Riot Games, the developer of League of Legends, bought the sandbox MMORPG Hytale in 2020. This game resembles Minecraft in its fundamentals but aims to do things differently. The release, initially planned for early 2023, has now been postponed indefinitely.
What kind of game is this? Hytale was developed by a group of former Minecraft modders. They formed their own development studio and drew a lot of attention with a trailer in early 2019.
In 2020, the studio was then purchased by Riot Games. The former indie studio with 30 developers has now become an independent company with over 100 employees, who are still working in parallel with the rest of Riot. Together, they want to create an interesting game:
- Hytale is supposed to offer you three options:
- A creative mode with mods.
- A social hub to showcase achievements and experience mini-games and events.
- Orbis, a mode reminiscent of an MMORPG.
- You will create your own avatar that represents you in all three modes. This avatar is very important to the developers, and there will be many options for it.
- In the MMORPG world, you can expect story quests, a developer-created environment, boss monsters, dungeons, other players, and of course, the option to build freely. It is somewhat unclear whether you can also gather all resources in the world.
- Orbis is designed for “competitive play.” There is a distinction between PvE and PvP servers, and anti-cheat will be needed to use Hytale.
- The developers want to offer many public servers, but it should also be possible to host your own, as in Minecraft.
Originally, the sandbox game was supposed to be released at the end of 2021. However, after the acquisition by Riot Games, the year 2023 was targeted for release. But even that is no longer being met.
A first glimpse is provided by the original announcement trailer, which has garnered over 59 million views since 2018:
Hytale receives a new engine to be released on multiple platforms
What is causing the delay? In the major summer update of 2022, the developers announced that they are completely overhauling the engine of Hytale. This aims to strengthen performance, facilitate future updates, and allow Hytale to be released on other platforms besides PC.
However, this is causing a delay in the release of the game. The blog states:
It definitely has an impact, but the redevelopment of the engine is progressing swiftly and we are reaching our internal milestones. However, the game will not come to market in 2023, which was the earliest release date we mentioned last year.
Currently, everything indicates that Hytale will be released at the earliest in 2024. However, there is no new release timeframe yet.
Additionally, there is currently significant work being done on the UI, which will likely differ more clearly from Minecraft in the future.
Why is the game so interesting? Essentially, Hytale resembles Minecraft in many ways – and not just because of the visuals. A sandbox game where players can gather resources, fight monsters, and use mods is likely not a completely new invention.
However, Hytale delivers things that Minecraft cannot. Especially character customization, story content, and generally more features, such as fixed mini-games or planned events in social hubs, stand out.
What do you think of Hytale? Does the idea appeal to you, or are you not interested in a Minecraft MMORPG? What content does the game need to attract you? Feel free to write it in the comments.
In the latest edition of our podcast, we discussed the most promising MMORPGs:
The 5 most interesting new MMORPGs that are currently in development
