This gorgeous Breath of the Wild-like is being made by an Overwatch 2 dev in his spare time

Today's pre-Game Awards Wholesome Snack presentation closed with a bit of a banger: Europa, "a peaceful game of adventure, exploration, and meditation" that looks firmly in the same vein as Sable and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild⁠—a beautiful, stylized open world adventure with an emphasis on discovery and puzzle solving.

Publisher Future Friends Games writes "On the moon Europa, a lush terraformed paradise in Jupiter's shadow, an android named Zee sets out in search of answers." Future Friends says players will "run, glide, and fly across the landscape, solve mysteries in the ruins of a fallen utopia, and discover the story of the last human alive."

Europa's primary developer is Helder Pinto, an environment artist who has worked on Overwatch and Overwatch 2. Pinto looks to still be actively employed at Blizzard, at least according to his LinkedIn, and it's mind-boggling to me that someone could make something this dazzling while already having a day job making games, but Pinto's environment art expertise is apparent in Europa.

I love how the trailer begins with a shot of Jupiter looming behind lush green hills. It immediately communicates the setting, the terraformed Jovian moon, but also? I'm just always happy to see a videogame skybox get nutty with it. Dragon Age and The Elder Scrolls took the Coward's Gambit and just subbed in a jpeg of Mars for our own moon to make their "alien skies"— boring! I want to see more like the GOAT, Majora's Mask, and its killer moon gradually descending into the Earth, or the looter shooter Destiny, which has its own great Jupiter-dominated skyboxes in its depictions of Io and Europa.

There's a throughline in the architectural style of the ruins in Europa, which are reminiscent of Studio Ghibli's Castle in the Sky. Otherwise though the trailer showcases a great variety of biomes. You've got verdant fields, a deep, possibly underground canyon, snowy mountaintops, and a complex laid out like a French chateau.

One sequence shows Zee platforming amidst ruins floating in the clouds, and there are a number of flying islands throughout the trailer. I think this is an exciting idea for Europa's world⁠—some of my favorite sequences in Sable involved floating islands, and BotW's sequel, Tears of the Kingdom, looks to be leaning into this sort of design as well. 

With all our seamless open worlds these days, there's a shameful paucity of floating islands in games, and Europa looks to seriously deliver on that front. Europa is currently set to release in 2023, and you can wishlist it now on Steam. I for one can't wait to vibe in some mournful sci-fi/fantasy flying cities and maybe get my heart broken by some tastefully tragic lore.

Associate Editor

Ted has been thinking about PC games and bothering anyone who would listen with his thoughts on them ever since he booted up his sister's copy of Neverwinter Nights on the family computer. He is obsessed with all things CRPG and CRPG-adjacent, but has also covered esports, modding, and rare game collecting. When he's not playing or writing about games, you can find Ted lifting weights on his back porch.

Read more
A crew of prospectors in Wildgate, featuring a robot, a rabbit man, and a small aquatic creature in a combination mech/aquarium.
Blizzard co-founder Mike Morhaime's new company is putting Sea of Thieves-style shenanigans in space with a new crew-based shooter
Sunset in the desert in Hello Sunshine
Hello Sunshine is a desert survival sandbox where you live in the literal shadow of the colossus
Eternal Strands character in armor
Eternal Strands review
Inzoi character studio - A Zoi designed to look like Billie Eilish
18 games the PC Gamer team can't wait to play in 2025
A man in a leather jacket with a crystal dragon on his shoulder
Lost Soul Aside, a spectacle fighter where your dragon pal turns into a hoverboard, is coming out in May
New RPG Clair Obscur: Expedition 33's team of protagonists, including Gustave, Lune, and Maelle
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, the surreal debut RPG from Sandfall Interactive, is out this April and I can't wait to hang out with my inscrutable balloon comrade
Latest in Strategy
Tzarina Katarin Bokha, the Ice Queen of Kislev
Total War: Warhammer 3 rolls out a cool Kislev overhaul, changes befitting Tzeench’s magic, new projectile units and creakier skeletal horses
Civilization 7 Great Britain - Modern Civ art (via YouTube)
As Civilization 7 struggles to keep up with Civ 5 player counts, a new patch is coming tomorrow with still more UI changes and gameplay tweaks
Battle Brothers
Nearly 2 years after its last update, the excellent Battle Brothers gets 'a bucket load of fixes' and free new content
King wielding his axe against would-be assassins in Norland.
Medieval colony sim Norland is getting a 'damn big update' that completely overhauls the game's mechanics: 'We're rolling out some radical changes to the core gameplay'
Age of Empires 2
Former Age of Empires 2 dev claims Microsoft demanded its first expansion should have a Korean faction, because 'StarCraft sold 3 million copies in Korea'
Endless Legend 2 Kin faction reveal
It's turtle time: Endless Legend 2's first faction is the fortification-loving Kin of Sheredyn
Latest in News
A mech awakens.
Mecha Break developer is considering unlocking all mechs following open beta feedback
Lara Croft Unified Art
Tomb Raider developer Crystal Dynamics lays off 17 employees 'to better align our current business needs and the studio's future success'
A long bendy arm stealing money from people in a subway car
'You're a very long arm. You steal things. It's a comedy game,' explains developer of comedy game where you steal things with a very long arm
The heroes are attacked by monsters
Pillars of Eternity is getting turn-based combat to mark its 10th anniversary, and that means PC Gamer editors will soon be arguing about combat mechanics again
Image of Ronaldo from Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves trailer
It doesn't really make sense that soccer star Ronaldo is now a Fatal Fury character, but if you follow the money you can see how it happened
Junah beginning a battle in Metaphor: ReFantazio.
Today's RPG fans are 'very sensitive to feeling like they wasted time' when they die, says Metaphor: ReFantazio battle planner—but Atlus still made combat hard anyway