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This action-adventure RPG, released in 2016, features fast-paced combat and exploration. It has garnered 14,989 positive reviews on Steam, indicating strong player reception. The developer is currently unknown.
Overview
Hyper Light Drifter is a 2016 Action game developed by Heart Machine and published by Heart Machine. On Steam it has gathered 15,364 player reviews, 93% of them positive, which counts as a very positive reception among indie titles in the Action category. The game is available on linux, mac, windows, and launched at $20. The pairing of developer Heart Machine with publisher Heart Machine is one of the studio-publisher relationships indielist tracks, letting players find comparable games and letting developers and investors study how Action projects reach the market. indielist's white-box method estimates its lifetime sales at roughly 830,000 to 1.9 million units, with the full Boxleiter factor breakdown shown on this page rather than a single black-box figure. Within indielist's catalog of indie games mapped to their studios, publishers, and funding, Hyper Light Drifter can be compared against similar Action titles and benchmarked on review counts and estimated sales.
Reviews
15,364
Positive
93%
Steam appid
257850
Engine
Unknown
Players (snapshot)
128
Historical snapshot ·
Sales estimate
v1.0830K to 1.9M
units (median: 1.4M)
≈ $9.5M to $22.1M modeled net revenue (fixed store-cut, refund, and regional-price assumptions applied)
+ - How is this calculated?
| Factor | Adjustment |
|---|---|
| base | +50 |
| year_2016 | +30 |
| price_$20 | 0 |
| positive_93% | +10 |
| final NB | 90 |
Heuristic display range: median × [0.6, 1.4]. Boundary protection: NB ∈ [15, 150].
Methodology & limitations
Sales estimates use an additive Boxleiter-derived heuristic against public Steam review
counts. They are not authoritative sales data, and the fixed display range
is not a statistically validated confidence interval. Actual results may fall outside it,
especially for deeply discounted or bundle-heavy titles. Algorithm version
v1.0. Read the exact method and validation status.
indielist estimates lifetime unit sales for Hyper Light Drifter at roughly 830,000 to 1.9 million copies, with a median around 1.4 million, derived from its 15,364 Steam reviews using a multi-factor Boxleiter method (version v1.0). That median maps to approximately $15.8M in net revenue after Steam's 30% cut, regional pricing, and refunds. Unlike black-box trackers, the full calculation is shown on this page: a base review-to-sales multiplier is adjusted for release year, launch price, review sentiment, studio size, and genre, and every adjustment is listed so developers, publishers, and investors can audit exactly how the figure was reached. The range itself reflects genuine uncertainty — review-to-sales ratios vary widely between games — so indielist publishes a low, median, and high band rather than a false-precision single number, and treats free-to-play, heavily discounted, and bundle-distributed titles as having wider error margins still.
Price history
53 observed days · window low $4.99Across 53 observed UTC days from 2026-05-31 to 2026-07-22, the daily lowest tracked USD price across stores ranged from $4.99 to $19.99. The tracked-window low was $4.99 on 2026-06-19.
Real store observations · daily lowest tracked USD price across stores · missing days are not filled.
Where to buy
Affiliate disclosureLatest tracked store observations (2026-07-22 17:55 UTC), cheapest first. Prices may have changed since observation. Some are affiliate links — we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Learn more.
Platforms
linuxmacwindows
Tags
Pixel GraphicsGreat SoundtrackAtmosphericAdventureIndieDifficultActionHack and SlashSingleplayerExplorationRPG2DColorfulTop-DownPost-apocalypticAction RPGMetroidvaniaSouls-likeFantasySci-fi
Frequently asked questions
- How many copies has Hyper Light Drifter sold?
- indielist estimates Hyper Light Drifter has sold between 829,656 and 1,935,864 units (median 1,382,760), derived from its 15,364 Steam reviews with the white-box Boxleiter v1.0 method. The full breakdown is shown on the page.
- Who developed Hyper Light Drifter?
- Hyper Light Drifter was developed by Heart Machine and published by Heart Machine.
- Who published Hyper Light Drifter?
- Hyper Light Drifter was published by Heart Machine, developed by Heart Machine. See Heart Machine's full catalogue and submission status on indielist.
- When was Hyper Light Drifter released?
- Hyper Light Drifter was released in 2016.
- How many reviews does Hyper Light Drifter have on Steam?
- Hyper Light Drifter has 15,364 Steam reviews, of which 93% are positive.
- Is Hyper Light Drifter worth playing?
- Steam players rate Hyper Light Drifter 93% positive across 15,364 reviews. indielist doesn't score games editorially; it surfaces public review sentiment and a white-box sales estimate so you can judge reception and reach yourself.
Ecosystem
Players looking for games like Hyper Light Drifter can compare it on indielist against semantically similar Action titles such as Dust: An Elysian Tail, Rain World, Hero Siege, TUNIC, ranked by shared tags and genre rather than by ad spend. On the developer side, Heart Machine's other releases and Heart Machine's wider catalog are one click away, letting developers benchmark where Hyper Light Drifter sits among a studio's body of work and how its publisher's portfolio performs. Because indielist maps studios, publishers, games, and funding into one connected graph, the same Hyper Light Drifter page serves three audiences at once: players hunting their next Action game, developers studying how comparable projects were positioned and what they sold, and investors tracing which teams and labels are active in the space. A machine-readable markdown mirror of this page is published at the same path with a .md suffix for AI assistants, and its review, price, and sales-estimate figures are refreshed on a schedule rather than frozen at launch.
You might also like
Matched from shared Steam tags and primary genre. Review count breaks ties; it is not a personal recommendation score.
- D
Dust: An Elysian Tail
Action
Shared tags: Action, Metroidvania, Indie
- R
Rain World
Action
Shared tags: Difficult, Atmospheric, Exploration
- H
Hero Siege
Action
Shared tags: Action RPG, Pixel Graphics, Hack and Slash
- T
TUNIC
Action
Shared tags: Exploration, Souls-like, Metroidvania
- A
Axiom Verge
Action
Shared tags: Metroidvania, Indie, Pixel Graphics
- H
Hollow Knight
Action
Shared tags: Metroidvania, Souls-like, Great Soundtrack
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