Vintage Story’s devs are trying to save some of cancelled Hytale’s soul by turning it into an adventure mode
How do you sort of resurrect a Minecrafty sandbox game that’s been blown up by a feature creeper before it could be released? Well, in the case of Hytale, it looks like one of the answers is going to be a new mode in another Minecrafty sandbox game.
Yep, amid much chatter about potential Hytale revivals since the news of its cancellation and Hypixel Studios’ impeding closure broke last month, the devs of Vintage Story are trying to make sure that at least some of the game’s spirit lives on.
“Perhaps we can put together a small sub-project within our team of developers to bring out an additional game mode for Vintage Story that can at least in part deliver on the vision of what Hytale set out to become,” wrote VS team lead Tyron in a blog post, not long after learning of Hytale’s fate.
His latest post is an update confirming that that team is pressing go on plans to at least “attempt” to make that adventure mode a reality. “The new mode would be departing significantly in aesthetics, setting and game mechanics compared to Vintage Story,” he wrote, “More focused towards fantasy and adventure/rpg-y compared to the gritty, realism-based nature of the current experience. Personally, I would love to see some Elves and Dwarves in there.
“For the time being it would ship alongside Vintage Story at no additional cost, but in the purely hypothetical scenario where it really takes off we could spin it off into a fully separate game,” Tyrion went on. “We’ll be very open about it, release early and the sub-team will be given significant agency over development direction and communication style with players. There will also be some areas where the goals of both teams will intersect and both projects will benefit, such as combat, improved enemy AI or better NPCs in general. For existing players – rest assured, the aesthetics and game mechanics of Vintage Story will remain true to its original vision.”
Tyron outlined that they’re currently going through job applications to be part of that sub-team. “We’ll be starting small (3 to 4 people) and expand once the project shows merit and gathers interest,” he explained. “A small team might be slower, but is also much more manageable, more effective and can pivot quicker. Slow growth allows us to fund this truly for the long term. And thankfully, we can re-use a lot of the Vintage Story ecosystem.”
He’s since updated the post responding to some concerns Vintage Story fans have raised, outlining that work on that game will still continue and that he doesn’t believe spending the resources this new mode will require on Vintage Story’s existing development would be a net positive for that project.
“Vintage Story might have never seen the day of light without Hytale,” he added in closing. “Now it is my turn to hand them an olive branch. It is the least that I can do. I know many of you have a significant emotional investment in Vintage Story, I am well aware of it. I will be careful to not lose sight of that.”
