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Hyper Light Drifter vs Wallpaper Engine

Reviews on Steam

Wallpaper Engine

48.9× more reviews

Critical reception

Wallpaper Engine

5.1pp gap

Cheaper at launch

Wallpaper Engine

$15.00 cheaper

Estimated sales (median)

Wallpaper Engine

21.7× more units (white-box estimate)

More recent

Wallpaper Engine

2 years apart

A

Hyper Light Drifter

2016 · Action

Heart Machine · Heart Machine

Reviews
18,724
Positive
93%
Launch price
$19.99
Engine
n/a
Sales (median)
1.7M
Net rev
$19.2M
B

Wallpaper Engine

2018 · Casual

Wallpaper Engine Team · Wallpaper Engine Team

Reviews
914,881
Positive
98%
Launch price
$4.99
Engine
n/a
Sales (median)
36.6M
Net rev
$104.3M

Tag overlap

15% shared , 3 shared tags, 17 only on Hyper Light Drifter, 17 only on Wallpaper Engine.

Only Hyper Light Drifter

Pixel GraphicsGreat SoundtrackAtmosphericAdventureDifficultHack and SlashExplorationRPG2DColorfulTop-DownPost-apocalypticAction RPGMetroidvaniaSouls-likeFantasySci-fi

Shared

IndieActionSingleplayer

Only Wallpaper Engine

MatureUtilitiesAnimeSoftwareDesign & IllustrationAnimation & ModelingFirst-PersonNSFWMemesCuteFunnyEarly AccessPhoto EditingSandboxHorrorGamingGame Development

Sales estimates

Both estimates use the same vv1.0 multi-factor Boxleiter method. Click "How is this calculated?" on either to see the per-factor breakdown.

Sales estimate

vv1.0

1.0M to 2.4M

units (median: 1.7M)

≈ $11.5M to $26.9M net revenue (Steam cut + refunds + regional discount applied)

1.0Mmedian2.4M

Sales estimate

vv1.0

22.0M to 51.2M

units (median: 36.6M)

≈ $62.6M to $146.0M net revenue (Steam cut + refunds + regional discount applied)

22.0Mmedian51.2M

How comparison pages work

Verdicts are objective, they call out which game scores higher on a single measurable axis (reviews, price, sales estimate, recency). They don't claim "better." Tag overlap is computed from the public Steam tag list. Sales estimates use a multi-factor Boxleiter method whose formula is shown in full on each game's page.

Want a comparison that doesn't exist? Browse all games, find two slugs, and concatenate them: /compare/games/<slug-a>/<slug-b>. Both orderings render the same content; we canonicalise to alphabetical for SEO.