Project L has become one of Riot Game’s most anticipated titles since its announcement in 2019, and the time between updates has had fans clamoring for more. Riot returns to end the year with its second promised update for Project L, an in-depth look at the game’s core systems and their newest character Illaoi by Project L‘s Executive Producer Tom Cannon and Game Director Shaun Rivera.

Illaoi was first introduced in Project L‘s past update in August and her character has come a long way since then. As stated by Cannon, Illaoi has grown from her early concept phase to being implemented in the game’s internal playtests. The work on her character is far from over. With only 30% done, the Project L team continues to fine-tune her model, effects, sounds, and play style to become fully realized.

/dev: Gameplay Basics & Tag in Project L

To cap off the year, let’s take a closer look at Project L’s core gameplay: We believe in systems that are deep and flexible, including dynamic movement, impactful buttons, and a whole lot of tag. pic.twitter.com/dzde0Ah48a

— Riot Games (@riotgames) December 5, 2022

Rivera echoed the early statements when discussing the game’s core design. The design emphasizes fluid movement, from jumping and dashes to specialized moves, rewarding offensive skills, nuanced defenses, and tag-team systems that encourage both ease of play and mastery of the game mechanics.

Project L‘s tag systems have been a major focal point in the game’s updates ever since the team made the big switch to them in 2021. Rivera game a brief overview, highlighting three of the newly implemented tag systems: Assist Actions, Handshake Tag, and Dynamic Save. Champions have two assist actions and holding the input will give players a charged assist. Handshake tags swap characters instantaneously and can be used alongside assist actions for devastating combos. Finally, Dynamic Saves act as Project L‘s combo breaker. While dynamic saves can be explosive when used properly, overuse can leave players open for punishment.

The fan reception to Project L‘s newest update has been mostly positive, with many impressed with Lllaoi’s progression. Others have noticed similarities between Project L‘s tagging systems and other popular fighting games including Skull Girls and BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle, for better and for worse.

Project L is very much WIP and I really like the VFX direction of the game, so I’m hoping these two spells for Ahri get polished before any betas or launch pic.twitter.com/1bsUdTTEpz

— Spideraxe (@Spideraxe30) December 5, 2022

Project L is really looking like BBTAG 3.0 at this point, the similarity between the tag systems is insane.

BBTAG had the feeling of easy to play, hard to master that Project L is striving for, so makes sense.

Personally I love it, great system and it fits my strengths well 😈

— Diaphone (@Diaphone_) December 5, 2022