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6 Awesome-Looking Games That Went Under The Radar At Gamescom 2025

by admin August 25, 2025

Gamescom 2025 was the biggest on record. Maybe your eyes began to glaze over from the multi-day barrage of new game announcements, trailers, and interviews. Now that the dust has begun to settle, we can finally reflect on a few of the fresh looks at cool, upcoming projects that may have gone under the radar. The following games didn’t catch the Gamescom spotlight, but they did catch my eye. Here are six neat trailers you probably missed.

Katanaut is a cosmic horror slash ’em up

Katanaut is a 2D pixel art roguelite about killing tons of abominations in a post-apocalyptic urban hellscape. You run, slash, dodge, and find lots of power-ups along the way. Will survival be rewarded with some cooler sci-fi story reveals than your average roguelike? I hope so. It comes to PC on September 10.

Wild Blue brings back classic Star Fox vibes

Wild Blue is an on-rails shooter starring anthropomorphic animals trying to save the world one blown-up enemy ship at a time. It’s being developed by Chuhai Labs, founded by Giles Goddard, one of the original programmers of Star Fox on the SNES. While we’ve gotten a few other spiritual successors like Whisker Squadron: Survivor, a new Star Fox doesn’t seem in the cards anytime soon, so the more the merrier. There’s no release date yet.

Kaidan is a samurai extraction game

Kaidan‘s trailer might be giving some people Soulslike flashbacks, but it actually seems like it might have more in common with the quick, arcade action of a 3D Ninja Gaiden. You play as a samurai in feudal Japan fighting Cthulhu-infused horrors, but the real twist is that it’s an extraction-lite. You’ll prepare for missions, select from multiple characters, and head into them solo or with an online group to fight mythical Yokai and try to come out the other side alive. It’s confirmed for a release on PC, but there’s no timeframe yet.

Project Bloomwalker is a Studio Ghibli-looking cozy sim with a twist

Project Bloomwalker is about removing blight from the world with a magical house that’s moved around by robotic legs. Once you settle down somewhere, you forage for materials, craft crystals, and try to get everything you need to restore the area to its natural splendor before moving on again. There are more than a few hints of Howl’s Moving Castle in the air, and the best part is that you get to recruit cute little creatures called Oddlings to help you with your survival crafting chores.

Lost Hellden has the PS2-era JRPG charm

Lost Hellden is an old-school Japanese RPG with shades of PS2 classics like Rogue Galaxy and Dragon Quest 8. There’s a job system, skill tree, and painterly backdrops to the areas you’re exploring. Final Fantasy veteran Hitoshi Sakimoto is helping with the music, and Gravity Rush artist Takeshi Oga is involved with the character art. Combat blends turn-based decision-making with real-time mechanics. There’s even a card-based mini-game. It’s all there on paper, though I’ve seen enough of these kinds of games fail to stick the landing to keep me cautiously optimistic.

Morsels is a Pokémon-like collectathon in the sewers

Morsels has you play as a mouse who transforms into strange creatures mutated by sewer life and has access to unique abilities. Structured as a roguelite, you can swap between the creatures you encounter on demand in order to fight your way back up to the surface and defeat the ruling regime of cats. Some are calling it a cross between The Binding of Isaac and Atomicorps. It looks really pretty and is mixing together enough different ideas to have a shot at distinguishing itself in a crowded genre. It’s set to launch on console and PC on November 18.

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August 25, 2025 0 comments

Product Reviews

‘This happened because of the best elements of our community’: Borderlands 4 won’t have a minimap, but thanks to player demand it will have an optional combat radar

by admin June 22, 2025

I think we can all agree that an always-on minimap is bad. Like the TV in a bar, you find your eyes drawn to it even when there are other things you should be looking at. You stare at a corner of your monitor while ignoring the fancy grandeur of whatever expensive open world is taking up the other seven-eighths of your screen.

But the absence of navigational aids can be just as bad. I got lost more than once in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 in areas where there was no map at all, and just had to loop around the place trying to find the one bit I was supposed to go to next. And in an FPS, you may not need to worry as much about getting lost, but you will need to worry about losing enemies when they duck behind cover.

When early footage of Borderlands 4 showed it lacking a minimap, some players were distraught. If you can hear psychos ranting but can’t tell exactly where they are, how will you figure out they’re actually on the other side of that hut in particular? Well, as Gearbox founder Randy Pitchford explained on the hatesite formerly known as Twitter, Borderlands 4 actually will have a combat radar in time for its September launch.

Explaining in detail why Borderlands 4 was initially designed without a minimap, Pitcfhord said, “Borderlands 4 is much larger than ever before, and seamless. There are main missions and side quests (lots of them) that often have objectives, sometimes multiple objectives, further than the scope of a useful mini-map. So we invest *more* into the main, big map—make it more useful, faster, better. And we invest in other features for navigation, like the compass and the EchoBot AI drone companion.”

Those other features sound pretty great. The drone can paint a path for you, like you’re casting clairvoyance in Oblivion Remastered, and the compass highlights targets as well as destinations, and indicates their height at the same time—something minimaps are often bad at. However, when Gearbox showed off Borderlands 4 on a recent world tour of preview events (Tyler Wilde attended one for us, and came away pleased with its consistency and also the cool hoverbike), some players did bring up the combat-usefulness of a minimap.

“The people who stuck with their feelings about a combat radar had a point”, Pitchford said. “WE got good at the compass for combat, but combat is all *feel*. Should we require everyone to learn the compass for enemy situational awareness?”

And so, the creative director and UI team pulled together and whipped up a combat radar—though it’ll be off by default. It wasn’t ready in time for the Borderlands Fan Fest, but it will be ready in time for the game’s release on September 12, when Borderlands 4 will be available on Steam and the Epic Game Store.

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June 22, 2025 0 comments

Game Reviews

Gearbox answers the pleas of Borderlands fans, adding a combat radar to Borderlands 4

by admin June 20, 2025

Borderlands 4 will include an optional combat radar, following intense pleas from the community.

In a lengthy social media thread by Randy Pitchford, the Gearbox CEO broke down the thought process behind the navigation and combat design in Borderlands 4, concluding the thread by revealing the team managed to add in a combat radar last week.

Pitchford wrote: “The feature will be *off* by default at launch. And, it didn’t come on-line early enough to make it into our branch for the build we’re bringing to the Borderlands Fan Fest this weekend. But it is now officially in the game!”.

Check out Eurogamer’s latest video on Borderlands 4 here!Watch on YouTube

Pitchford elaborated: “This happened because of the best elements of our community. I’m talking about the real fans who sincerely want the best for the game and gave constructive notes and made reasonable arguments. You know who you are and you rock! You made this happen!”.

The whole thread is worth reading for those interested in the game design process. It offers a lot of insight into the thought process behind the new movement and navigation mechanics, the costs of adding a combat radar to Borderlands 4, and how a recent press tour provided feedback that ultimately convinced the developers a combat radar would be a good idea.

Borderlands 4 creative director Graeme Timmins added their own thoughts on the reveal, noting: “Props to Jason Brown, Justin Dooley, and Ray Peña who went incredibly fast when I told them – ‘If we’re doing this, I want it for launch.’ This is just how committed we are here guys; we’re doing everything to make BL4 the definitive Borderlands.”

A combat radar was an ever-present feature of previous installments in the Borderlands series, and offered quick and reliable information as to where immediate dangers were at any one time. This wouldn’t be a huge deal at first, but as you proceeded to more challenging content it became vastly more important.

As such, its absence was noteworthy. In response to this news Borderlands fans celebrated on social media, with user furt1v3ly writing: “Oh heck yeah. I didn’t need the mini-map but that radar beats the compass system hands-down. And being able to turn it off for screenshots or for extra frame rate should be a bigger win. This is the best choice.”

It’s a moment of good PR for Gearbox, at a time when it’s sorely needed. Gearbox recently revealed the $70 retail price of Borderlands 4, which Pitchford was publically “stoked” about. This came after Pitchford stated on social media that “real fans” would get a copy regardless of its price.

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June 20, 2025 0 comments