The sandbox roleplaying game Hytale enters early access today (13 January 2026), marking a new chapter in a long and turbulent development journey that began with a reveal in 2018. The game centres on exploring and shaping expansive fantasy worlds, combining structured progression with the freedom for players to build, create, and define their own experiences.
The early access version is available on PC and is described by the developers as a genuine work in progress. Players are advised to expect bugs, unbalanced systems, and frequent updates, with development planned to continue over several years and no fixed timeline for a full 1.0 release.
What is Hytale?
Hytale blends open-ended sandbox creation with roleplaying game systems built around exploration and progression. Players can explore procedurally generated worlds featuring varied biomes, dungeons, ruins, caverns, and environmental landmarks, while shaping the landscape through building, crafting, and infrastructure.
Exploration is designed to be unpredictable, with random events, hidden locations, and environmental spectacle emerging naturally from world generation. Players can encounter creatures ranging from small wildlife to powerful monsters, with more dangerous enemies guarding valuable gear and rewards.
The game supports multiple playstyles, allowing players to approach the world as adventurers, settlers, or craftspeople. Players can establish homes in different biomes, grow crops, prepare food, and construct transport systems such as minecart networks to travel across large distances, either solo or co-operatively with others.
Creation and community content play a central role in Hytale’s design. From early access launch, players can run their own servers, customise them with mods and plugins, and build custom experiences. The game includes creator tools for building, modelling, and animation, enabling players to design characters, creatures, and props and import them directly into the game.
While official minigames and Adventure Mode are planned for later development, the early access version allows the community to begin creating custom servers and experiences immediately. The developers have positioned modding and player-created content as critical to the game’s long-term future, with shared-source server technology planned for release once legal requirements are met.
Hytale’s revival
Hytale’s path to early access follows the announcement on 23 June 2025 that development had ended and the developer Hypixel Studios would wind down. In response to the community’s reaction, the original founders moved to reacquire the game from Riot Games, regaining full ownership and restoring the project’s independence.
The acquisition was completed without prior access to the full state of the project and involved significant risk. Since the cancellation, more than 40 former and new team members have been hired, bringing the total to 50. The leadership has committed to personally funding Hytale for the next ten years, without external investors or publishers.
As part of the revival, the team abandoned the newer cross-platform engine that had been in development for several years and returned to the legacy engine used in the original trailer and early blog posts. According to the developers, the newer engine was significantly behind in gameplay and would have required extensive refactoring before becoming production-ready. The legacy engine, while older, is described as immediately playable and more closely aligned with the original vision for the game.
“If you don’t feel comfortable pre-ordering, please don’t,” says Hypixel founder Simon Collins-Laflamme in a press release. “This is true early access, meaning it’s still very much unfinished and will be buggy for a while, but you have my and the team’s commitment to make Hytale the game we’ve always wanted it to be. The first impression will be rough, but the path ahead matters more.”
* Visit the ‘Hytale’ website here.