door of the room you died in with the same amount of health and health packs as you entered . If you enter into a combat section with very little health and nothing to heal you , you are going to have to play that section until you can figure out how to get through with the minimal amount of life that you have left . Sections with puzzles or platforming elements in addition to the normal combat further compound the game ’ s intricacy . You can fall through the floor and die . Alternatively , you could be completely blindsided by a sliding wall and die . Spend too much time on the puzzles or room hazards and you could easily become overwhelmed by enemies . Either way , you ’ re probably going to die and you ’ re probably going to die a lot .
One of the major complaints against the game is its difficulty . The problem is not games that are difficult . The problem is games that are punishing through bad design . If the difficulty comes from a flaw in the game , then that is just poor design , but if the difficulty is a core part of that game , lowering it would compromise a part of the experience . There is a strong sense of accomplishment and satisfaction that comes with games that are challenging . Every battle has more meaning for me because I put in the time and effort to get through it . Now shortly after Hyper Light Drifter ’ s release , Heart Machine added a patch called the invincibly patch .
One of the things that the patch did was add i-frames , or invincibility frames . Invincibility frames refer to a period of time , measured in frames , when a character is impervious to damage while performing a certain
action , specifically , dashing . Heart Machine decided to add i-frames because i-frames made combat smoother , allowing you to fully complete an action before the enemies killed you , making it easier to get into a flow state . With the i-frames , there were fewer deaths that felt unfair . Before , you could have dodged an enemy attack but still died . This off course makes the game more difficult because it decreases the margin of error when completing tasks , requiring greater precision from the player . After the patch , many players complained about the drop in difficulty while others rejoiced because the change made the game more accessible .
Many changes from the invincibility patch were later dropped like warp pads refilling health kits , but the added i-frames remained . Eventually , Heart Machine took the extra step and just made an easy mode . The easy mode makes the game more accessible for players who had been previously turned off by the high difficulty . For video games , publishers want as many people to pay for and play the game as possible . This is why games are released on multiple platforms and this is also why Hyper Light Drifter has an easy mode . There are better ways to go about fixing difficulty then adding an easy mode , however . Dark Souls 3 gives players ways to make their game easier , by choosing different items and upgrades , which means they can alleviate the difficult for certain sections they think are more difficult . An easy mode does not necessarily make a game easier because everyone perceives difficulty differently and what is easy for one might not be easy for others .