For nearly eight years, Joe Tung was responsible for leading development on Riot’s hit MOBA, League of Legends. At the end of 2020, he left the company to cofound Theorycraft Games. Since then, the studio, which employs people who contributed to League, Valorant, Overwatch, the Halo series, Destiny and Apex Legends, has been quietly working away on its first project, a game codenamed Project Loki. Before today, only a handful of content creators and pro-gamers have had the chance to play Loki. That’s about to change, with Theorycraft announcing a two-day PC playtest that will start tomorrow, June 29th.
Theorycraft describes Project Loki as a squad-based hero battleground. Imagine a game that has MOBA-like heroes who need to nail skill shots to perform their best. Now, instead of pitting those characters against one another on a map with minion lanes and towers, you force them to fight on a large, Fortnite-inspired battleground. That’s the pitch of Project Loki, and the studio hopes it turns out to be the next game you decide to spend 10,000 hours playing with your friends. One thing Tung, whose past credits also include Halo: Reach, says is a core part of Project Loki is player creativity. Each session starts with you and your teammates choosing a group of heroes you think will win you the match, and will need to adapt your strategies on the fly.
Tung says Theorycraft Games is a “small and very independent game studio,” but it has the backing of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, which took part in the company’s series B fundraising round last year. In other words, there’s a lot of money riding on the bet that Theorycraft can create the next LoL or Apex Legends. Expect to hear more about the game in the weeks and months ahead. You can sign up to playtest Project Loki on Theorycraft’s website.