Hyper Light Breaker is a successor to Heart Machine's 2016 debut Hyper Light Drifter, which is well-regarded for its impeccable soundtrack and retro-yet-modern sound effects. Since Hyper Light Breaker is 2D rather than 3D, audio lead Alex Johnson found that many of the original game's sounds didn't fit, and was tasked with crafting much of the indie game's sounds from scratch.
Game ZXC sat down with Johnson to talk about Hyper Light Breaker's sound design, which required heavy use of synthesizers along with creatively applying various sound effects to realize his vision. He also went into detail about the game's dynamic audio system, which tracks events in-game to alter the soundtrack in ways that accompany the many situations players may encounter during varying roguelite runs.
Hyper Light Breaker's Music Seems To Predict What's Going To Happen Next
One of the greatest advancements in video game audio is dynamic music systems, which Dying Light 2's music recently used to great effect. Developers can use information about what's going on in the game to affect the game's soundtrack, for example, increasingly mixing in an intense drum pattern underlying the current song when the player is in danger. Hyper Light Breaker's audio team worked hard on developing a system that fluidly and subtly evolved the music to not only accompany the situation but also to build anticipation for something that could be coming.
We're trying to, whenever possible, be predictive and move where we're doing that to say, “We know that this thing is going to happen, so 20 seconds before we're going to do this, we're going to do this.” We’re looking at any game data that we can to determine the status of the game, like how many enemies are around me or if my teammates died.
Basically, by asking questions about game states, I can give us an idea of what may have happened, or maybe what is going to happen, and create anticipation.
Since Hyper Light Breaker is an open-ended roguelike game that changes with each run, this system can help the audio adapt to a wide variety of circumstances. Each run will be different in terms of gameplay and encounters, and the particulars of the run's audio experience will also be similarly varied.
Heavy Effects Usage and Processing Were Key To Hyper Light Breaker's Sound Effects
Although pre-made sound effects libraries and synthesizer presets are widely used in both video game audio and everyday music, Hyper Light Breaker's audio team largely crafted its sounds from scratch. Johnson was fond of synthesizers like Kilo Hearts Phase Plant as the basis for his sounds, but to sculpt Hyper Light Breaker's sound further, he relied on some complex and creative use of effects.
Different people approach it in different ways. The smart thing to do is to look for the biggest moments and support those first, and then you have your anchors and then you can build some sound around it and figure out how to lead into it. A lot of times I will have things going on in the back of my mind and so I'll work on the more subtle aspects of the sound first, and start to explore. I like to do that because there's a lot of creative room in this project.
We have to do things that don't just sound realistic, but sound interesting, and that means a lot of the sound design process is really heavy processing and heavy effects usage, more so than I would do on almost any other project.
It took a lot of trial and error, with Johnson often having to replace sounds that didn't quite fit in the overall mix. He approached them as "a family of sounds," working hard to make the game's sound effects both interesting on their own while also feeling like they exists authentically in the same space as the other sounds. The end result is a sonically complex and creatively impressive array of sounds that play a major role in establishing Hyper Light Breaker's all-important vibe.
Hyper Light Breaker is set to release in Fall 2023 on PC.