It’s not like the game is completely punishing anyway – it does have its more relaxed moments, letting the player catch their breath before sending them on another challenging level.
Fairness seems to be at the core of its design, and that’s been pointed out by several critics taking a more in-depth look at what the game has to offer. Even if the player keeps losing over and over again, the game at least makes it clear why that happened and how it could have been avoided, and it gives a good incentive to give the problem another try.
We hope that “Hyper Light Drifter” will open the eyes of some developers to the fact that games like it have a lot of potential and a very active market. The industry can benefit from more releases in the same tone, especially if they also come with a similarly artistic presentation.
And on the subject of art, it’s clear that pixels are not quite dead yet. There was a lot of controversy in the industry over whether it’s appropriate to design games with pixel art nowadays, as some see it as a cheap excuse to avoid putting a lot of work in that component. But one glance at “Hyper Light Drifter” is enough to clearly show that developing this game’s art was anything but easy, or lazy.