The 10-Year Wait For ‘Minecraft Killer’ Hytale Is Finally Over

I’m currently exploring, crafting and building my way through Minecraft-like Hytale to find out what this long-delayed blocky survival sim does to differentiate itself from its obvious inspiration. But in the meantime, let’s take a look at what’s already happened in the game’s first 24 hours since releasing into early access.

Hytale very nearly didn’t happen. The cuboid sandbox game has been in production since 2015 from Hypixel Studios, with financial support from Riot Games for the first few years until the massive company bought Hypixel outright in 2020. However, big twist: in June 2025 Riot cancelled the whole project, leaving its future in serious doubt. But then another twist: in November of last year, the game’s original founder Simon Collins-Laflamme bought the entire IP back from Riot and revived development. Just two months later the game is out in early access, making Riot’s decision all the more peculiar.

It’s not nearly finished, it’s fair to say. If you buy the game now you’ll find its central hub area is mostly various buildings with “Under Construction” signs on them, and the game’s “Adventure” mode is yet to be added alongside Survival and Creative. However, you’ll also find a very familiar style of game if you’ve ever played Minecraft, but with much higher-fidelity graphics, a far more complex array of crafting tables, and the slightest touch of creature collecting. So how’s it going so far?

Well, pretty well! In the first 24 hours Hytale became the most watched game on Twitch, with 420,000 viewers across many, many streams. And perhaps more significantly, Collins-Laflamme took to X just before launch to say pre-orders have been so successful that the game has already secured a further two years of development costs.

Pleased to announce that we have officially secured the next two years of development costs through pre-purchases. Combined with my personal commitment of ten years, we are looking very strong for the future ❤️

Thank you all for the support.

Hytale is saved.
We are almost home.

— Simon (@Simon_Hypixel) January 12, 2026

Yay Patch Notes!

The game has already received its first hotfix, aimed at fixing crashes caused by eyebrows, squelching a bug that stopped Norwegian people from launching it, and preventing buckets from breaking the game. Of course, this being early access, Hypixel are keen to communicate that the game is still going to be packed with issues and bugs. In a blog post celebrating the pre-release of the game, the team asks people to keep in mind the following:

• Early Access – many features are still missing, and bugs are expected
• It’s only been two months since we reacquired Hytale – and that’s how long we’ve had to prepare the game and rebuild the team from the ground up
• Demand has exceeded our expectations, which means launch week will be bumpy, but we’ll get everyone in

The game, which is currently only available for PC but plans to make its way to PS5 and Xbox, does already allow modding and as such, people are already getting creative. Perhaps the most stand-out example would be someone getting Doom running in the game before it even released. As PC Gamer spotted, it’s achieved by importing a Java version of id’s shooter, then having it rendered via color-changing blocks within Hytale. Or witchcraft.

Exploration Motivation

The Exploration mode is the “proper” way to play the game just now, where the procedurally generated collection of biomes contains really elaborate structures to discover, and also all the core ingredients for the Minecraft survivalist. So you can build homes (I’ve made a lovely log cabin!), grow crops, craft ever-more useful tools, and do all this solo or with chums. Digging down proves similarly elaborate, with big underground structures to explore, and of course mobs to battle. There are also the vestigial beginnings of the game’s story, with a hub area you can teleport to once you find the Forgotten Temple, speak to a couple of NPCs, and begin a task to identify as many species of creatures as you can in order to unlock new crafts.

The forthcoming Adventure mode appears to promise a lot more RPG-like elements that will hopefully better distinguish the game from its inspirations, but in the meantime the focus is really on venturing far from where you spawn and discovering its much more detailed landscapes and the mobs within.