The Art of Hyper Light Drifter

True to the game itself, there's a lot more "showing" than "telling" in here. Pages and pages of detailed artwork, including some sketches and original notes if you want to dive into what inspired the original ideas for the game. Really shows how much work went into Hyper Light Drifter. It was cool that they included some of the best fan art at the end, too!

Anyone that loves Hyper Light Drifter's vibe and pixel-art will love this book. There's enough art from the game in this (actually pretty thick) book to keep you occupied pondering how to build your own worlds for quite some time. The forward at the start was heartfelt and insightful. It's interesting to see how they built their world for HLD; you really want to start playing it again once you've turned a dozen pages or so, but it's so captivating you don't want to put it down. If you collect concept art books, or just really love this game, I'd say it's a must-buy. Very inspiring piece of work!

I was impressed by the size of the hardcover book - expected it to be smaller. It contains a small piece of text dedicated to the game developers and their roles and mainly includes sketches of the areas and characters encountered in the game. A few illustrations look like they're in jpg format, but most are of decent quality. This book also has literally sprite-by-sprite animations printed for some of the notable game characters. Interesting how these little things together form such an amazing atmosphere in the actual game.