New Project Loki Game Looks Like a Mix of Apex Legends and League of Legends
Theorycraft Games formally announced its debut game by showing off more of "Project Loki" this week, a hero-based, squad-based game that looks to have a dash of battle royale in it, too. The new gameplay shown off in the accompanying announcement trailer shows off some of those genre influences parts of games like Apex Legends and League of Legends instantly apparent from a first watch. For those who want to see more on Project Loki, you'll (hopefully) have your chance soon if selected to be part of a playtest taking place this week with signups now open for that test.
Project Loki (sometimes just called "Loki") has been talked about via Theorycraft's socials for over a year now with playtests going on just as long, but considering how the studio's Twitter account has just around 10,000 followers and gameplay from the game has basically been nonexistent while things were kept under wraps, this is likely the first time many are hearing about Project Loki. Content creators and other playtesters have described it as "League meets Apex meets Smash," according to Theorycraft, and it looks like the developer is cool with sticking by that description. It's easy to see why after seeing the gameplay below, too.
"In a session of Loki, you'll assemble your squad from our roster of heroes," said Joe "New001" Tung, the CEO of Theorycraft. "You'll put together totally unique builds with exotic powers and equipment. You'll outplay other teams in sprawling, free-flowing battles. You'll run the edge of a huge world in the sky and dream up crazy strategies in our combat sandbox."
If Tung looks and sounds familiar here, that's probably because you've seen him in older League of Legends videos from Riot Games' "Riot Pls" series and other announcements. Tung worked as the executive vice president of League at Riot, and he's not the only AAA dev who's working on this game. Periodic dev announcements have been shared on socials as people joined the team, and Theorycraft says it has devs from League, Valorant, the Halo series, Apex, and more on board with Project Loki. We've seen other games like Omega Strikers that were made with similar developer backgrounds perform well soon after release, so perhaps Project Loki will see a similar success by pulling from these established communities.
@RenaudGaland is a lead artist at Theorycraft, formerly the Lead Character Artist on @PlayOverwatch and Overwatch 2 (and was a founding member of the team). Prior to that he was a freelance 3D character & environment artist across a number of titles. pic.twitter.com/rXgFMwwRRB
— Theorycraft Games (@theorycraft_inc) November 7, 2022
Competitive players invited to join the test and other content creators have shared their cryptic, hype-y thoughts here and there, but this announcement today feels like Theorycraft's big push to get the game in front of more people. More on Project Loki can be seen via the game's site, and if you want to play it, you can sign up here to be considered for the playtest that'll run from June 29th to June 30th.