This Purpose-Built Display Tracks Hyper Light Drifter Tabletop RPG Stats

2016’s Hyper Light Drifter is an atmospheric, retro-styled RPG video game. Its lead developed, Alex Preston, described it as a combination of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past and Diablo. The game was very well received and has been ported to almost all modern consoles and operating systems. Last year, a Kickstarter campaign was launched to create a tabletop RPG version of Hyper Light Drifter. Albert Phan backed that campaign and now has the game. To keep track of his in-game stats, he made this dedicated battery-powered display to use during gaming sessions.

Like virtually every other tabletop RPGs out there, Hyper Light Drifter: Tabletop Role Playing Game relies heavily on statistics. The stats that this display is able to keep track of are health, energy, and dash. The health and energy readouts each have 20 LEDs that can be illuminated in one of two colors in order to show up to 40 units. The dash readout can show up to ten units. Six momentary buttons are used to add or subtract points from each of those stats. Two capacitive touch buttons can be used to adjust the display brightness. Power comes from a battery that lasts roughly 8 hours at the default LED brightness. Stats are, of course, saved when the display is powered off.

Phan doesn’t provide much detail about the hardware components used in this build, so we don’t know which microcontroller, LiPo charging chip, or persistent storage chip are being used. But we do know those components are arrayed across three unique PCBs. The bottom one contains the buttons, chips, and LEDs. The middle board acts as a spacer and to isolate the LEDs. The top board contains the capacitive touch buttons, LED windows, and Hyper Light Drifter artwork. A simple 3D-printed enclosure protects those boards. It’s unclear if Phan plans to sell this tracker as a kit or to make it available as an open source project, but we’re really impressed with the fit and finish of the finished device.