The upcoming fantasy survival and construction sandbox game Hytale is going on hiatus once more, it’s been revealed. The Minecraft-esque adventure game, which was due to be released in 2023, is no longer planned to launch next year, due to some pretty seismic decisions made by its development team at Hypixel Studios.
In a new summer development update shared on the game’s website, it’s been revealed that Hytale‘s planned launch will need to be pushed back because the team have now decided to rebuild the game entirely. The new update explains that the team are planning to “redevelop Hytale’s engine—both the client and the server—in C++” which is a marked shift from working in Java and C# as has been the case up to now.
The rationale behind such a big undertaking centres upon the game’s potential future longevity and ease of release across multiple platforms. The developers explain that they want to avoid a situation where “a situation where our community finds themselves split up based on the platform they play on.” This makes sense in terms of forward thinking, although news of another delay to Hytale, which has been in the works now since 2015, is sure to come as a disappointment to some. However, Hypixel Studios seems confident that this is the right decision to make.
Many developers find themselves in the opposite scenario: discovering that they need to make tech changes but being simply unable to do so. The negative consequences of these situations are almost always felt by players. We would rather take advantage of the resources at our disposal and make the right decision now, rather than put our community through painful upheavals in the future.
Hypixel Studios
Alongside the news of the game not being ready for release in 2023 came some pretty in-depth looks at the work being done on Hytale so far, and it does look pretty impressive. You can check out the summer development blog in full to have a look at some of the game’s latest screenshots, as well as another track from the game’s OST.
For now, it looks as though we’ll have to wait a bit longer to jump into the world of Hytale. We’ll be keeping an eye out for further updates from Hypixel as they continue rebuilding the game in the new engine.
