One question I am often asked is: How does one become a Game Expert™ at Akliz? The full trajectory of my career is unexpectedly complicated, but the short version is that I love games. Not just playing them - but modding them, alpha-testing them, setting up servers to share my love with my friends, making art for games, I am endlessly enamored with every part of the process. As a consequence, I’ve spent far more time in most every game I’ve played than most of those games deserve. Nearly every title I provide my Expert Support for, I have played for hundreds if not literal thousands of hours. Developers put in tens of thousands of hours into creating these worlds, and sometimes it takes just as long to truly appreciate them.
Hytale has taken many, many thousands of hours to get here. Originally announced in 2015 by Hypixel Studios, the game spent years in development, got acquired by Riot Games, was quietly canceled, and then was bought back by its original creator Simon “Hypixel” Collins-Laflamme. Now, nearly 90,000 hours since it was first announced, Hytale is here. In the two weeks since launch, I’ve put around 100 hours in, and I suspect many hundreds more yet to come.
What is Hytale?
Hytale is a block-based sandbox RPG with procedurally generated worlds. There, that’s the contractual obligation out of the way, we’ve established the minimum context in case you’ve somehow found this article without having ever heard of Hytale before.
But, there’s dozens of games that fit that description - they’re all over the internet and a new one appears practically every month. It’s a much-beloved genre. So, what is the heart of Hytale, and sets it apart from the sea of endless copycats?
My silly little swamp hut. Please be nice, I am a terrible builder.
The Early Access Context
Hytale has been in development since 2015, but after it was canceled by Riot, Simon’s small team has had to put together the pieces as best they can. As such, it’s still largely unfinished - large swathes of content have “under construction” signs out front, signifying that they’ll be available only at a later update. Right now, you get Exploration Mode (the main adventure) and Creative Mode, along with robust modding tools that have already spawned some wild community creations. What's missing? Adventure Mode (a structured campaign), additional biomes and zones, and a lot of polish. This is early access in the truest sense - you're playing a game that's still being built around you.
Exploration & World Design
The world of Hytale is divided into distinct zones, each with its own theme, challenges, and secrets. While the textures and colors have a lot of pop and pizazz, the biomes themselves are still rather flat, and beyond their constituent materials, they feel a bit same-y. Dungeons can be found scattered around the world, as a mixture of pre-fabricated structure and procedurally-generated mazes. You'll find abandoned camps, mysterious ruins, and the occasional deep cavern full of mystifying structures.
The strongest draw to the world generation that I have seen, is a general sense of environmental storytelling - every structure gives the feeling that this was built by someone, be it ancient long-dead progenitors or savage trolls. It is clear that Hytale has set out to create a world, not just a sandbox, and one that feels, to an extent, lived-in. Biome generation is a bit lackluster, but Simon’s team has been posting images hinting at an upcoming overhaul to the world generation algorithms that promise greater variety.
Combat & Progression
Hytale's dungeons are full of monsters to fight & chests to loot
Combat in Hytale is by far a stand-out feature for me, and is surprisingly tactical for a block game. You can't just face-tank enemies and spam click until they die. Enemies have a lot of health, and hit substantially harder than you do. However, they also have fairly clear telegraphs for their attacks, so you have the time needed to dodge, position yourself intelligently, and identify enemy attack patterns. It feels responsive and weighty when you’re deep in a dungeon and surrounded by foes.
Each weapon type also has its own move set to complement this. Charge attacks, jumping attacks, sprinting attacks - finding a new axe or hammer genuinely changes how you approach combat, and the satisfaction of finally crafting that upgrade you've been working toward is real. The variety of movesets also means that some weapons will be better for groups, close-quarter combat, and some better for hunting animals. Variety is the key to success, and I enjoyed every weapon I found.
End-game progression seems to be tied to visiting new dimensions - these dimensions also feel very unfinished in the current build. You can create portals to visit them, but you’re strictly time-limited in those visits, and it doesn’t feel like there is much to do there. They show promise, but ultimately are mere hints at greater variety.
Building & Creativity
The building tools in Hytale are intuitive and I have seen some incredible constructions arise. It allows a far greater degree of rotation and connection control between blocks that I rarely seen in this genre of games. I’m not much of a builder myself (my bases are routinely stone cubes with little square rooms inside them), but I’m sure the passionate builders among you will be excited when I speak such words as “vertical slabs” and “freely-rotated staircases” (if you know, you know).
Creative Mode gives you access to every block and item, along with tools that make large-scale building projects actually feasible. You're not spending hours placing individual blocks when you can just select an area and fill it. Many people might feel that “Yes, this was possible in other games using mods and plugins”, but I feel that the inclusion of these tools directly into the base game’s UI speaks to the developer’s intention. Truly, this was built to be a paradise for creators - a canvas for painting just as much a game for exploring.
Modding & Community Tools
Simon, your profile picture is a sloth in a suit. I shouldn't have to explain why these should be playable.
I initially spent my time in Hytale without mods, to get a feel for the baseline, but quickly found that the sheer volume of incredible mods being produced by the community overwhelmed my desire to learn the game without them. Hytale feels like a paradise for modded players - many of the friends I shared a server with were apprehensive about adding mods, due to the usual headache of matching/downloading mods between groups of people, but with Hytale you can simply drop mods onto the server. All players will receive the modded data required automatically when connecting - no additional download required.
Hytale has great tools for the mod creators too. It ships with Blockbench integration - for those unaware, this gives modders professional-quality tools for modeling and design right from the get-go. The community has already created some absolutely bonkers things: someone made a working version of Windows 95 inside the game (yes, really), and the list of texture packs, custom models, and gameplay mods grows daily.
The Grind
It can’t be all sunshine, demon stabbing, and rainbows though. Let's talk about leather. Oh ye gods, the leather. You need leather for everything in the mid-game onward: armor, tools, various utility upgrades (Backpacks! You need backpacks!), and crafting station improvements. Getting leather means roaming the world to hunt animals, as there is no breeding / taming system as of yet, which spawn inconsistently and drop it even more inconsistently. Of the time I have spent with Hytale, the most dull have been spent trying to get enough leather for that next upgrade - a grind which never ends, as tools and armor have a limited lifespan.
Mining can also feel like a slog, with certain materials appearing in frustratingly small quantities, and with tools having very low durability compared to the amount of mining required to craft them. The repetitive nature of resource farming is probably my biggest frustration - certain materials only appear in certain biomes, but mining in those biomes isn’t a substantially different experience from any other, so it feels less like progression and more like repetition. I want to be exploring and fighting and building, not running a loop around the forest for the umpteenth time, praying to the RNG gods for deer to spawn.
Content Depth
In my 100 hours, I’ve thoroughly hit the content ceiling. Early access means there's only so much to do - once you've explored the available zones, built your base, and poked around the very-unfinished feeling, time-limited dimensions, you start to run out of new things to experience. The game needs more biomes, more enemy variety, and more reasons to keep adventuring once you've seen everything once.
Endgame activities are particularly thin right now. There's no real end-game challenge outside of farming up the mats required for particularly expensive gear. You'll find yourself fighting the same enemies in the same locations more often than you'd like. That said, this is early access, and more content is coming, and hopefully soon. Simon has been very transparent about the update process, with constant communication on what features are coming and where we can expect future updates to take us. While I feel there is little more for me to do at this time, I trust that won’t be the case for long.
The Verdict
What Hytale Gets Right
Baby! Camel! I LOVE THEM
When everything clicks, Hytale delivers moments of genuine magic: exploring into a beautifully placed dungeon, finally crafting that armor set you've been working toward, or just watching the sunset from your balefully lit anime-villain tower - I keep coming back because those moments are worth the grind.
Hytale offers structured progression and satisfying combat, trading some of the pure creative freedom commonly found in “block games” for a more guided adventure experience. Once these bones have been built on - either by modders, or by Simon Hypixel and his team - I feel this will be a land of great value to embark upon.
Where It Needs Work
Before full release, Hytale needs more content variety and better resource balancing. The grind needs to feel rewarding rather than tedious, and there need to be more reasons to keep playing beyond “get better gear”. Some performance optimization and quality-of-life improvements would also go a long way to smooth out the experience.
For early access, I always try to keep my expectations reasonable. I know I'm playing an unfinished game, but even accounting for that, there are areas that need work before this becomes the game it clearly aspires to be.
Should you play Hytale?
If you're a modder or someone who enjoys being part of a game's development journey, now is the perfect time to jump in. Modding tools make the process easy, and you’re not going to be fighting to overcome established “popular” mods, like you might be in other modding communities. The foundations are here, the tools are excellent, and the community is booming.
If you're primarily interested in the adventure experience… You may want to give it more time. I’ve enjoyed my time with the game, but I did so with the understanding that when the new updates come in, I’m likely to have to completely start over from scratch. This isn’t going to be a smooth, clean ride through to full release. It’s going to be a journey, and I’m here for it.
Closing Thoughts
Unfinished, but still lovely
After 100 hours with Hytale, I'm optimistic about its future. The game has strong bones: the core systems work, the world is beautiful, and the modding potential is some of the most exciting I’ve seen in a game. My concerns revolve around whether the development team can deliver on the scope of their vision with a small team, particularly considering they’re working with a smaller team compared to previous time in development under Riot.
Would I recommend it? Yes, with caveats. If you understand what early access means and you're interested in watching (and influencing) a game as it develops, now is the perfect time. Just know that you're signing up for an unfinished experience, and be prepared to grind for a lot of leather.
If you want to experience Hytale with friends, setting up a dedicated server makes the adventure even better. Setup is quick, modding is simple, and you can get started with our hosting plans and have your server running in minutes. Get your crew together, strap on your mining helmets, and let’s get going!