Riot has finally shared a little more information about its unnamed upcoming 2D fighting game, currently only known as Project L.
As well as dropping an all-new trailer - this one over six minutes long and full of tasty behind-the-scenes peeks - project leads Tom and Tony Cannon tell us more about the new League of Legends fighting game set in Runeterra.
Project L was confirmed in August 2019, but we didn't know anything about it aside from it being a fighting game developed by Riot. A subsequent livestream confirmed the project would be set in the League of Legends universe… and that's all we knew. Until now, anyway.
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"Our initial reveal back in 2019 showed a potential direction that we could take the game," Tom Cannon now explains in a new blog post. "But Project L is in R&D: the phase of game development where we’re exploring options and finding the fun. Today, our explorations have borne fruit, and we’ve landed in a spot that we’re all pretty excited about! So now felt like a great moment to bring you up to speed, especially with all the Undercity Nights festivities happening across Riot.
"We're excited to share that Project L will be a tag-team style fighting game, where you'll build and pilot a team of two different champions," Tom added. "In this preview, you'll see we've updated the game's art style and included a breakdown of a champion's kit. You'll catch a glimpse of how we're approaching controls with an easy-to-learn but hard-to-master mentality.
"We also talk a little about one of our top priorities for the game: to build the absolute best in netcode that you can get in a fighter. Of course we're starting with rollback as a foundation, and we're adding in existing tech from Riot like RiotDirect, which does a great job at minimizing ping for League of Legends and Valorant."
The bad news? We're not going to see Project L released in 2021 or 2022.
"Our goal is to build a super high-quality fighting game that the FGC can invest deeply in, playing for years or even decades," Tom said. "That takes time to get right, and we’re not going to rush it."
To manage expectations, he stated that we probably won't get another update about Project L until "sometime early" in the second half of 2022.
In the meantime, here are all the new games of 2021 (and beyond).
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