MindsEye loses its free-roam mode, gains a dodge roll, and rebrands itself as 'Powered by Arcadia' whatever that means

An old man in a gas mask with CAN'T DRINK DUST written on his exposed stomach

(Image credit: Build a Rocket Boy / ResetEra poster RedbullCola)

"Open world game that doesn't need or particularly want to be an open world game" feels like a niche subgenre, but I guess it's a niche big enough to contain L.A. Noire and several Mafia games—and now MindsEye as well.

The GTA-like shooter from the studio headed by a former GTA producer had a launch you could call troubled, or considering all the layoffs that followed, maybe catastrophic is the right word. Post-launch updates have arrived, however, the latest of which is Update 5. Developer Build a Rocket Boy has added two of the most-requested features—a dodge roll and the option to shoulder-swap—though players clamoring for a melee attack will have to keep waiting for that one.

Unusually, this update also removes a feature. As the patch notes put it, "Free Roam is taking a short break but will return soon." The free-roam mode wasn't a well-loved part of MindsEye, forcing you to play as a character players dubbed "Can't Drink Dust Guy" because he's an old man in a gas mask and inexplicable outfit with the words CAN'T DRINK DUST written across his bare stomach—the first of many baffling choices. MindsEye's free-roam mode cut you loose in an open city where you could only drive a single car, then get out of it to do missions like shooting guys in car parks for minimal reward. And basically that was it.

MindsEye - Introducing ARCADIA | 2025 - YouTube

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Finally, there's Arcadia. As the patch notes try to explain, "Play.MindsEye is now ARCADIA, and Build.MindsEye is now Build.ARCADIA on PC." Which is not a helpful explanation. In-game, it's noted that Arcadia is "Build A Rocket Boy's powerful, no code creation tool. New content will be delivered regularly from Build A Rocket Boy and also from our talented crew of player creators." So I guess Arcadia is a rebranding of Everywhere, the neverending user-generated sandbox the studio originally promised before pivoting to make MindsEye its focus.

Maybe it'll deliver on that particularly high-concept idea, and I hope when it does it brings Can't Drink Dust Guy back with it.

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.

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