League of Legends Project L: Fighting game champions, & everything we know
Riot GamesProject L is Riot Games’ upcoming fighting game set in the League of Legends universe. More details are coming to light after the game’s first reveal in October 2019. Here’s what we know so far, including the roster of champions.
The League of Legends universe has been ever-expanding since Riot released a can of worms during the League 10 Anniversary celebrations in October 2019.
Project L has arguably been the most secretive game of the lot. As Legends of Runeterra and Valorant launched, and Riot delved into their MMORPG and indie titles under Riot Forge, there hasn’t been much news about the fighting game.
However, Riot is working towards a big release in Project L, finally sharing more details with the world recently. Here’s what we know so far about Riot’s League of Legends-inspired fighting game.
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Riot GamesDoes Project L have a release date?
No, Project L does not currently have a release date. Riot’s Tom Cannon said the Project L team still has a long way to go, but they’re working very hard on it. Players shouldn’t expect to get their hands on Project L until 2023 at the earliest.
The developers will continue to give updates in 2022 and beyond though, with the first of two promised info drops confirming Project L will be free to play at launch.
As of August 2022, devs are “finishing up our work on core mechanics now,” Cannon said. “A lot of our team has moved on to building champions or building game features like competitive play and our social systems.”
Therefore, development appears to be on track for an initial launch at some stage in 2023.
What League of Legends champions will be in Project L?
On the character side, a few League of Legends champions were spotted in initial Project L trailers, including Ahri, Darius, Katarina, and Jinx.
What’s neat is that there are multiple different types of abilities resulting in numerous different styles. While a champion like Darius uses his axe for combat, similar to a game like Soul Calibur, Ahri could be primarily projectile-based.
As confirmed on August 1, we also know that Illaoi is on the way to fight against the previously teased roster.
Here’s a full list of League of Legends champions confirmed for Project L so far.
- Ahri
- Darius
- Ekko
- Illaoi
- Jinx
- Katarina
Project L’s original prototype, here shown in 2019, looked a lot like Street Fighter V.Project L trailers & teasers
League 10 Anniversary announcement
Project L was briefly revealed during Riot’s League of Legends 10 year anniversary stream back in October 2019. Tom Cannon, the game’s director, spoke briefly about their ambitions, with a first look at prototyped gameplay.
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Trailer begins at 33:37
RiotX Arcane Epilogue trailer
The next time we saw Project L was during the RiotX Arcane event in November 2021 — two years on. It has evolved a lot since it was first shown off, with Riot explaining some of the game’s mechanics.
Project L gameplay
Project L appears to be a 2.5D “assist-based” fighting game. The characters will be 3D models fighting on a horizontal 2D plane — close to Street Fighter V.
It will have tag-team mechanics, where you pilot a squad of two different champions, swapping them in and out to land some nasty combos.
“This is the right foundation to build a game that rewards strategic team building and on-the-fly decision making, on top of strong fighting fundamentals,” the developers said in a November 2021 update.
Riot GamesOriginal prototypes featured a standard 90-second match timer. Additionally, the game keeps track of combos indicating how many hits connect with an opponent.
Character-specific meters also indicate the possibility of EX-attacks and supers, though nothing has been shown off yet.
Riot are also using their RiotDirect netcode that has helped reduce ping for Valorant and League of Legends, with some rollback elements.
We will update this piece with more Project L news as it comes to light.