It’s a scary time to launch a new multiplayer video game. The live service bubble has well and truly burst, with publishers collectively sinking hundreds of millions into promising online titles, only to pull the plug just months later. As we’ve seen with games like Steel Hunters, Splitgate 2, and Concord, quality isn’t the issue, yet there’s a real struggle to capture and hold the attention of transient multiplayer gamers. Wildgate doesn’t have the same pull as a Call of Duty or Fortnite, but it has enough fun ideas working in tandem to make for one of the most interesting live service hits of 2025.
There’s a lot going on in Wildgate and the tutorial doesn’t do a particularly great job of explaining what the various moving parts are, or their strategic importance. At its most basic, Wildgate can be described as a sci-fi extraction shooter where five spaceship crews (of up to four players) attempt to locate precious artefacts, surviving long enough for a warpgate to appear so they can escape with their hard-earned booty.
Players must divide their attention between chasing loot, gathering resources, and manning their ship, which is essentially a mobile base of operations. Equipped with turrets, probes, shields, and upgrade slots, those opening minutes of a match are usually spent plumbing nearby ruins and stations for gear to outfit your ship.
These map landmarks each have objectives to complete before you can access their loot, typically requiring the solving of an environmental puzzle or gunning down AI patrols. They’re basically mini-dungeons with higher difficulty zones holding Wildgate’s rarest gear that can then be ferried back to your ship, whether that’s a Sniper Cannon turret upgrade or a module that passively replenishes ammunition.
The biggest threat is other player-controlled ships with almost all of the matches we played ending in head-to-head dogfights. Getting ambushed while your shields are down can result in a swift elimination though there are other ways of bringing down enemy crews. Boarding other ships is risky, but if you catch rival players unaware you can gun them down (forcing a respawn), plant bombs, set fires, and become an all-round nuisance. Clever pilots can also outrun and outmanoeuvre other ships, potentially drawing them into hazards such as firestorms and cosmic rifts.
As you can tell, there are a lot of plates that need to be kept spinning: this isn’t your straightforward Team Deathmatch or Capture the Flag. Learning the ropes will take at least a dozen or so rounds before you turn your attention to loadout optimisation and mastering the game’s different heroes with more options becoming available as you progress via a quasi battle pass system.
As you earn experience points in Wildgate, they’ll be funneled into whatever “Adventure” you currently have active, filling its progress bar and unlocking rewards such as new characters, ships, guns, and equipment. Making your way along this track can feel like a slog at first, though it’s clearly developer Dreamhaven’s intention not to give players all of Wildgate’s tools from the get go while steering them towards completing daily objectives.
Speaking of Dreamhaven – whose employees consist of ex-Blizzard staff – there’s definitely some continuity when it comes to vibrant, comic-style visuals, some of Wildgate’s Prospectors passing for upcoming Overwatch heroes. There’s a slickness to the game’s UI too, giving crews a quick oversight of how their ship is holding up while presenting unobtrusive tooltips exactly where needed. While there isn’t a great deal of worldbuilding or storytelling happening front and centre, this actually works in the game’s favour, allowing players to grow a natural attachment to the setting and its characters through gameplay, those moments of emergent gameplay weaving its own narrative tapestry.
From our experience, that narrative rarely involves one of Wildgate’s main focuses: Artefacts. Matches will begin to repeat in terms of flow as crews clear a handful of PvE zones before hunting rival ships, preferring quick and decisive battles rather than slowly scouring the stars for a chance to loot an Artefact, then waiting for a Wildgate to finally open before escaping. Making Artefacts easier to find or opening extraction points earlier into a match may help, though it’s a delicate balancing act.
