A Note from Heart Machine & Patch Notes - v0.5.1.107947

A NOTE FROM HEART MACHINE

First and Foremost, Thank You!

We’ve been delighted to see so many players joining us in The Overgrowth this launch week! Early Access launch marks just the beginning of Hyper Light Breaker and we’re excited to shape and evolve the game with you all throughout the course of Early Access. Our community is awesome and has been providing a ton of feedback and support already – this is what we want out of Early Access development. Your participation is what will make this game the best it can be. The best way to ensure we see your feedback and concerns is to post in the #hlb-support channel on our Discord: www.discord.gg/heartmachine. That said, let’s dive into the current top issues we’ve received from players and how we’re addressing them in today’s major Hotfix (patch notes below!) and future updates.

Top Issues We’re Looking Into & Addressing

Improving Overall Performance

The strongest feedback we’ve received this week focuses on performance, particularly on lower-end machines and the Steam Deck. Today’s Hotfix includes a large number of performance improvements and improved Graphics Settings. Expect even more improvements in future planned updates as well.

Improving Graphical Options & Control Settings

In addition to performance improvements, we’ve added some additional visual effects toggles, so players can change graphic settings to their liking, as well as mouse and analog stick sensitivity options, and expanded our list of re-mappable controls. Games should be for everyone – that means being able to play on the hardware you want, where you want, with whom you want, and how you want. These additional settings are just a start towards those goals. Expect to see more control and settings options across our time in Early Access. Let us know in our Discord what is preventing you from playing where, how, and with whom you want!

Confusion Surrounding Gameplay Loop & Game Mechanics, Concerns Regarding Difficulty

As an Early Access game, the game will be evolving continuously and will evolve thanks to feedback from you all. With it being an evolving game, that makes it tricky for an indie team, like us, to have robust onboarding experiences for new players – but we clearly underestimated how opaque and complex the game can be. Expect better onboarding, tutorials, and in-game reference material in future updates. Your feedback here will help us add the “easy to learn” to “hard to master” elements and help us determine the best way to change-up the gameplay balance overall.

What’s Next & Future Updates

Thank you all again for joining us at the beginning of our Early Access journey with Hyper Light Breaker! Our team is hard at work responding to the feedback so far - expect to see a continual stream of updates to the game over the coming year. We will have three types of updates over the duration of Early Access.

• Hotfixes - like today’s patch, these respond quickly to serious issues raised by the community – mostly bug fixes or other improvements that address universal pain points.
• Minor Updates – monthly updates that include additional responses to fan feedback, along with balance updates and bug fixes. Expect to see some smaller pieces of new content – enemies, gear, characters, and more – as they become available.
• Major Content Drops – quarterly updates that include big changes to the game, new Bosses, Assassins, features, etc. – these major updates will change up the whole game.

Now, it’s time to jump into our notes for today’s (and first-ever!) major patch!
~ Michael Clark, Lead Producer, and the Heart Machine team

TODAY’S PATCH NOTES v0.5.1.107947

Note: Anything listed as a “COMMUNITY ASSIST” and “COMMUNITY SUGGESTION” are fixes made thanks to our awesome community of players! We really appreciate your all’s support and feedback – so please keep it coming!

Performance Optimization & Control Changes