Four years after the departure of Blizzard legend Mike Morhaime, his new company Dreamhaven finally shows what they have worked on: Wildgate is a co-op shooter in which she as a space pirate crew is on the scatter and entertained opposing ships.
Moonshot Games's debut game is reminiscent of a wild mixand, only with significantly more space scrap. We could already play it - and got sweating faster than we loved.
What is Wildgate?
Behind Wildgate is the studio Moonshot Games, founded by former Blizzard developers who worked on games such as Hearthstone, Starcraft 2 or Heroes of the Storm. Together with the publisher Dreamhaven founded by Mike Morhaime, they follow a clear vision: create games that throughStrong social dynamics and emergent gameplay
look lively - and that is exactly what you notice from the first second.
The game principle is most likely to be described as a co-op extraction shooter in space: In a team of four prospectors - the playable characters are called - you get into a small spaceship and explores the Typhon Reach, a dangerous, procedurally generated zone full of treasures, wrecks and rival crews. Your goal is that the legendaryArtifact
Find, secure it and bring it alive to the extraction point. Alternatively, you can also eliminate all other teams and force the victory.
Each round is a race against other players:You dock at abandoned room stations, fight against enemy NPCs, loosen upgrades, expanding your ship to win the upper hand in the fight against other crews. You never stay in the ship - many of the activities take place on foot, because you can leave the ship at any time via jetpack and enter hooks.
How the gameplay Loop works, the developers also explain to you again in the deep dive:
What sounds like a clear target structure on paper turns out to be a wonderfully unpredictable mix of tactics and improvisation in the game. Because as soon as another team has also found the artifact or ventures near you, it becomes uncomfortable. And then it often says to quickly shake a plan B from the sleeve.
So a round of wild gate really plays
Our first round Wildgate starts surprisingly calm - but by no means boring. Before it even thinks of firefights or raids, it means first: secure resources. Because without ice and fuel you don't get far in the Typhon Reach. With the jetpack we leave our ship, hover through a rubble field in space and finally come across shimmering chunks that we have to dismantle with a special tool. From this, two resources can be harvested: We need ice later to repair our ship, fuel provides the boost - which can become a lifesaver in battles or the escape from dangerous situations.
Back on the ship we continue to the next destination: one of the many so -called points of interest. These places-sometimes an abandoned space station, sometimes a claustrophobic cave in an asteroid-are something like mini-dungeons in the middle of space. The card is procedural, each game throws you into a new environment with a different distribution of loot spots and dangers. In the best sense, this ensures constant disorientation: you never know exactly what is lurking behind the next rubble field - or who. Fortunately, you can control small educational drones
In our case, enemy NPCs lurk in the station, which are not particularly clever, but are quite dangerous in the mass. After the battle, we open a heavily secured loot chamber and are rewarded with ship upgrades and other useful tools-such as better protective towers, alarm systems or other modules that can make the difference. Everything is integrated into your own ship directly on site, ideally where potential intruders cannot let our stuff go directly along.
Until then, our mission is almost too smooth. But Wildgate would not be an extraction shooter if it stayed that way for a long time. Already when leaving the station we notice another ship - the first real enemy contact.
A fight burns. While two team members sit on the on -board cannons and step into a violent battle of space with the enemy ship, we go to the counterattack in pairs: we board the enemy ship by jetpack, we fight through the crew and at the push of a button we overheat the reactor. It would almost have been enough to destroy the ship. But at the last moment the survivors escape and disappear in the rubble field.
We use the rest phase to repair our own ship and collect further resources. But then a system warning sounds: Another crew has found the artifact - the object that is all about - and is on the way to the diving gate, the title -giving wild gate. When you achieve it, the game ends and we have lost.
So we start the persecution. We locate the target ship, attack - and then it happens: The ship that we had almost destroyed previously reappears. Instead of alleviating with us to save the game, they apparently decide to take revenge on us. The tactically wiser step would have been to switch off the artefact team together. But they choose the principle - and thus enable the opponent to win.
As frustrating as that sounds: exactly such unpredictable twists made by real players make the appeal of Wildgate. It is not always fair, not always calculable - but all the more exciting.
What we like - and what doesn't quite ignite yet
After a few rounds it becomes clear: Wildgate is not a typical co-op shooter. It does not live from perfectly rehearsed processes, but from the moments in between - when a plan goes wrong, someone spontaneously improvised or the whole team suddenly has to rethink. Thisemergency
Situations, as the developers call it, are the greatest strength of the game. Each game tells its own story, and something rarely runs as planned - in the best sense.
Nobody is forced to take on a certain task, but there is automatically a certain division of labor. Sometimes you fly the ship, sometimes she defends you in front of intruders, sometimes you hover through space with a pulled weapon on the way to the enemy lock. The fact that all of this merges seamlessly ensures a pleasant flow.
The scenario is also particularly strong. The combination of a procedurally generated map, self-inserted play styles, PVE-MOB fights and the constant PvP risk makes every round exciting. The environment not only looks good, but also invites you to explore and try out in a playful way - including optional destinations such as resource dismantling or the detection of less often loot rooms.
However, there are also points at which Wildgate should still be upset. This is most noticeable with the weapons of the prospectors. The firearms currently look a bit weak - the hit feedback, which is extremely important in a shooter, is missing. The development team assures that weapons that can be activated later have more punch, but ideally the basic arsenal should convince. Because especially in the early hours of play, the gunplay often decides whether the spark jumps.
The balancing between the game styles - such as pure loot vs. aggressive fighting - is still difficult to assess at the present time. Some teams act cleverly and defensively, others plunge into every battle. It is not yet possible to assess whether all tactics are equivalent in the long term.
Soon you can start yourself into space
You don't have to wait too long to get yourself a picture of Wildgate. The first community preview takes place from10. to April 14, 2025instead of. If you want to play along, you can on the official websiteplaywildgate.comregister.
The full release is planned for 2025 on Steam, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X | s. According to the developers, Wildgate should not be a free2play title, but a precise price has not yet been determined. All playfully important gameplay content such as new weapons, equipment and prospectors can be activated in the game by earning experience.
