Hyper Light Drifter dev reveals 4-player battler Kyoto Wild

Teddy Diefenbach is among the developers working on Hyper Light Drifter, but he's also been working on a title of his own in his free time called Kyoto Wild. Describing it to Eurogamer, Diefenbach explained that Kyoto Wild pits one player against as many as three others, encouraging a one-hit-kill, weapon-aided fight to be the last one standing.

The survivor of any of Kyoto Wild's single-screen spaces advances to the next, where bested rivals await a rematch with a fresh round of characters. Though characters mostly play similarly to one another, the variety lies in a player's arsenal: "Each character fights with what they're using when you encounter them, whether that be a sword or something non-traditional like a rake," Diefenbach said. "When you throw a weapon, you equip the next weapon you're carrying as a backup, so there's sort of an economy of weapons to the game."

Diefenbach also teased that environments will contain secrets, and that Kyoto Wild's sense of exploration will separate it from the one-and-done battles of games like Samurai Gunn, but he's withholding further details until the game advances a bit more in development.