Riot Dishes On "Project L," A Dual-Champion Fighting Game Set In League Of Legends' Runeterra

It's been two years since Project L, Riot's fighting game based in the world of Runeterra, was announced, during Riot's big 10th Anniversary reveal-o-rama. Several other projects announced at that time -- Legends of Runeterra, Valorant, and animated series Arcane -- have since come into full bloom, but we've heard next to nothing about Project L.

That changed over the weekend, with a video presentation from Executive Producer Tom Cannon and Technical Lead Tony Cannon, along with an accompanying article. In Project L, you'll take a team of two champions into each battle, although the size and exact composition of the roster has not yet been set. Controls fill follow the "easy to learn, hard to master" mentality, with a "steadily increasing difficulty curve" for people willing to invest the time to become proficient with a character.

Highlighted was Ekko, described as a "punk genius," who can manipulate time to "rewind his own mistakes and stay one step ahead of his opponent." His Chronoslash leaves an "echo" of himself behind, which he can warp to to either escape or use as a platform to launch another attack, while his Timewinder grenade can slow down an opponent that it hits.

Riot is also "investing big" in Project L's netcode, which is a vital component to have in an online fighting game where milliseconds can make the difference between extending a combo and getting countered. There's a lot of technical talk by Tony Cannon to describe exactly how that will happen, but the ultimate goal is to "deliver the same, highly responsive gameplay that you'd get playing offline."

And when will you get to play Project L? Not for a while. Core gameplay is just about locked in, but there's still a long ways to go before it can be called a finished project, or even one in open beta. Riot promises at least two more updates in 2022, but the game won't ship until at least one year after that.

You can read the complete dev diary on Riot's website, or check out the video blog below.