Last night, Riot Games released the first video game of Project L, a fighting game set in the world of League of Legends. The video contains several different League of Legends characters and discusses in depth what type of fighting game the developers behind Project L are trying to create.

Riot Games has been playing League of Legends derivative games for the past year or so, and recently released two LoL derivative games and a popular Netflix animation show. Now, Project L is one of the older derivative products first announced on 9th, 2011, and finally has a proper gameplay display, showing the appearance and gameplay of the fighting game when it is finally released...Someday. Riot made it clear that Project L will not be launched this year or next year.

According to the developers behind Project L, this is a vertical slice, and they still have a lot of work to do to get the game out. “We built it to finalize the final look of the game,” explained senior director and executive producer Tom Cannon, “before actually entering and building all of our content (such as characters and stages).”

Project L plans to become a doubles-style fighter, where players manage two teams and exchange between them in battle. The video also shows an early understanding of the controls. According to Cannon, the goal is to create a fighting game that is "easy to learn but difficult to master". I think every modern fighting game claims to do this, so it remains to be seen what this actually means in practice.

One thing that fighting game fans will appreciate is that the developers behind Project L are focused on creating the best web code possible. The game will have a rollback function, but will also use Riot's own network technology to reduce ping and latency in games such as League of Legends and Heroic.

Play the role of Xingjue

Make a decision among the crew

Considering how early this all sounds, it is not shocking that the game does not have a release date. Riot does plan to share at least two game updates and development status in 2022.

At the same time, it is reported that Riot Games is still postponing the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing's ongoing investigation into its workplace sexism and sexism history.

Interestingly, despite what happened, Riot Games was generally welcomed by the public. Of course, Blizzard can't say that.