CASTLEVANIA Producer Adi Shankar Is Now Developing a HYPER LIGHT DRIFTER TV Series

You may or may not be familiar with the action RPG Hyper Light Drifter, but if you are, you might be excited to learn that its creator Alex Preston has teamed up with producer Adi Shankar (Castlevania, Devil May Cry, Assassin’s Creed) to develop an animated series based on the game!

The game is actually pretty cool. It pays homage to the older 8-bit and 16-bit games and is is said to be a a combination of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past and Diablo.

While talking to Polygon, the game's creator confirmed that he was working on the series with Shankar, but at the moment it is still in the conceptual stage. They are trying to figure out the best way to bring this story to life for fans to enjoy. He said:

“The difference between a series and a game is vast in a lot of ways. Hyper Light as a game was pretty atmospheric and kind of overbearing at times. For a series, the question is: how do you sustain and keep your attention on a non-interactive run? Does it get really, really dark and serious? Does it have some levity?”

Preston also said that they are "leaning a lot more towards something that's representative of the game on the style side," it’s also explained that “although the visuals will likely trend toward anime-esque animation rather than a straight interpretation of the game’s pixel designs.”

He then shared an interesting idea that the series could end up not having any dialogue:

“There’s still a question of how much dialogue we really have, if any. Could it be a more silent series or would we have voice acting? Considering Hyper Light was wordless, there’s an idea there of how much that would carry over to to a show.”

While that may seems strange, I actually kinda dig the out-of-the-box thinking on that. A series where there is no talking could be really cool and powerful because the story would have to rely on the visuals, and I’m a big fan of visual storytelling.

For those of you who want some additional information on the game, here ya go!

Hyper Light Drifter is a 2D action role-playing game fashioned after The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, rendered in a pixelated style comparable to Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP. The player controls the Drifter, a character that has access to technology that has long been forgotten by the inhabitants of the game's world and is suffering from an unspecified illness. The story concept was inspired by lead developer Alex Preston's heart disease, and has been likened by others to Studio Ghibli's Castle in the Sky, while Preston cites the studio's Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind as inspiration for the game's world.

The Drifter is equipped with an energy sword but can gain access to other modules that expand their weapon and ability arsenal. These often require power from rare batteries scattered around the world. Weaponry includes traditional console role-playing game archetypes, including long-range guns and area attacks Rather than scavenging ammunition from the game world to load the player's guns, the player's ammunition instead charges when hitting enemies and objects with the energy sword. The player faces increasingly difficult monsters, both in number and ability, requiring the player to hone their tactics to succeed in the game. Preston's goal was to replicate the experience of playing on the SNES, noting that the unit had "amazing, almost perfect games designed for limited environments" which he challenged himself to simulate in Hyper Light Drifter. One feature of SNES games that Preston captured is that there is no spoken dialog, placing more emphasis on the game's music and visuals to tell a story.

I know the series is still in the early stages, but I would love to see this adapted as an animated series. I hope that it happens.