It’s been a long time since I’ve last heard about Hytale, so imagine my surprise when I learned that it was coming out in early access today. It’s a sandbox game heavily inspired by Minecraft, and if you know anything about its development history, you’d be well aware of that by now.
As someone who only checked in on this game on occasions over the years, getting my hands on this early access version has been the majority of my exposure to it. Despite the warnings that it’d be an early build that’s still missing a lot of the “Adventure” content, I figured I’d check it out!
Raw Sandbox Experience
I’ve been playing the early access version the minute it became available, so bear with me if you’re reading this much later with more knowledge. Ain’t no wiki to learn from this early!
From what I’ve seen so far, the game has a fairly strong foundation as a sandbox game with very light survival elements. Anyone who’s played Minecraft will feel right at home here, but there’s also so much good QoL that’s built right into the vanilla experience.
Don’t get me wrong, the game is 100% trying to forge its own identity in the genre, and they’re doing a pretty good job of it so far. I’ve found it to be incredibly enjoyable, especially with all of the thoughtful mechanics sprinkled all over the game. Here are a few handy features that I noticed right off the cuff:
- Chopping trees from the base brings down the whole tree.
- You can jump high and climb up to four blocks high without assistance.
- Extremely convenient map that makes it easy to find nearby points of interest.
- Procedurally-generated mines scattered around the starting biomes.
- You can access crafting stations from several blocks away.
- Crafting stations use resources from nearby chests!
Thankfully, there’s no hunger to worry about. If you’ve read my content before, particularly my early review of RuneScape: Dragonwilds, then you know that I’m not a fan of being forced to eat and drink in sandbox games.
They might add hunger mechanics later on, but the world is filled to the brim with food that you can forage, and a large stack of meat takes no time at all to cook. There are even friendly traders that sell you farming supplies!
Punchy Combat & Diverse Enemies
Hytale places heavy emphasis on combat, and boy does it feel great. Hits with any weapon feel and sound impactful, and there’s something for almost every playstyle.
If you value mobility like I do, you’ll love using this game’s daggers. They let you charge up a jumping attack that, when it lands, bounces you back and gives you an opportunity to replenish stamina before reengaging. It’s amazing for kiting melee enemies or moving quickly around the map. Heck, there’s already bunny hopping tech with the damn things!
On the flip side, you’ve got maces and battleaxes that’ll work well for players who love dealing tons of damage to large clumps of enemies. I also noticed that the maces have arrows on the crosshair depending on where you’re moving, which do trigger directional attacks. No idea if that’s useful for anything, as they don’t seem to change anything but animations at the moment.
I crafted an iron hand crossbow as my first weapon in that tier, and it’s already my new favorite weapon. It burns through arrows like crazy, but it trivializes most fights as nothing can touch me.
Enemies – Memories to Discover
There’s a wide range of creatures and NPCs to encounter across the different biomes. If you can get past the golem, entering the Forgotten Temple will lead you to a statue called the “Heart of Orbis” where you can record memories to unlock various rewards.
Memories are collectibles that you automatically collect as you run near “undiscovered” NPCs, and this only starts happening after you interact with this mysterious statue. Based on the total number you can collect (240), there’s a metric ton of variety in both enemies and docile creatures out in the wilds.
In the couple of hours I’ve played, I’ve already fought giant spiders, wolves, bears, orc-like creatures, and at least four different varieties of skeletons (archers, mages, and different flavors of melee). In the caves, you’ll even meet some giant rats and all manners of creepy crawlies.
Night Terrors
As you’d expect, night time is when all sorts of terrifying enemies start to spawn. If you peek out of your base, you might see a lot of green eyes in the distance. These things spawn everywhere, as long as it’s dark, and I’m not ashamed to admit that I’ve been jumpscared by these things when I first learned of their existence.
Just imagine turning around and suddenly realizing that three fast-moving undead crawlers are chasing you. There are even some strange floating eyes that straight up look like beholders. Thankfully, they’re MUCH flimsier than the spectators you could fight in Baldur’s Gate 3. Their existence definitely caught me off guard though.
Aside from these void enemies, you’ll find your standard skeletons walking around with torches. These nocturnal versions seem more aggressive than normal, but I can’t tell for sure just yet.
Optimistic Future
I’ll be following the game’s development a little more now, and I’m looking forward to whatever Hypixel Studios is cooking in the background. For starters, I’d love to see how the adventure mode actually works, as the game is largely aimless at the moment.
I do love some completely self-motivated sandbox gameplay, but some quests and/or challenges to complete wouldn’t hurt, even if they add them bit by bit. Humorously, there’s a ton of “WIP” signs blocking some obvious avenues for future content. The Forgotten Temple is full of them, and I found another one in the open world. I’m assuming this is supposed to be a dungeon:
Anyways, I’m gonna be spending a lot more time messing around with the game and its current systems. I already find it extremely enjoyable in its current state, mostly because it’s a nice breath of fresh air from the likes of Minecraft and Palia, which I still play every now and then.
I did forget to talk about the game’s performance, but that’s because I had no hiccups in my several hours of playtime. In fact, I still have it open as I write this, and it’s still fine. I’m running it on a modest 5700x + RTX 3070 PC (playing on 2K resolution) with 32GB RAM, and it’s been buttery smooth all throughout.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have an early Scarlet Hollow review to work on. I’ll be revisiting this game once more major content updates are released, or maybe even when it fully releases. We’ll see!
Hytale Guides:
- Beginner’s Guide – Top 5 Tips to Thrive & Survive
- How to Get Thorium
- Hot to Get Cobalt
- How to Find Adamantite Ore