After overcoming a cancellation, a fantasy take on Minecraft called Hytale is enjoying a very successful early access launch.
The prospect of anything overtaking Minecraft sounds ridiculous given its popularity, but there is talk that a new game on the block could, at the very least, serve as a worthy alternative to Microsoft’s blocky sandbox game.
Entitled Hytale, it launched for PC via early access earlier this week, on January 13, and we wouldn’t blame you for not noticing since it’s not available on either Steam or the Epic Games Store. You need to buy it from Hytale’s own website.
And yet it already seems to be off to an amazing start. Developer Hypixel Studios (which began as a Minecraft multiplayer server) said it was expecting at least one million players at launch and, for a period, it was the most viewed video game on streaming platform Twitch.
Without any sales figures or a means of checking player numbers, this is the only independent metric for measuring Hytale’s success, but for it to overtake more famous and longer-running games like GTA 5 and Minecraft itself is impressive.
Hytale accrued over 420,000 viewers at launch (per PC Gamer) and though it has since dropped from the top spot, it still sits in the top 10 most viewed games on Twitch at time of writing, at 62,600 viewers. That’s beating the likes of Fortnite and Animal Crossing: New Horizons, despite the latter’s new Switch 2 update.
At the very least, Hypixel co-founder Simon Collins-Laflamme is pleased with Hytale’s performance: ‘We got a long way to go to achieve our goals with the game but I’m happy to see the positive reaction, I was not expecting such support and understanding!
‘I was reading feedback and suggestions earlier and lots of it is already planned so nothing surprising and make me feel very confident about the future.’
What is Hytale?
At its core, Hytale is a lot like Minecraft, being a sandbox game where you’re plopped into a procedurally generated world and can gather materials to build things.
However, it has more of a fantasy aesthetic and promises more role-playing game elements compared to Minecraft, such as explorable dungeons, boss fights, and a dedicated story mode.
Hytale was actually announced back in 2018, with a promised early access release date of January 13, 2026. It clearly had a lot of eyes on it as the trailer has generated over 62 million views since then.
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It’s also had a very tumultuous history, as League Of Legends studio Riot Games bought Hypixel out in 2020 to fund Hytale’s development. However, the project was cancelled last June.
In most cases, that would’ve been the end of things but come November, but Collins-Laflamme announced he had bought Hytale back from Riot and development would resume.
If you’re at all curious, Hytale is available to download from the official website although as an early access release, it’s obviously unfinished. So far, it only includes an exploration mode, a creative mode, mod support, and multiplayer options.
It also isn’t free, with the cheapest option being $23.99 (about £18). There are Supporter and Cursebreaker options that come with extra cosmetics, and these cost $41.99 (about £31) and $83.99 (about £63), respectively.
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