Hyperwired Review

HYPERWIRED is a curious little title: it's a roguelike top-down shooter, with a heavy focus on resource management. You have Health, Energy, Laser, Bombs, and Ammo to manage, each of which can be regenerated at a Socket. HYPERWIRED has you bouncing between these and connecting to them, not only to progress, but to keep yourself alive. Energy drains whenever you do anything, and regenerates at every socket (while other resources require specific sockets). Being plugged in limits your movement though, which forms the crux of the difficulty.

The core gameplay is solid, moving and shooting is fluid (despite some minor pain points when plugged in), and thanks to the core resource mechanics, there's a constant flow to the gameplay loop. You're always bouncing between sockets, killing enemies, and finding upgrades.

These come in two primary forms: Batteries and Chips. Batteries are picked up and inserted into sockets once you plug in, buffing you while you're still using that socket, and these primarily come in the form of bullet buffs. Chips remain seated on your cable, which adds a variety of different effects… I think. Chips were a weird issue; I could see them on the cable and know they were doing something, but being specifically aware of what they were doing was something I consistently struggled with. There's no indication of their effects, and they don't last long either.

Alongside Chips and Batteries, you can also find stranded ships. These are small drifting vessels which require specific resources. You can tow these to a socket, and give them a little amount of time to charge up, and then they'll join you in fighting off enemies. Saving them for the first time also unlocks new ships, which have some relatively minor but interesting differences in functionality.

This is where my only major issues come into play: progression doesn't feel particularly fun or meaningful. Chips don't last long, and aren't major boons anyway, and batteries are restricted to sockets, which limit their viability and long-term effects. Builds struggle to come into form in the same way many other roguelikes do, and to me, that heavily limits HYPERWIRED in the grand scheme of things. While you do get persistent upgrades between stages, these are also not as run-defining as I would like.

HYPERWIRED's core mechanic is interesting, but could definitely do with some tweaking, too. It's interesting and makes for some unique gameplay situations. The challenge of having heavily limited movement is interesting, but its correlation to every resource has some rough impacts on the gameplay. Due to the layout of the stages, certain sockets can be awkward to find. For example, running out of ammo can lead to awkwardly fumbling around searching for an ammo socket.

Overcharge is something I found myself getting irritated by, too. Fundamentally, Overcharge is a system that punishes you for remaining plugged in too long, and it makes sense as a system to avoid players staying plugged in for too long and actively being able to ignore the resource management aspect. But when you're lacking in multiple resources and need to top up on all of them quickly, bouncing between all the sockets can lead to Overcharge, temporarily locking you out of all sockets. It's minor and is more of an annoyance rather than an interesting balance choice.

I finally want to touch on the bosses, which are perfectly fine. While I do think they're a little lacking in complexity, they fit in with the general vibe of HYPERWIRED. It's simple, its core mechanics work generally quite well, and it feels all around good to play. I do think there are some key areas that need work. Progression could do with feeling just a little more dynamic; the addition of some weirder items could make runs feel more unique. Some general mechanical tuning and level generation tweaks would go a long way, too. Exploring to find certain sockets can get tedious fast, having to hug walls until you find the right path, but it's not bad at all.

HYPERWIRED is a mixed bag. The core mechanics are fun and generally flow well. There are some notable flaws leading to some frustration, but it's absolutely nothing that couldn't be ironed out with a few tweaks.