With Riot’s immense success with Project A, which ended up being a tactical FPS game named Valorant, Riot has continued to dip their toes into new genres of games with their latest unreleased game (currently) titled “Project L”. While we still don’t know much about this game and haven’t seen much of its gameplay in action, there are certain things we already know about this new title from Riot Games.
Project L – What is it?
Project L is a new fighting game from Riot which will feature characters from the beloved League of Legends game. The fighting games genre is still relatively niche, so it makes sense that Riot would use characters from their insanely popular IP to make Project L more appealing to the masses.
Unfortunately, Project L still hasn’t finished development. It hasn’t even been given a name yet.
However, there has been some bits and pieces of information released about Project L by Riot and other sources, so we’ll be going over everything we know right now about Project L in this article.
What kind of gameplay will Project L have?
When it comes to the gameplay of Project L, what we know is that it’ll be very similar to the gameplay of a canceled fighting game called ‘Rising Thunder’. Rising Thunder was being developed by Radiant Entertainment before it was acquired by Riot Games.
Tom Cannon, the person working Project L, was also handling Rising Thunder, so we can use the gameplay of that game to have an idea of what Project L could be like.
Rising Thunder’s selling point was that it was really approachable, meaning anyone could pick up the game and quickly get a hold of the mechanics.
In other fighting games, there’s a steep learning curve and it takes a while for players to get good at the game. This is why Rising Thunder stood out as it was more attractive to players who didn’t want to learn quirky mechanics and long, confusing combos.
From the little bits and pieces of gameplay footage we’ve seen of Project L, it seems like the fights will have a 90-second timer and characters may have their own special attacks due to the character-specific meters shown in the gameplay footage.
Some really good news about Project L is that it will reportedly implement GGPO (Good Game Peace Out). GGPO is a middleware (created by Tom Cannon himself) which helps create an almost lag-less online experience in fighting games.
With this middleware, players will be able to have intense, fast-paced, real-time fights in the game without having to worry about any lag or input-delay. This is amazing news for a fighting game like Project L.
What League of Legends characters will be in Project L?
As of right now, only four characters from League of Legends have been confirmed for Project L, as shown in the aforementioned video. These are Ahri, Darius Katarina and Jinx.
There are 150 champions in League of Legends for players to choose from, so you’ll definitely see way more LoL characters in Project L’s roster when it gets released. Fighting games benefit from having large character rosters, so LoL’s massive roster works in favor for Project L.
Currently, that’s all we know about the roster of Project L. All we can do now is sit tight and patiently wait until Riot Games releases some more information about the game.
What is Project L’s release date?
The first look at Project L was shown way back in October of 2019 in this video by the official League of Legends YouTube account. In this 10-year anniversary video, the developer states that they’ve “been working on this for a little while”, and this was a year and a half ago.
This means that Project L is probably relatively far into its development. That said, there seems to still be a long way to go for Project L as Tom Cannon, the person overseeing the development of Project L, tweeted out some unfortunate news about the game’s release date.
He said, “Glad you’re hype for Project L. The game is on track with many core systems in place, but we still have a ways to go. Pls do not expect a beta (public or private) any time soon, and def. not this year.”
On the flipside though, Tom Cannon also tweeted that they’re planning on a dev update for around the end of 2021, confirming that we’ll get to have more information about the game and maybe even some new gameplay footage from the developers.
Some more good news about Project L is that according to Dot Esports, an “in-person” playtest for the game has reportedly been confirmed for April 23 to 25. If that goes to plan, maybe we’ll see some more footage from the game.
There have been rumors going around that Project L was intended to be released in early 21. However, the game’s development and release got delayed due to the pandemic.
For the time being, it seems like Riot Games is also busy in other things including a potential mobile port for Valorant. League of Legends Wild Rift is already in development for iOS and Android so these projects too might add to the delay of “Project L”.
What platforms will Project L be released on?
According to some rumors, Riot plan on releasing Project L on all platforms; including PS5, Xbox Series X and PC.
Just like Valorant, it seems like Project L won’t be that demanding of a game, so you’ll be able to run it on lower-end hardware as well. This was the idea with Valorant and it worked out really well, as it gave players with all kinds of setups a chance to play the game; instead of just the players with high-end hardware.
Since Project L is a fighting game, it’s safe to assume that Riot may make a mobile port for it too, since they’re doing the same thing for Valorant.