Castlevania’s Adi Shankar announces Hyper Light Drifter TV series

Netflix’s Castlevania producer is teaming up with HLD creator Alx Preston.

March 28, 2019

Hyper Light Drift is a 2D action RPG developed in an impressive solo effort by Alx Preston, and was released in 2016. The game is known for its gorgeous pixel art, intoxicating atmosphere, challenging and unique combat mechanics, and masterpiece soundtrack. After its release both critics and fans alike sang the games praises, and it was nominated for a slew of awards — including Best Original Game at the Golden Joystick Awards in 2016.

Preston originally funded the project through Kickstarter, asking for $27,000, but ended up raising over $600,000. This in turn allowed him to hire other developers, and found his own studio — Heart Machine. The small studio has become an indie darling, and has fans drooling with anticipation over their next upcoming title — Solar Ash Kingdom. But that’s not all Heart Machine has in the works.

Today in a conversation with Polygon, Preston revealed that he’s partnered with Ali Shankar, producer of Netflix’s adaptions of Castlevania and the upcoming Devil May Cry series, to develop an animated series based on Hyper Light Drifter. The pair are still very much in the conceptual phase, chewing on how they can translate Hyper Light Drifter’s unique gameplay experience to the television medium. They’re actively reaching out to writers to lead the adaptation.

“The difference between a series and a game is vast in a lot of ways,” Preston told Polygon. “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 and Shankar are “leaning a lot more towards something that’s representative of the game on the style side,” which leads one to wonder how they will translate pixel art, and the games unique atmosphere to a television series.

Unsurprisingly, Preston is struggling with how to address whether or not to use voice acting “There’s still a question of how much dialogue we really have, if any,” Preston says. “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.”