reviews with a 'Very positive' rating though so I don't know.
Breaker on the other hand has been sitting at 'mixed' pretty much nonstop since the Early Access release and any chance they had at turning that around was dependent on the planned January update which like, let's face it - is a long ways away for people with limited time.
A through-line I've seen of other feedback about both Solar Ash and Breaker are that at the end of the day, what people wanted was a sequel to Drifter - and it's commendable for Preston and Heart Machine to defiantly say they wanted to try new things, that lightning wasn't going to strike a second time, but by specifically calling this game 'Hyper Light Breaker' I think the sequel curse got them all the same.
The Drifter TTRPG exists, in theory a show is still in development though what that has to do with the game dev side of things is practically zero. Art or story oversight from the studio at best with nearly everything else handled by those respective project's own teams.
It's sad. I was rooting for them all. Hope everyone who lost their job gets back on their feet and gets back to making amazing things, and I hope Heart Machine finds its groove back in smaller projects.