Is Hytale worth playing? A lifelong Minecraft fan’s perspective

Allow me to tell you a story. The year is 2010, and this humble journalist is a mere 14 years old. In school one day, a friend tells me they’ve found a new game they want us to play. It takes a bit of work to get it running, and it’s only in beta, but he thinks that it might already be one of the greatest games ever made.

And so, my friend group and I set out to explore the strange, blocky biomes of Minecraft, and for sixteen years, we haven’t stopped playing.

I tell you this so that you know just how important Minecraft is to me. It was the first game I truly fell in love with and the first game to consume my every waking moment. It’s safe to say I yearned for the mines.

Like most Minecraft players, I’ve dabbled in mods and custom servers over the years, but I almost always found myself returning to vanilla Minecraft.

Mods are as essential to the Minecraft experience for die-hard players as the core gameplay loop itself. While the core game has remained faithful to its initial idea, mods and custom servers have continued to iterate on the game to provide all-new and exciting experiences.

In other words, if you like vanilla Minecraft, then you’re covered, and if you want something new or a bit more difficult, then mods or custom servers are the way to go. Every so often, that same friend who got us all into Minecraft would return with a new mod they wanted us to try, and we’d play for a while only to return to the comforting pastures of the classic game.

We’d even venture beyond Minecraft itself and try other sandbox games that promise, as many do, to be the ‘next Minecraft’. Of course, those promises are often as empty as your inventory after being taken out by a creeper.

This brings me to Hytale, a new sandbox RPG that, on paper, appears to be another such game.

Hytale, launched back in 2015 on the Hypixel Minecraft server and became a sensation. Now, over a decade later and after weathering a torturous development cycle that included cancellations, sprawling ambition and eventual acquisitions, Hytale has finally been released to the world as a stand-alone game.

As a Minecraft fan, I was keen to see how the new game stacks up against its legacy and if this is the natural evolution of the Minecraft experience we’ve been led to believe.

Most importantly, I set out on a quest to answer the question: if you’re a vanilla Minecraft fan, is it worth picking up Hytale?

Hytale’s Minecraft roots are immediately evident from the moment you boot up the world. In fact, the game’s vast, procedurally generated world looks incredibly similar to Minecraft.

Blocks, textures, day-night cycles and resources all look like those found in Minecraft. Even the mechanics are similar. Walk up to a block, punch it a bunch of times, and, after a while, a block of stone or wood will appear in your inventory. Create a ‘workbench’ to craft tools like a ‘crude pickaxe’, and you’ll be able to graduate from punching rocks to properly mining them.

There are some nice improvements over the mining experience found in Minecraft, most notably, cutting down trees is a lot easier and more satisfying. However, the core gameplay loop still echoes the game that serves as its foundation. For the first hour of gameplay, I almost forgot I wasn’t playing Minecraft.

Then something happened. I was killed by a grizzly bear in broad daylight.

I made my way from my mountain-top dwelling to fell a tree, only to be greeted by a ferocious bear who proceeded to hunt me down with fury in its eyes. The sun was still high in the sky when I met my doom, and there were no zombie groans or rattling skeletons to herald my fall. This was my first brush with danger in the world of Hytale, and it wouldn’t be my last.

This is where the other major influence on Hytale becomes apparent. Unlike in Minecraft, where you randomly spawn anywhere in the biome, in Hytale, you spawn inside a strange ancient temple before opening a door onto the beautiful and expansive fantasy world. Walk some distance from your spawn point, and a title card announces that you have arrived on the ‘Drifting Plains’.

As an opening to a game, it reminded me less of Minecraft and more of the opening to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. I was instantly reminded of awakening as Link at the start of the game before stepping out into the bright, vibrant world of Hyrule. The Zelda franchise influence runs far deeper than just the name.

After my third hour in the game, when I’d finally built armour and weapons strong enough to survive my encounters with Hytale’s many aggressive mobs, I was struck by something I haven’t felt since I first played Minecraft all those years ago. I wanted to message my friends and get them to join me on my adventure.

The beautiful marriage of fantasy-RPG elements, unique world-building through new creatures and strange ruins and the ever-reliable gameplay mechanics perfected by Minecraft make Hytale feel like a true successor to the best-selling game of all time.

And so, I return to my original question. Should fans of Minecraft pick up Hytale?

Whether you’ve played Minecraft religiously since it launched, you’re a lapsed player who hasn’t picked up the game in a while, or you’re just looking for a fun new sandbox RPG to dive into, you won’t be disappointed by Hytale. Hytale scratches that Minecraft itch in a way no game has since the original, adding new dimensions thanks to its Zelda-like experience.

With the game still in early access, I’m reminded of those scrappy, independent early years of Minecraft. Is it perfect? Of course not. But it’s the exact kind of game that captures the imagination and refuses to let go. I can only hope that somewhere out there, someone is introducing the game to their friendship group and sparking what will become a years-long obsession.

I know I will be.

Check out more of our Gaming coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.