Hytale co-founder says "I won't say much" as he tries to buy back the IP from Riot, and then basically gives us a full road map for the Minecraft-like game

Hytale hopefuls huffing huge heaps of hopium as Hypixel studio co-founder Simon Collins-Laflamme tweets about "the process" of buying back the Minecraft-inspired IP from Riot, which cancelled the upcoming game earlier this year.

Yesterday, he tweeted an emoji of a smiley face wearing sunglasses in reply to his old "no risk, no story," post. It sent fans into a frenzy trying to decipher what it meant, but he says that's all we're going to be getting for a while.

"I won't say much as it could potentially hurt the process! Will share details the minute I can," Collins-Laflamme replies to a fan eager for an update. "For now you get to decrypt emojis and memes." This message was, of course, concluded with a smiley face wearing sunglasses. He's also posted a picture of a cartoon fella getting injected with hope.

"This message alone just told us what we wanted to hear, let's go boys. We are so back," writes one Hytale hopeful on Reddit. "I don’t think he’s fully done it already. Buying an IP from a big ass corp can’t be this fast and easy, but I’m pretty sure he just accomplished a first big step towards it, so definitely amazing news," suggests another.

Collins-Laflamme has said he's hoping to buy just the Hytale IP from Riot, as this would be cheaper and easier than buying the full Hypixel studio back. He said, "Negotiation wouldn't last long, it's the initiation of talks that can take a while to start because everyone is busy and the agreements drafting is the real time sink."

So, Collins-Laflamme could be currently in the negotiating process or trying to get through to Riot, and is now winding down how public he's being for fear of affecting those talks.

He is still happy to share what he plans to do if he does get the IP, though. He tweets: "Survival and/or creative would be released first, just to get Hytale out ASAP. Minigames requires a bit of infrastructure hardware work so it would take a bit of time. I don't want to make people wait, gotta break the release curse. Later on Adventure (story) mode, this would have a more complete "survival" loop with more content."

Hytale has been in development for 10 years, so I understand why he's keen to get something out the door, even if it isn't the complete product people were hoping for.

In the meantime, check out some of the best games like Minecraft you can play right now.