Last night, Riot Games released the first gameplay video of Project L, a fighting game set in the League of Legends universe. The video included a few different League characters and an in-depth discussion about what type of fighting game the devs behind Project L are trying to create.
Riot Games has been on a League of Legends spin-0ff spree for the last year or so, with two LoL spin-off games releasing recently as well as a popular animated Netflix show too. Now Project L — one of the older spin-offs being first announced back in 2019 — has finally got a proper gameplay reveal showing off how the fighting game will look and play when it eventually releases… one day. Riot made it clear that Project L won’t be out this year or next year.
According to the devs behind Project L, this is a vertical slice and they still have a lot to do to get the game out the door. “We built this to hammer out the final look of the game,” explained Tom Cannon, senior director, and executive producer, “in advance of actually going in and building all of our content like characters and stages.”
Project L is planned to be a tag-team-styled fighter, with players managing teams of two and swapping between them during fights. The video also showed off an early look at the controls. According to Cannon, the goal is to create a fighting game that is “easy-to-learn but hard-to-master”. I feel like every modern fighting game has claimed to be doing that, so what that will actually mean in practice remains to be seen.
Something fighting game fans will appreciate is that the devs behind Project L are focused on creating the best netcode possible. The game will feature rollback, but will also take advantage of Riot’s own network tech used to lower ping and lag in games like League of Legends and Valorant.
Considering how early this all still sounds, it’s not shocking that the game doesn’t have a release date. Riot does plan on sharing at least two updates on the game and the state of development in 2022.
Meanwhile, Riot Games is still reportedly delaying ongoing investigations by the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing into its history of workplace gender discrimination and sexism.
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