Since the game was first announced in 2018, I’ve been one of Hytale’s biggest and most eager fans. I remember the day the trailer dropped, and I spread it around to all of my friends and family and yapped endlessly about how excited I was for the game. This process continued with each dev blog posted by the developers until their releases became less and less frequent. My hype eventually died down when I heard the game was scrapped, and it felt like something of a miracle when the original creator managed to get their hands back on the title and announced something I, at that point, never thought I would see: a release date for the game.
This puts me in something of a strange position when it comes to reviewing Hytale‘s aforementioned Early Access release. On the one hand, I must admit to some level of bias, as I’ve been waiting for this game for almost ten years now and was one of many who pre-purchased the title, knowing full well that it was still unfinished and not knowing exactly what to expect. That being said, the years of hype have made my expectations for the game mighty, and although I reined them in a bit knowing that the game was releasing as a very, very early build, I knew that Hytale still had to do a lot to impress me, especially with other competitors now on the market. Vintage Story, in particular, has been sucking up an unfathomable amount of hours of my life leading up to this point.
Needless to say, my standards were high. And yet, Hytale, even in its very early, very unfinished state, managed to captivate and excite me to a surprising degree.
If somehow you’re unaware, Hytale is a voxel-based survival and exploration game in the same vein as Minecraft. The game was, in fact, developed by the same creators behind one of Minecraft‘s most popular multiplayer servers, Hypixel.
The game very much feels like something born from the creative vision of “what if Minecraft was better?” with similar-feeling gameplay, yet gameplay that feels like a clear evolution from what came before. Similar mechanics have been fleshed out with great quality-of-life changes, more advanced world generation, tons of new mobs, and an overall fantastical take on the original inspiration fills the world of Hytale. There are too many differences for me to list, but any Minecraft fan can drop into Hytale and quickly understand what they’re doing, and is very likely to prefer the way Hytale does things over its inspiration.
Jumping into Hytale, I was immediately won over by the game’s character creation, its bountiful selection of fantastical animals and enemies, its intricate but not overwhelming combat system, and the wealth of exploration and construction potential offered even in the game’s earliest form.
There are similar voxel games on the market, but Hytale, in my opinion, has managed to secure its own identity beyond just the hype. If, for example, we call Vintage Story the survival-focused craftlike, with its heavy emphasis on time-consuming construction and punishing survival mechanics, then I would call Hytale the action-adventure title of its genre. While there is still plenty to do on the creative and farming side of things, with massive homes to build and tons to mine, collect, farm, and craft, I would say the game definitely puts a big emphasis on combat and exploration, with much of the game’s progression, at least in its current state, pointing you in that direction.
I would almost compare Hytale to Skyrim, with a pretty similar gameplay loop, as players explore the environment, discover dungeons of various sizes, and defeat the enemies inside to unlock loot. Calling the game Skyrim meets Minecraft might not be the perfect way to describe it, but it isn’t inaccurate either.
Hytale has also done something that no other voxel game, even the original Minecraft, has managed to do and created free, easy-to-access multiplayer. You can simply share a code with a friend and have them join your game with the press of a button, and it’s truly incredible. I do not doubt that server hosting websites are grieving that they won’t be making nearly as much money off Hytale as they do with similar titles.
For as much praise as I give the game, it’s important to note that Hytale is still a very incomplete game. In the current Early Access version, the title lacks immensely in scope and scale, with promised narrative content and expanded systems coming at a later date. Currently, I would say that players are bound to progress through the game rather quickly and find themselves wanting more after, say, six to ten hours of gameplay.
This is fairly normal for Early Access games and, typically, it’s excusable. Hytale‘s incredibly long development time makes this sting a bit more, however, as we’re faced with the conclusion that many of the game’s nearly ten years in development were, apparently, an utter waste.
That being said, the future for Hytale is promising, so long as the developers follow through with their promises and give the game the attention it deserves. Considering the overwhelmingly positive response to the title, I have no doubt that this will indeed happen, and it shouldn’t take another ten years to see Hytale fully fleshed out.
If nothing else, the developers have created a bountiful future for Hytale thanks to the game’s ease of modding, making modding tools readily available to players and using the popular and accessible model creation tool Blockbench as an official development tool. If you ever feel like Hytale doesn’t have enough content, you can trust the game to have tons of mods readily available for you to play, and the game already has some created and available to download, developed before the game even launched.
Pros:
- A rich world full of interesting mobs and places to explore
- Familiar yet tweaked mechanics that move the genre forward
- Accessible multiplayer, requiring no port forwarding or server hosting
- Incredible modding tools that allow for infinite community-created content
Cons:
- Somewhat of a disappointing scope and lack of content for a game that’s been so long in development, but with a promising future of updates ahead
Comments