This guide will help fans that loved HLD's aesthetic achieve a similar look in HLB. I really wanted a "Legacy Filter" of sorts that paid tribute to the original game's art and thought there HAS to be a way to achieve something close with Reshade. Important for me was to also preserve the UI.



This is still a 3D game make no mistake. It won't magically make it feel 2D and geometrical exactly like HLD is. It is probably the closest we can get with just shaders however. Perfecting that could only be done in-engine via either modding or the developers themselves spending resources making new shaders, materials, etc. So that's already out of my hands.

Attaching before & after pictures as well as videos showcasing the effect. First video has realtime switching between Vanilla and Reshade. All provided shots and footage feature the game running at maximum settings, 1080p except for Film Effects, Film Grain & Chromatic Aberration. Those I completely toggled off for even sharper edges. A couple more tweaks I found since first posting the guide (maximum pixel clarity): Set Shadows to 1 & disable Ambient Occlusion as well as FXAA. As of writing this, AO is bugged and only possible to disable this by setting the sg.PostProcessQuality to 0 in the GameUserSetting.ini, located in C:\Users\"YourUserName"\AppData\Local\Breaker\Saved\Config\WindowsNoEditor. Same goes for FXAA as there's no AA option in the graphics settings (set sg.AntiAliasingQuality to 0), will update accordingly if something changes in the future.




Good luck!

- First off, we gotta backup just in case you want to later uninstall Reshade. Go to Steam\steamapps\common\Hyper Light Breaker\Breaker\Binaries\Win64 and create a new folder called "backup", copying everything from current folder and putting it in there. If you want to uninstall and go back to vanilla, you can always wipe that folder and paste back all that you copied previously to the backed up folder. If the game has updated since your backup, after pasting also perform file integrity verification from Steam.

- Download Reshade with full add-on support from the official site: https://reshade.me/#download.

- Open the setup and choose the game's executable "Breaker-Win64-Shipping.exe" located in the directory mentioned at the start: Steam\steamapps\common\Hyper Light Breaker\Breaker\Binaries\Win64.

- Click Next and choose DirectX 10/11/12 API. Next you'll be prompted with choosing what effects to install. For the purposes of this guide we'll only choose what we need. So tick the box that says FXShaders by luluco250 and on the dropdown only leave VirtualResolution.fx checked.

- Finally you'll be asked to select addons. Simply pick ReshadeEffectShaderToggler (REST) by 4lex4nder and finalize the installation.

- Upon booting the game up, a message on the upper left will appear notifying you Reshade has been succesfully installed and prompting you to use the Home key to open up it's overlay, do that.

- Select to "Skip Tutorial". You'll likely be in Home tab now, if not navigate to it and click on VirtualResolution.fx.

- With VirtualResolution now ticked-on (activated), it's values will be displayed on the bottom of the overlay. In my case, for aspect ratio 16:9 and 1080p resolution, we are going to set Virtual Resolution Width to 480 and Height to 270. These are naturally the pixels for both width and height, 270p I've found to be the sweet spot here. HLD was also internally rendered at 270p, then upscaled according to your screen's resolution while preserving pixel sharpness (Nearest Neighbor interpolation). We're trying to do just that here.



- Final step is to go to Preprocessor definitions, open it's dropdown and change VIRTUAL_RESOLUTION_DOWNFILTER to POINT.

This will result in the game looking like it plays in 270p, but the pixels will be sharply upscaled to whatever 16:9 resolution you are playing at. You can obviously tweak the above settings to match the equivalent 1/4th of your current aspect ratio's resolution and achieve the same.

To keep UI from being destroyed by the pixelization and becoming unreadable, we are going to make use of the REST add-on. This will keep all elements like the HUD and menus completely unaffected by Reshade effects, just needs some tinkering first so follow closely:

- With Reshade overlay still open ingame, navigate to Add-ons tab and open the dropdown for Reshade Effect Shader Toggler.

- Open the dropdown of the last option "List of Toggle Groups" and create a New group. Check the box near "Active" and hit the Settings button to the right.



- In the newly opened menu (Group Settings (Default)) you'll most likely already be in the Effects tab. Make sure Invocation location is set to AFTER DRAW and "Apply all enabled techniques" is checked.



- Now to your left is a big list of codes starting with 0x.... We'll want to select each one preferrably starting from the bottom and pay attention to how the pixelization effect & the UI itself react to each selection. Since the overlay will be to your left, you can simply pay attention to your Bright Blood currency on the upper right of your screen (if in Hub section during HLB gameplay). We want the pixelization effect to remain functional but the UI unaffected by it There is also a small preview preview on the bottom of the Effects tab which shows which elements of the screen are affected. If all of the UI elements (like radar etc.) are turned invisible but the rest of that screen looks okay, it most likely means that you've succesfully toggled-out the elements you were looking for.

- Personally I only had to move 4 codes from the bottom to find mine (0xfaf0b849). Your case may be different, pay attention and you'll find it. Far easier than it sounds here.



- Once you have found it, double click on it so it turns yellow (means it's been applied) and close this window. Now back on the Toggle Groups dropdown click on "Save all Toggle Groups"

You are done. Press home again to close the overlay button. I also recommend assigning an "effect toggle shortcut" key in the Settings menu of the Reshade overlay. This key will instantly alternate between Reshade On/Off for you to compare Vanilla vs Reshade realtime. Enjoy!

Youtube compression not doing these justice but here's some realtime footage:



I spent quite some time compiling these into a guide. Hopefully it worked out for you! I like helping out my fellow communities, providing utility goodies like this and custom game shortcut icons, among other things. I wouldn't ask for anything really, but a nice coffee to support my art & efforts would be invaluable: https://ko-fi.com/mk0taid

Thank You all so much and see you out in the Overgrowth! Hopefully in your new pixelated selves, enjoy!