Riot Games again looked set to dominate the gaming industry with yet another new Fighting game. They have disrupted the MOBA genre with huge success and is one of the most popular title in the world. This time, they are targeting to come up with a new Fighting Game, “Project L” which have been in development for a few years.
This time, they gave a sneak peak of the progress and revealed some new characters.
Tom & @Pond3r reintroduce Project L, an assist-based fighter set in the world of Runeterra. 👊🏽💥💥
Learn More: https://t.co/hg4xAQ8RJV pic.twitter.com/TDVQn2kasR
— Riot Games #RiotXArcane 💥 (@riotgames) November 20, 2021
The developers Tom Cannon and Tony Cannon have been keeping this project a secret for many years and they are looking to shape up the fighting game industry, namely big heavyweights such as Capcom which have been holding a large market share of its fighting game titles such as Street Fighter, Super Smash Bros and Marvel vs Capcom. However, it seemed that there were not much competitors except for Mortal Kombat and Tekken, these developers were pretty much complacent and not much innovation was introduced in this genre.
In this Project L, players will be able to choose two different champions to battle an opponent in a 2D, assist-based fighting-style game. The video that was shown has a very common characteristics of typical 2D animation with a wide variety of combo moves that can be executed. The characters are based from the world of Runeterra and the two champions could help each other during combat, similar to a tag-team fighting game such as Marvel vs Capcom.
In the video, Tom iterated that Riot’s goal is to establish a high-quality fighting game that the Fighting Game Community will invest in for a long time. Just like how Riot has developed League of Legends, it is definitely in good hands to see Project L progress well and witness the potential of a fighting game.
The controls are designed such that it has an “easy-to-learn” but “hard-to-master” mentality. This means that the skills are definitely top tiered for hardcore players who are able to unlock super compatible champion pairs or discover super combo moves that can eliminate champions easily. Alternatively, there could probably be champions with strength or weakness against other champions. These techniques or mechanics would be difficult to master for highly skilled or professional players. However, the game should be easy to learn to have an enjoyable time and straight forward to control the characters.
Players who have experience with other fighting games should not have any problems picking up this game. The learning curve of Project L should be a smooth one for players with a solid foundation of fighting games. The fundamentals of Project L would require players to rely on quick decision making and connecting combos to master the game.
Each of the champions would probably have iconic abilities or moves which were adapted from the famous League of Legends and incorporated into their fighting styles. This would definitely add a lot more excitement to see the amount of flexibility that each character has.
One of the champion revealed in the video was Ekko where he is able to create an image of himself and has the ability to retrace back in time. This would give him the agility to fuse up complicated combos or even escape from daunting situations. He also has a Timewinder grenade to slow down opponents for a few seconds.
The next part of the video focuses on netcode. The developers wanted to ensure that latency would not be a hinderance given that fighting game is a fast paced game and Riot is willing to invest big in this area. “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.” Tom added. Lag and dropping frames are definitely key issues which would affect gameplay experience. Riot would definitely want to prioritize this to avoid rage quitters or lag spikes exploiters.
It is not known when would be the exact release date but Tom has confirmed that it would not be shipping between 2021 or 2022. There is probably much more work to be done before they are prepared to show the world their new game. Till then, we look forward to more reveals from Riot!