Hytale roadmap "isn't completely pre-planned," but features like friend lists and proximity chat are already in development as the Minecraft-inspired sandbox hits early access

Hytale has finally entered early access, and that means it's already time to start looking ahead to what's next. The developers say the Hytale roadmap hasn't yet been set in stone, as they want to get feedback from fans about what their areas of focus should be, but certain key features are already in the early stages of development.

In a new blog post accompanying today's launch, Hypixel says early updates will come "quickly and frequently" because there's "still a large backlog of obvious construction sites we need to tackle." The devs have spent months warning that Hytale will be in a rough state as early access begins, and it seems smoothing out those edges will be the first priority before larger updates enter development.

"The work on the official minigames will begin in the coming months," the devs continue, "enabling us to create new systems and features that expand gameplay and provide wider access to 3rd-party servers. As a side note, we already have prototypes of social features, such as friend lists and proximity voice chat, in development."

They add that the "roadmap isn't completely pre-planned, as we are expecting feedback within the next weeks and months from actual Hytale players, experiencing the game for the first time!" If you experience bugs while playing, the studio recommends using the in-game bug report tool.

Certainly, the studio has plenty of runway to make sure the game's early access period is successful. Yesterday, lead dev Simon Collins-Laflamme said that Hytale's 50-person dev team has been funded for the next 2 years through pre-orders alone.

Minecraft-like RPG Hytale expects "over 1 million players" at launch, Hypixel lead reflects on its "incredibly difficult" development: "No sacrifices, no Hytale."