Hyper Light Drifter is a fast-action role-play game that combines exploration and puzzles with arcade-style shooting. You play a Drifter who can access technology in a post-technological world. This grants access to upgradable energy weapons to help you in battle, but also requires you to investigate and make sense of the strange world.

You dash through lush woods and crystal lagoons, and you fight poison wolves and old knights with an electric blue sword and a modifiable gun. Rather than scavenging ammunition, you gain bullets by hitting enemies and objects with the energy sword. This, along with the rapid approach of increasingly difficult monsters, makes battles frantic and reaction-based. As you progress you can upgrade weapons, learn new skills, discover equipment and traverse a dark, detailed world with branching paths and secrets abound.

But alongside this brash neon combat threads a story, underscored by orchestral music, about the tragedy of the world's dark and violent past. You discover a land steeped in treasure, blood and dilapidated architecture. You are haunted by an insatiable illness and must travel deep into the lands of Buried Time, hoping to discover a way to quiet the vicious disease.