Lessons Unlearned: I am not surprised that Hyper Light Breaker is having a rough time

Hyper Light Drifter was released by the studio Heart Machine in 2016. It is a two-dimensional top-down action RPG where you play as a nameless wandering Drifter. He appears to be very ill—dying, perhaps—but is committed to carrying out some quest that is unclear to us, the player. The world he inhabits is one that is foreign and mysterious to us. No one speaks any language that we have ever heard,…