The teamfight meets the fighting game
As the year is nearing its end, Riot Games is spotlighting one of its League spin-offs. Project L, the League of Legends fighting game in development at Riot Games, got a new gameplay deep-dive today, showing off its tag system and battles in even more detail.
First revealed in 2019, the still-codenamed Project L looks to take the brawls of Runeterra and bring them into the 2D fighting arena. Today, executive producer Tom Cannon and game director Shaun Rivera talked a little bit about the actual systems at work in Project L.
While the project started out as a one-on-one fighter, according to Rivera, the team swapped to a tag system about two years ago. Fights in Project L are two-on-two, much like BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle or the first Marvel Vs. Capcom game.
Alongside getting a new look at Illaoi, who’s now playable in Riot’s internal playtests and looks fearsome, the Project L team runs down the basics of their tag system. If you’re already a fighting game player, you might be familiar with some of the ideas. Namely, that you always have a point character, the one playable on-screen, and an assist character, who can be called in for help or a tag-out. Here are the basic terms, which Rivera says are placeholder and could change.
Project L tag system actions
- Assist actions are the most common use-case. You call in your back-up character to execute a special assist attack. Rivera says each champion has two they can perform, and the input can be held for a charge assist.
- Next, the handshake tag lets players swap their characters. Using this tag, you can hand control over to the incoming assist character. As shown in the gameplay breakdown, this can lead to some tricky offensive options.
- Lastly, the dynamic save lets the assist character get the point out of a bad spot. It’s an explosive intro to try and push back the enemy, much like the Burst in Guilty Gear Strive. If it’s too predictable, though, it can be countered.
It’s a pretty good look at what’s in store for fighting game fans with Riot’s entrance into the genre. No launch window has been set, but this update still has excited for what’s to come in the future.
