Riot Games owns an entire development studio, Hypixel Studios, that has been solely focused on building a block-based, procedurally generated open-world sandbox game: an explicit 'Minecraft killer' project. They've been working on the game since 2015, that's six years at the time of writing, and their upcoming game Hytale isn't set to release until 2023 at the earliest.
In this article, we'll tell you everything you need to know about Hytale.
Who Is Hypixel and What Is Hytale?
Hypixel is actually a famous, old Minecraft Java server that began way back in 2013. Today, the server is perhaps the largest in Minecraft with over 150,000 active players. To support such a massive server, Hypixel has an actual development team behind it.
Back in 2015, a group of approximately 40 employees left the development team of the Hypixel Minecraft server to found Hypixel Studios to develop a game inspired by Minecraft and the Hypixel server but that was its own entire game that could address a lot of the classic issues gamers have with Minecraft.
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Hypixel Studios never wanted to be thought of as developing a Minecraft clone or a Minecraft killer, and rather, they often described their project as a game obviously and intentionally inspired by Minecraft and Hypixel but with its own DNA and built to do things Minecraft never did.
These things included a much more robust combat system, more gear and weapon variety, and a more of a fantasy aesthetic and emphasis on lore and worldbuilding. The game would also be multiplatform, have robust mod support, be procedural and infinitely replayable, have a long-term support plan, and be able to be played on low-end devices while scaling beautifully to high-end PCs. Suffice it to say, Hypixel Studios are ambitious.
This would sound almost No Man Skye-esque with their ambitions and the indie nature of their team, but the studio was acquired by Riot Games in 2020. According to Hypixel, Riot has little influence on the game or the company, and rather, they intend to bankroll Hytale and give Hypixel the resources they need to launch a game like Minecraft.
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Whether you believe this or not aside, Mojang, the developer of Minecraft owned by Microsoft, currently employs nearly 650 employees worldwide, while Hypixel likely has around 100 with Riot's support. With a considerably smaller studio and far less development time than Minecraft already has, having a wealthy parent company and taking upwards of 8 years of development time makes a lot of sense.
There is a blog for Hytale if you're interested in following along with its development, and while updates do tend to come irregularly, there's tons of information, screenshots, and videos for you t take a look at. Plus, you can expect any major development updates to get published on the blog as well, so if you want to stay up-to-date with Hytale news, this is your best resource.
However, relatively little has been officially confirmed and slated for final release in Hytale as of now. This includes the game's business model. It's currently unclear if it'll be free-to-play, supported with microtransactions, be a full, premium release, or even require a subscription.
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Is Hytale Hypixel, Minecraft, or Something More?
Well, the tl;dr here is it's something more, but Hytale will absolutely look, feel, and play like Minecraft and the Hypixel server to an extent. Think of a game like the Hypixel server, which exists within Minecraft so obviously has a lot of the same mechanics, that was its own game with a whole set of features built to do what the developers at Hypixel always wanted to do.
Terraria is a lot like Minecraft but in 2D with a much more robust combat system. Hytale is going to try to bring a similar complexity to gear and combat but in the context of another procedurally-generated 3D open-world game like Minecraft.
To the end that it's inspired by the Hypixel server, alongside an Adventure mode (like Minecraft's Survival mode) and 'creative tools for content creators' (probably like Minecraft's Creative mode), Hytale will have a Minigames mode where players can both play games together and do PVP.
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On the Hytale website there's a ton of FAQs that the developers have answers for, if you're looking to take a look at the full breadth of official info about the game currently announced.
Hytale's Release Date: 2023 or Later
Hytale has had a few release dates, or rather release targets, and it has continuously been pushed back. Currently, Hytale is slated for release in "2023 at the earliest" which was set as the latest release target in Hytale's summer 2021 development update blog post.
This was a fairly massive delay for the game, but with the Coronavirus pandemic raging, a delay because of it was inevitable, and the project itself has already been slow. Ultimately, while disappointing for many, the delay was fairly unsurprising.
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2023 isn't a particularly hard releaste date either. Hytale is planning to launch across a number of platforms with a ton of features alongside multiplayer, and there doesn't seem to be plans for an early access release, so we could still see the release date pushed back into 2024.
Riot's philosophy, as a company, when it comes to new games is to take things slow and keep projects in the oven until they're totally done. While a huge company with a lot of projects in development, we don't expect major releases every year from Riot, and Hytale is not going to break this trend.
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