Hypixel is one of the most popular and successful Minecraft modding teams ever, best known for their Minecraft minigames Bed Wars, SkyWars, and Murder Mystery. The team has set multiple world records, including for the most popular independently run game server. But Hypixel's aspirations grew beyond the limitations of Minecraft and now it's ready to show the world what it has been working on. Introducing Hytale, Hypixel's standalone sandbox RPG.

Hytale is a new game built from the ground up to expand on the ideas Hypixel experimented with in Minecraft, but couldn't achieve solely with mods. It is, like Minecraft, a "blockgame" and will feature a core adventure mode with procedurally generated servers. However, unlike Minecraft, Hytale sets aside the core survival focus in favor of an adventure RPG form. The procedural world will be filled with handcrafted adventure scenarios including mage towers, underground caverns, dungeons, and giant monsters, supported by a robust crafting and loot system full of weapons and armor.

Adventure mode isn't all Hytale has to offer, however. Alongside the adventure mode are two more core aspects of the game. First, as befits the Hypixel brand, Hytale will also include a minigames mode featuring several of the team's most famous games. And third is, of course, Hytale's robust creators' tools for customizing and modding Hytale as players see fit. These tools include basic block building, in-game scripting, a model creation feature, and a toolset for cinematic filmmaking.

The development of Hytale is particularly interesting. Its reportedly been worked on for over three years by Hypixel, but a recent change has changed development significantly. Hypixel started as just two developers working together on Minecraft maps, but has grown to a team of 40 now. That explosive growth wasn't solely off the back of Hypixel's modding successes, however. In 2016, Hypixel met with League of Legends' creators Riot Games in search of advice about developing such a large project. Those talks eventually grew into Riot directly investing in Hypixel.

Part of Hypixel's announcement today includes a major shift for the development team as Hypixel Studios is founded, a branch off of Hypixel Inc. which produced Minecraft mods and ran servers (and will continue to do so). Hypixel Studios is fully focused on the development of Hytale with the project fully funded through investments from Riot Games and an angel advisory group. In other words, Hytale is positioned to be extremely impactful come its eventual release.

Just going off the trailer, it's clear that Hypixel has made something special in Hytale. Now the team just has to live up to the newfound level of expectation, not to mention avoid escaping the shadow of ever-popular Minecraft. As monumental as that task seems, Hypixels seems all the more excited to tackle it.

Hytale has no currently planned release window, but is currently accepting registrations for a PC beta in the future.