This is a highly impactful game: the pixel art style is haunting, as is the sound design and musical composition -- transitions of the musical composition leads to profoundly interesting moments. As might be well-known, Alx (the lead dev) suffers from heart disease, and the game communicates something of this experience.

Really couldn't recommend it more.

Disasterpiece is a fantastic composer. His work on Fez is probably some of my favorite video game soundtrack work on any game ever. I remember hearing that he was working on Hyper Light Drifter when it was on Kickstarter and I was thrilled and while it's not as individually memorable (in my opinion) is still great work.

If anybody was wondering about the music, or wanted to purchase it:

> https://disasterpeace.bandcamp.com/album/hyper-light-drifter...

> https://disasterpeace.bandcamp.com/album/hyper-light-fragmen...

Disasterpeace has a bunch of breakdowns of his work on his youtube channel. Including a session about his work on Fez. He's a really interesting guy, both artistically and technically very skilled.

For those who would like to watch in Youtube (and save it to their playlists?):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1b9xKRC74E

I quite like this one

https://youtu.be/U4FNBMZsqrY

If you liked HLD this is your reminder that Heart Machine made three other games.

Solar Ash - rail-grinding and schmoovement, with a joyfully colorful visual style and a melancholy story, well worth the ten bucks or so it is on Steam right now

Hyper Light Breaker - free-roaming online roguelike, did not make it out of early access, really not worth the twenty bucks or so it currently is

Possessor(s) - a very pretty and melancholy metroidvania, a great value for the two bucks it's priced at on steam

Last I heard Heart Machine seems to have pretty much evaporated, their bluesky is pretty much nothing but nine-month-old reblogs of their laid-off devs posting their Linkedins. Maybe it will return but I'm not holding my breath.

my ears are mushrooms, this to me feel the same as fez.

(2017)