While the main show of the Game Awards featured some big reveals and cinematic extravaganzas, it was during the pre-show that the real star appeared. An action-platform game called Bradley the Badger, with gameplay that looks to be about gaming in a four-dimensional folding layers meta sense while taking multiple jovial jabs at games like The Last Of Us, Cyberpunk 2077 and Dark Souls.
Beginning with the conceit that we’re already big, nostalgic fans of Bradley, a cheerfully colored mascot platforming character who’d be right at home in the PS2 era, Bradley the Badger‘s trailer sees the titular character enthusiastically setting out on his latest colorful, upbeat platforming adventure, only to discover his house is now inside some sort of grimdark Soulslike. Walls are made of petrified hands, some holding blue-glowing lanterns, and then a title card drops in reading “Badgerborne.” But as Bradley platforms around in this unpleasant reality, he discovers that it’s very much not finished. Art assets are marked as “WAITING FOR REVIEW,” while sticky notes appear all over demanding fixes.
This, Bradley discovers, means he can start manipulating these unfinished textures and placeholder blocks, such that he can drag and reshape his own platforms, or reprogram the properties of items. And there, there you’ve got a brilliant idea for a game.
Except it keeps adding. Once Bradley’s in a Cyberpunk 2077 reality, he’s able to transform himself into untextured items in the world, becoming a trash bin that can roll up walls, and in a The Last Of Us spoof we see him turn into both a pick-up truck and a size-changing apple. This all starts to look really incredible, with the game not demanding players learn code (thank god) but instead just manipulate toggles for various settings of each item; explosive or inert, big or small, magnetic or not. And just as you’re getting to grips with what this is all about, Bradley reaches the end of what’s been coded in the game. And wakes up. As a real person, FMV, with filthy human feet and hands, and a dirty, ill-fitting badger hat on his head. He’s in the development studios of Dreamwoods Games, the walls covered in Bradley posters and notes, and at that point I have no idea what this is.
The game’s Steam page makes things a bit clearer. This is, at heart, an action-platformer, but one where you have “game developer powers.” But on top of that, it’s a game about a beloved franchise mascot becoming self-aware, realizing his fictional reality, and fighting against it to try to restore his normality. And then, yes, the story will include live-action sections too. Which is glorious.
Evan Peters, the X-Men movies’ Peter Maximoff, plays the real-world version and voice of Bradley, in the first game from Day 4 Night Studios, a team of former AAA devs who have variously worked on games like GTA: San Andreas, Mario + Rabbids, and Dead Alliance. One of the co-creators, Christian Cantamessa, calls Bradley the Badger “part love letter to video games and part satire of them.”
The game is set for a Steam release in 2026, but will clearly be looking for console releases after its TGA appearance.
