Everything you need to know about Project L

Project L is the one game that everyone is waiting for with bated breath. This title is a fighting game set in the world of League of Legends. As the game slowly gets closer to being released, it is getting attention from both people who like fighting games and people who have been playing League for a long time.

With Evo 2023 done, here, we gathered a lot of new announcements. The actual reveal of Yasuo happened just a few hours before the show started.

If you want to stay up to date on this project, this piece will tell you everything we know about it right now. This piece will be changed as new information comes out, so make sure to check back every so often if you’re not sure what’s been said.

When is the Project L release date?

As of right now, there is no clear word on when Project L will be out. That said, when they showed off their 2021 games in November 2021 as part of the big Arcane event, they said that the game wasn’t done yet and probably wouldn’t be out in 2022.

As of the last big update, which was a talk at Evo Japan 2023 that took place behind closed doors, the game is still a long way from being in a closed beta. So we’re going to have to kill some time.

How does Project L work as a fighting game?

Project L is a 2D fighter where each player controls two League of Legends characters in 2v2 battles. It’s a three-button fighter, so there will be buttons for light, medium, and heavy attacks. Instead of the usual fighting game inputs, special moves will be controlled by simple direction orders. For example, to throw a flame, you would just press forward + attack instead of making a quarter circle. If you have played the Smash Brothers games, it will be like the smash strikes in those games. To win, both of a team’s heroes must be knocked out.

The game has a feature called “Duo Play,” which lets two players each take charge of one character on the same team. You can also use the fuse system to change how you interact with your help character, give them more attacks, make their super moves better, etc.

There are many ways to defend in the game, and many of them haven’t been shown off yet. One of them is a retreating guard, which seems to let you stop a backdash into a guard. Also, as a tag fighter, there are a lot of tag features that were shown off in the Project L January 2023 dev diary.

In terms of close similarities, the game looks like it has a fast pace and a flexible tag system like Marvel vs. Capcom or Dragon Ball FighterZ.

Also, Project L is free to play! In the August 2022 dev diary, it was said that the game would be free to play, just like all other Riot Games goods.

What platforms will Project L release on?

We don’t yet know what devices Project L will be available on. But it’s safe to think that it will be on PC, since almost all Riot Games games are for that platform. There is no news yet about console versions.

Who are the Champions available in Project L?

In campaigns for Project L, the following champions have been seen. But as of Evo 2023, only Ahri, Darius, Ekko, and Yasuo have been shown to be usable in demos:

• Katarina
• Darius
• Ahri
• Ekko
• Jinx
• Illaoi
• Yasuo

As for new champions, we don’t know who they will be or how many will be on the final list. But each character does have a choice of colors, so you can change the way they look in the character pick.

Who is making Project L?

Project L was made by some really interesting people, in addition to Riot Games, the company behind the game. So far, Tom and Tony Cannon, who have both been in the fighting game community for a long time, have been the leaders of the Project. Tom started Evo, which is the biggest fighting game event in the world. His brother Tony made GGPO, which was one of the first arcade net code programs. That’s cool!

Seth Killian, who is also a well-known name in the Western fighting game world, helped make Project L in its early stages. But he left quietly in 2019 to work at Epic Games. No one has said officially why he left.

Also, someone named Shaun “Unconkable” Rivera is on the team. A very old-school American FGC player who competed in Tekken with big names like ChetChetty and, of course, the UK’s own Ryan Hart when he was at his best. He has worked at Riot Games for more than a decade and is now the Project L Associate Game Director and Gameplay Design Lead.

At Riot’s office in San Francisco, these few top developers and a team of other R&D developers are working on Project L.

How will Project L esports work?

Even though the esports bubble is bursting all around us, Riot Games seems to be moving away from the full franchise structure of League of Legends and Valorant, and the Cannons have promised to keep grassroots fighting game tournaments a big part of the ecosystem.

This means that pro Project L players shouldn’t have to give up other games and that Project L should be able to be played at events with other fighting games. In a way, it’s like how Riot Games ran the professional League of Legends game before they stepped in and took over in the 2000s.

Even so, nothing has been decided for sure yet. Things change over time, and there are no written contracts. There haven’t been any interviews or public blog posts or developer diaries about this topic. Stay tuned to find out more.

How long has it taken to make Project L?

Technically, the company may have started working on Project L as early as 2016, when it bought Radiant Entertainment. Tom and Tony Cannon, along with Seth Killian, worked for that company as they made Rising Thunder. Even though a community version of this game is still usable, it was canceled to make room for Project L.

When is the next beta test for Project L?

As of right now, there is no news about a Project L test coming up. There have been playtests for people who were invited, but nothing like a public beta or even a secret beta is coming soon.