Riot presents Project L, the League of Legends fighting video game
Riot’s Netflix debut with Arcane and two animated shows set in League of Legends, as well as the launch of new MOBAs that adapt the most popular MOBAs in the world to other genres, was followed by a trailer posted by the company for Project L, their upcoming fighting video game.
It was announced around the same time Valorant – a first-person shooter, akin to Counter-Strike – as part of Riot’s push to bring more games out, set in their fictional world of Runeterra, went dark for just over a year as the studio worked on the game. Tony and Tom Cannon are fighting game veterans who founded the EVO fighting tournament. They will be bringing League of Legends characters into a traditional tag-team fighting game.
The trailer featured Jinx, the protagonist of Arcane, and Ekko, Ahri, and Darius, all redesigned.
Tony Cannon is also the creator of GGPO middleware software. This program allows for ‘rollback’. The system will predict your next input and then roll back the game’s current state to provide smoother gameplay on both sides. This middleware program was developed in response to Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting’s 2006 release. It had a poor net code that made it difficult for local players to play.
This software was used more recently in the Guilty Gear, Melty Blood and Melty Blood games.
Riot’s goal with Project L was to create an easy-to-learn but difficult-to-master game. The controls will make it easy for everyone to use but still reward those who effort. The video doesn’t show any directional inputs such as quarter-circles. This makes it more similar to alternate control modes in games like Tatsunoko Vs. Capcom. These changed inputs to single directions and then used button presses to perform more complicated moves.
It is intended to provide players just starting with the game with something to “aspire” to and show off their skills for those who have mastered the game.
Riot has confirmed the game won’t be released until 2024. Two updates will also be in the second quarter of 2024 that will show more of the game. Netflix confirmed that Arcane would be receiving a Season 2.
