Summer 2024 Development Update
Hello! In today’s development update, we’ll be sharing perspectives from the team on the progress we’ve made in the first half of 2024. These include a first glimpse of our in-development new engine and an overview of the way we’re structuring the development of the game from 2025 onwards. We’ll also provide more details of our plans for creator outreach and, of course, show off another reimagined Orbis faction.
To kick us off, here’s Hytale’s Executive Producer, John Hendricks.
- First Playable: the first time a feature is usable in the new engine
- First Testable: the point where a feature is complete enough to test
- Alphas: features are ready for broader exposure, but not feature complete
- Betas: features are complete, but may be buggy or have incomplete content
Engine Progress
We're excited to share our first images from the new Hytale engine! Thomas Frick, Hytale's Art Director, has been working hard to validate that the new engine meets our expectations in terms of look and feel.
Team Focus
Disclaimer: goblin planning does not accurately reflect real-world dependencies or progress. (Illustration by Ted Artsel)
All of these efforts are focused on getting Hytale back in front of players – both in the user research lab, and beyond. Moving into the new year we will be focused on mini-games and creative tools, moving quickly through the first two phases of development outlined above as we port over the progress from our legacy prototypes and playtests.
The team is continuing to grow to ensure we're ready for the challenge. Here's our latest team photo from our yearly studio meetup – this time held in Dublin.
We're currently looking to fill a wide variety of roles, from UX design to studio operations, production, QA and engineering. Find out more about our open positions on our jobs page .
As we build our team, tech and tools, our design and creative vision for Hytale continues to mature. Our adventure, social and personalization features are coming online, informed by research and data from our insights team.
At its core, Hytale is about empowering creators. While we have always drawn inspiration from our history in the modding community, it’s vital that we bring in fresh perspectives to ensure that our approach meets the needs of today’s creators. To achieve this, we’ve brought a select group of creators into the fold to provide their input on our plans for Hytale’s tools and creator ecosystem. Here’s our community manager, BuddhaCat, to explain more about this recent outreach work.
Creator Outreach
Illustration by Bob (Brickface)
Rebuilding The Hive
During Kweebec Corner's visit, we gave him a peek at some of the recent work our creative team has been doing to expand and improve Hytale’s worldbuilding. Now it’s time for you to see it, too!
This year, the evolution of Orbis has marched ahead, particularly when it comes to the creatures and characters of our adventure world. As we said in our last dev update, we've revisited every faction to make sure that they have a clear purpose, deep connections to their world, and offer engaging gameplay to players. Here's former community artist turned invaluable team member Pebble, and our Narrative Lead, Chris, to talk about the evolution of the Scaraks...
Scarak Environment Concepts by Bob (Brickface)
Scarak Environment and Lineup Concepts by Pebble
Scarak Guard: Marika Orehek / Scarak Scout: Pebble
What Comes Next
We'll continue to share updates as we move through future milestones – from blog posts like this one and our series of Technical Explainers, to less formal communications like #AskHytale via BuddhaCat’s X/Twitter (and more goodies via John’s X/Twitter !). You can expect us to share our progress when it comes to all of the different bits and pieces that those goblins are so eagerly cobbling together.
After a long period of refactoring, the wheels are starting to turn in earnest and Hytale is beginning to come to life around us once again. We’ll be back with more to share at the end of the year.
In the meantime, we’ve got blonks to fill.
