Did everyone know that there was a League of Legends fighting game in the works at Riot Games? It’s been over two years since the game known as Project L was revealed and there hasn’t been much on it since – but now Riot has finally shown off the project’s first gameplay, although it still sounds a long way off.
As part of the final stage of the celebration of Netflix series Arcane, which concluded this weekend, Project L game leads Tony and Tom Cannon headed a video re-revealing the game and showing off controls, a few of the characters, and how it will play.
Project L is a one-versus-one assist fighter in the style of Marvel Vs Capcom and Dragon Ball FighterZ – where the player can call in an AI fighter to help them. The four characters shown off were Jinx, Ekko, Darius, and Ahri, and all were based on their designs in the Arcane animated series. The developers say their “goal is to deliver on the iconic moves that League champions are known for but adapted to work in a fighting game” and showed off Ekko’s move set to illustrate, complete with time manipulation.
Regarding controls and difficulty, the devs say that they’re “embracing the ‘easy to learn, hard to master’ mentality” so the controls will be straightforward but have a “steadily increasing difficulty curve” – so a more experienced player can still “showcase your high-end mastery”.
Riot is also proud of its netcode system for Project L. While it has rollback, the developer has created “a new networking model that enhances the benefits of rollback with core technology developed by other games at Riot”, with the aim of making sure that matches aren’t affected even if one player has a bad connection.
The bad news is that, while the team is “happy with how core combat is shaping up” it admits that “there’s still a ton of work to do” and they will take its time to make sure they “get this right” – so, along with the lack of an official title, Project L is likely still a long way off. Who knows, it may even release alongside the recently confirmed Arcane Season 2.