League of Legends’ preseason period includes new features like the “Jungle Companions” that look to overhaul the jungle once more, and this week, we gained some new insights into those creatures and how they’ll affect players’ experiences. League designers Ezra “Riot Phlox” Lynn and Tim “Riot Truexy” Jiang talked about the new jungle pets in a video shared on Friday while showing off what these pets will look like in-game when they’re following junglers around.
Throughout League’s various seasons, the jungle has been the most tumultuous and changed of all the roles and has also been the densest one for newcomers. Through these new pets, Riot hopes to not only offer something new for long-time junglers but also wants the companions to provide a clearer indicator of what should be done.
“Jungle pets are basically our new replacement for jungle items. You see your pet, you want to feed it, you want it to grow up, and you’re going to get powerful,” said Riot Truexy. “And as you do that, you can tell how you’re doing, right? ‘Killing camps’ This is something good that I want to do. ‘Killing dragons, going to lanes and ganking–this is all stuff I want to do.’ And we see all the rewards of that going into your pet. It’s helping you get more powerful. It’s helping you clear. This is what you’re supposed to do. This is what makes me feel special.”
Riot Phlox continued by saying these jungle pets act as “a narrative for how the jungle functions.”
The League designers also talked specifically about some of the three different pets as well in terms of their designs. They’re distinctly different both in design, species, and function, but it appears that Riot doesn’t have set names for the creatures yet.
Once the pets are fully detailed, they’ll spend quite a bit of time on the PBE servers before they’re ready to go live. They’ll likely be iterated on many more times afterwards, but we can expect them to be tested and changed all throughout the preseason period at a minimum.
