Wildgate has officially arrived this morning, bringing a bright and cozy sci-fi vibe into the co-op extraction RPG shooter space thanks to studio Moonshot Games and publisher Dreamhaven (yes, Mike Morhaime’s Dreamhaven).

“In Wildgate, players (called ‘prospectors’) team up in small crews to venture into a hostile, unpredictable, and mysterious region of space in search of an ancient relic known as the Artifact,” the pitch says. “While in pursuit of the Artifact, players work together to pilot their spacecraft, plunder wreckage, and discover forgotten loot. To win, crews must successfully reach the exit point with the Artifact or go for a domination victory by destroying all rival ships by whatever means necessary.”

The game is about 30 bucks on Steam, Xbox X|S, and PS5, and it’s promising to be a large affair; “hundreds of thousands of players from around the world” apparently participated in last month’s playtest. We also participated in the playtesting a few months ago; MOP’s Andy found it enticing and fun but in need of targeted systems to incentivize strategy and exploration – and maybe tamp down on the weird player behavior. (He’ll be going back for a relook, so stay tuned for that.)

“Around 6 years ago we had nothing,” game director Dustin Browder, whose name you know because he’s a former top Blizzard dev, mused on Twitter last night. “No ideas, no team, no office. We sat around a dining room table with our laptops, convincing ourselves that we could do it. When you look at making a video game and you have nothing, it looks impossible. Why even start? Yet here we are.”

And from here it will continue: Earlier this month, the devs released a post-launch roadmap, promising biweekly updates, mid-season patches, and seasonal content drops, including new reach anomalies, balancing, QOL, new prospectors, new ships, new adventures, and new narrative arcs. That includes the launch of season 1 and custom lobbies coming by the end of the year. Happy launch day!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDcX7Kf_gTg