Hytale has one huge advantage over Minecraft, even though it’s only just launched

When it comes to the Sandbox Genre, Minecraft has reigned supreme for over a decade. Players have built insane recreations, filled servers with specific themes, and created communities of modders who have reshaped the game. But Hytale could tip everything Minecraft achieved on its head.

Hytale has only been out for a few weeks in early access, but it is already leagues ahead of where Minecraft was at launch. Where Minecraft players had to create mods to add content or fix elements of gameplay, Hytale provides plenty of interesting ways to explore the base game in its earliest phases, and that makes it a dangerous competitor in the Sandbox space.

The Escapist recaps

• Hytale’s early access has included elements that still don’t exist in Minecraft.
• Hytale is already pushing boundaries for what players can achieve narratively.
• A good sense of mining and crafting progression makes gameplay more interesting.
• The framework of Hytale is designed to grow beyond new mobs and weapons.
• Minecraft is propped up by its modding community, but Hytale’s base game will be enhanced by modding.

Hytale is new, but it already offers better exploration

When first setting out in Hytale, players would expect the early access world to be fairly empty. Minecraft, especially in its early days, didn’t offer much beyond vast biomes and a limited crafting system to players. While Hytale seems very much like Minecraft, the similarities end once players jump in and start exploring.

Right from the start of the game, Hytale players are introduced to an overarching plotline as they are encouraged to locate a shrine, defeat a golem, and interact with a statue that requires memories to provide character progression. Players are then thrust into a world that is far more complex than it appears at first glance.

Enemies, Ore, and wood types don’t just appear anywhere. Instead, players will need to travel to specific biomes. Like in Minecraft, there is a progression tree for weapons, armor, and tools that is tethered to ore types, but you can’t just dig straight down and immediately get Iron or even Diamonds minutes into a game. To get rare materials like Mithil Ore in Hytale, you will have to cross vast distances, battle bosses and enemies, and reach distant locations where it will spawn.

The system of progression in Hytale is simultaneously pleasantly involved and addictive. You don’t immediately feel like you need more to keep playing, and that puts it on a different level than Minecraft Vanilla.

You don’t need mods in Hytale

There is a joke in the Minecraft community that playing Vanilla is not the way to experience Minecraft. While almost every Minecraft player has gotten their start in Vanilla, the standard open sandbox mode available with the base game, it quickly begins to lack content after a dozen hours of gameplay. Because of this, players have turned to mods, with vast mod packs gaining more popularity than anything the base content has to offer.

In short, Minecraft is propped up by the modding community. The game wouldn’t have lived as long as it has without key fan-made additions that have added vast tool systems, story elements, animals, tools, and more. While Hytale will benefit from fan-made mods, it isn’t likely that the game will need them to stay interesting.

Already, players are creating new content for the game, but many of these new additions are just extended versions of in-game mechanics – options that could end up in the game via future updates, omitting the need for mods. Hytale is interesting as a base game and has taken the lack of story and general gameplay options in Vanilla Minecraft as a framework for what could make Hytale more interesting to players. It’s a system that will allow mods to enhance Hytale, but not create a situation where the game isn’t fun without them.

Hytale is more than just mobs

One of Minecraft’s biggest struggles, especially in recent years, has been lackluster updates. From new content patches that add a single mob to repeated reworking updates for chunk spawns and biome arrangement, updates from Minecraft can feel more like early access patches than big and exciting concepts designed to revolutionize or improve an aging sandbox title.

Meanwhile, just days from its launch, Hytale decided that wicked dungeons filled with monsters, strongholds in arctic climbs, and giant elemental golems weren’t going to cut it – so they decided to fill some underground caverns with dinosaurs. 

I think that is the crux of what Hytale has that Minecraft doesn’t. The developers at Hypixel look at the game, and they don’t play it safe. They are willing to try our crazy concepts and flesh the world out with genuinely fantastical elements that are shocking, exciting, and enriching to a sandbox game. It’s wild, fun, and makes it so players never know what will be lurking when they set out on their next adventure.

The stimulating direction of development on Hytale is the advantage it has over Minecraft. If it keeps pushing boundaries, trying new things, and adding to the world that players get to explore, there is no telling how popular it will become.

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