VOXEL POPULI

How the heirs to Minecraft’s throne are building Hytale, a next-generation blockgame that gives the power to the people

- JEN SIMPKINS

What happens when the announcement trailer for your indie game gets 54 million views – and counting? Well, first, your website has a minor meltdown. “There was a moment when the countdown hit zero, and the website script didn’t just quite perfectly fire,” project lead Aaron ‘Noxy’ Donaghey recalls. Everyone on the Hytale team spread all across the world and gathered on Teamspeak for the occasion, held their breath for a good few seconds. Then the network team sprang into action to fix the issue. “And there was an inhalation – we watched the trailer once, and nothing was happening for like, the first two minutes.” But, as people started to finish the video, comment after comment after a comment appeared underneath it. The reaction videos started rolling in ten minutes later. “It was…” Donaghey exhales. “Euphoric is an understatement.”

His fear was that Hytale – a game with more than a passing resemblance to Minecraft, created by many people with a background in running a successful Minecraft server – would be dismissed as yet another title destined for the evergrowing block game graveyard. But the trailer – which showed off features such as a realistically lit and the animated world, adventure and minigame modes, extensive modding, and in-game animation tool and even live scripting – immediately struck a chord. “We had an internal poll on how many views,” Donaghey says. “In my head, you know, anything below 250,000, I’m disappointed. 500,000, I’m happy, and a million, I’m like,