Disclaimer And Starting Opinion
The game Hytale, as of writing this review, is only a few hours old. Meaning it will not cover absolutely everything within the game, nor can it as of now.
Within their own post, they mention how many things are not fully implemented, or left out until future versions.
The game also had to go back multiple years in development and restart from there, meaning that bugs and or issues will likely exist.
But even so, starting up the game was smooth, the main menu looks great, character customization is easy with a large amount of options already existing (as can be seen in the images below)
And for those wondering about performance, starting the game off on medium graphics, on 1440p, while having a 1660 super, the game had about 60 fps, and later rose to be a relatively consistent 80
Exploration Mode
The game started me off within a cave location, having a stable spawn point that I presume will be in every world, and in theory, could even be used as an extremely basic starting housing as well, which is what I utilized it for to start the game off.
The game, like Minecraft, does not really give a tutorial and throws you into the experience to let you discover things, but it does have control prompts on the screen, so even without a tutorial, someone new to gaming can figure things out.
Resource gathering is extremely satisfying, cutting down trees in one go is possible even with just fists, and picking up items is quick when they are on the ground.
Crafting with resources is also simple, having a basic crafting menu with a few items that each tell you what they need to be crafted, allowing you to craft basic tools from the basic inventory screen.
An interesting detail with ores as a resource, is that they opted to have 3D “Gem” like placements into the stone itself, which helps in designing ores and making them look a lot better overall, compared to many other games having flat graphics placed on top of the stone, though I would like to see a little more variation on the gem placements.
What Ore Looks Like On Stone
Another thing I noticed is that hunger is not a mechanic; instead, you still eat food to recover health, and recover stamina faster.
Combat, as of now, feels alright. The weaponry players have access to feels good to use, but against simple enemies (such as skeletons, goblins, spiders), the combat so far feels generic, but decent enough. I would show images of it, but that is rather difficult; it is probably better to look for a video format to better see it.
Another thing I noticed with crafting is that crafting tables will use items in nearby chests, which is a massively helpful quality of life feature.
Chest In Middle Of Room, Accessed By Crafting Table.
Crafting Menu, Pebbles With Chest Icon
Hytale is also generous in having a map that you can access, and starting you off with a waypoint both to spawn, and to an important location, that seems to act both as a trading hub, and as a potential exploration incentive to find “memories” of different mobs and items.
The Map
Forgotten Temple (The Hub Like Area)
Overall, as a baseline, exploration mode feels great, giving you a basic starting point to work with, structures around the world to explore, a map to avoid getting too lost, and even a system to reward finding new things.
I can’t speak much on how building feels, as I did not get into depth in building, but for the limited experience, things feel alright for it.
Creative Mode
While I did not go super in depth with it, creative mode has a lot of tools; the ones below are tools specifically for building purposes, however, some exist that remind me a lot of the replay mod in Minecraft.
While I would explain if the tools do well or not, I am not a creative person, nor do I mess with them for very long. But considering how many exist, especially without mods or plugins of any sort, I can see these being wonderful tools for builders right from the beginning.
Another thing I experimented with in creative mode, was stress testing the world. You can change your movement speed up to 10x the usual speed, while having no clip, and flight, all running at the same time.
In Minecraft, fast flight can often make chunks struggle to load, and while the chunk loading is not able to 100% keep up, only while sprint flying at 10 speed, was I able to actually see any cutoff that a chunk failed to load, and even then, it was only temporary. I was also unable to fly ahead of said chunks.
Of course, this is not a perfect stress test at all, but it is amazing to see how much the game can handle while still running smoothly.
Overall
The experience of exploration as of current is decent. I did not go caving per say in this experience, but for general exploration, things to do, progress, general combat, and survival mechanics, it all feels pretty good, maybe not perfect, but good.
Creative mode definitely has a lot of tools for creators, even without further add-ons. I’m sure people will be able to make wonderful creations in a short time span when they are learned.
In terms of how stable and smooth the game performance is, it is currently in a great state, having stable frame rates, and when pushed to its limit, it doesn’t really have any frame dips, and it can keep loading chunks anyway.
A lot of promise exists, and even in its current state, I would recommend buying and trying it for yourself.
