Build A Rocket Boy’s long-awaited open-world action-adventure game MindsEye has officially crashed and burned upon release, earning the dubious honor of becoming 2025’s lowest-rated major game. Led by Leslie Benzies, the former producer of the Grand Theft Auto series, MindsEye was expected to deliver an innovative take on the open-world genre. Instead, it’s being panned by critics across the board with scores hovering between 30–45 out of 100.
The game’s big problem seems to be its barren open world. Players are basically pushed from one story mission to the next with virtually nothing to do in between. There are no side missions, mini-games, collectibles, or any of the activities you’d usually expect in modern open-world games. Even after finishing the main campaign, the unlocked “free roam” mode stays empty and pointless.
Core gameplay mechanics are just as underwhelming. Players only get basic shooting and taking cover, with no dodging, rolling, melee combat, or stealth moves. Vehicle gameplay is weirdly limited—you can only use certain mission-assigned cars and can’t steal or pick other vehicles. If the assigned car blows up, the mission just fails.
“It’s like they took a 2007-era linear shooter and dropped it into an empty open world,” said one well-known reviewer. The missing features like a wanted system or police taking action when you commit crimes have especially confused players who know Benzies’ work on GTA.
Technical issues just make things worse. The game is reportedly full of bugs and runs pretty rough, but reviewers point out that fixing these problems wouldn’t solve the core problem of there just not being enough to actually do.
The game’s development story provides some context for how things turned out this way. Build A Rocket Boy was started by Benzies after leaving Rockstar Games in 2016. MindsEye was first announced as part of a larger platform called “Everywhere,” which was hyped up as “GTA meets Roblox” and centered on player-created content. Development reportedly started around 2017, but the team apparently switched game engines and restarted several times.
People in the industry say the original idea for the game was significantly scaled back, possibly due to technical issues or financial constraints. Some hints of the planned user-generated content tools are still tucked away in the PC version, resembling leftover bits from the larger “Everywhere” vision.
The alien-featuring story suddenly takes a weird turn after the main story ends, forcing players to control a random new character instead of the main one. This off-beat switch just adds to the feeling that MindsEye was rushed out the door before it was finished, maybe to hit a deadline for investors or contracts.
