Mindseye studio head reportedly aims to 'relaunch' its underwhelming debut game

This year has already been awash with sensational, new must-play games. Expedition 33, Blue Prince, and Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 are just a few stellar examples to illustrate how good 2025 has been, on the whole. However, on the other end of the spectrum, Build A Rocket Boy's action adventure game Mindseye is probably this year's most disastrous launch so far. Despite looming layoffs, BARB's studio head and former GTA lead Leslie Benzies has reportedly told staff that he hopes to relaunch Mindseye so it can experience a proper 'redemption arc.'

In the here and now, a game as poorly received (and reviewed) as Mindseye feels somewhat irredeemable. But we've seen fortunes change over the years for the likes of No Man's Sky and Cyberpunk 2077, which launched in dreadful states but are now highly regarded - the latter even earned itself a place on our best PC games list. So a redemption arc is never out of the question, no matter how rough a launch a game experiences. That's apparently what Benzies is aiming to achieve.

According to IGN's sources, the former Grand Theft Auto producer appeared on a brief video call on Thursday, July 2 and 'insisted BARB would bounce back and relaunch Mindseye.' However, IGN also reports that the entire studio has been issued at-risk notices, meaning huge swathes of staff could be laid off in the coming weeks. Depending on the final severity of the cuts, I wonder if there'll even be enough resources available to fix Mindseye and deliver the post-launch content and support that was set out for it.

I also assume that Everywhere, BARB's Roblox-rivaling UGC platform and initial north star project, is still in its plans, even if it's clearly taken a back seat to get Mindseye out of the door first. The likes of Cyberpunk required huge amounts of effort and time to patch up and improve, and I just don't see either of those things being readily available to BARB if there's a big round of redundancies.

IGN also claims that on the same video call, Benzies cited 'internal and external saboteurs' as one of the reasons why the game has struggled since launching last month.

It's not impossible for Build A Rocket Boy to turn things around - I might be sitting here in a couple of years' time talking about how its Steam user rating has gone from its current 37%, 'mostly negative' score to 'mostly positive.' Am I confident that will happen? Not massively. But I'm eager to be proven wrong, and I hope that BARB can bounce back to some degree - if that's not with Mindseye, then it could one day hopefully be with Everywhere.

While I can't recommend playing Mindseye right now, I'll point you towards our picks for the best sandbox games and best single-player games instead.

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