Wheel World

Summer is here, and with that comes one of the biggest sporting events in the world: the Tour de France. It’s easily the most famous cycling competition ever, and it also seems like the perfect moment to unleash a game like Wheel World, where you will be doing A LOT of cycling. Luckily, the game seems to have taken inspiration from Le Tour and especially from amateur cyclists from all across Europe.

In Wheel World, you wake up as Kat, who discovers a mysterious building. There, she finds a completely rusted bike and the daemon who it belongs to. They seem to have slept in after performing the last Great Shift, a ritual that brings all of the recently departed spirits to the afterlife. That’s a bad thing: the Great Shift needs to be done on a regular basis, and even worse, the daemon’s bike has lost all of its legendary parts! You need those parts to be able to perform the ritual, so your mission is clear: to retrieve what has been lost.

To do so, you’ll have to travel to Velo City, the capital of Wheel World, where you discover that the four best cyclists in the land have each stolen parts of your bike. The only way to get them back is to race these legendary riders, but they won’t even entertain the thought until you’ve built up enough Rep. So you travel this tiny open world, taking on the local biking teams in order to get the Rep you need.

Rep can be earned in a couple of ways: finishing in the top three in a race, actually winning the thing, beating the time of the best racer ever, and collecting the letters K-A-T while also winning the race. These different options immediately provide you with a lot of replayability, especially for completionists who want to set every record.

Wheel World takes a lot of inspiration from the landscapes you’ll see in typical bike races, and with the sun out it sure feels like you’re biking through France while the Tour de France is going on. You’ll meet plenty of colourful figures on your way, and most of these groups have delightfully punny names. Puns definitely make up most of the game’s humour, but luckily, they’re all very charming. Enough for an eye roll and a little smirk.

Gameplay finds its inspiration unexpectedly in Forza Horizon. You travel by bike to the starting spots for different races, and then you try to beat your opponents. It even features the super slow-mo action shot when you cross the finish line. Luckily, with the map being a lot smaller than Xbox’s massive hit and the number of things you can find on each map being more limited, the game never feels oppressive. You’re completely free to do whatever you want to do, whether that’s chasing down another race, going to shops to buy new parts for your bike, or just cruising through the lands.

On the roads, there are particularly slow vehicles, but also other cyclists who you can quickly challenge by ringing your bell when you’re behind them. This will instantly launch you in a one-on-one race, which can be a fun distraction from your other objectives. Upgrading your bike is also vitally important, as you’ll want a better bike for the more difficult races. The cool thing here is that you can completely choose how to upgrade your bike, with each part influencing certain stats.

It’s important to choose the correct parts for your bike, as a lot of the racing is down to how your bike handles. Depending on your own racing style, you can equip the parts that fit your playstyle the best, and this really makes a difference. The bike’s physics are a particular highlight of the game, so getting the correct parts will mean a lot to how much you’ll enjoy racing.

For some reason, another game that I feel might have inspired developer Messhof is Caravan SandWitch. Now I know that that’s not a racing game, but I’m talking about vibes. The world is wonderfully colourful, and with its limited scope, it feels like a world in which you can discover every nook and cranny without having to spend literal weeks to do so. There’s also a vibe of positivity that shines through from the game which feels similar to Studio Plane Toast’s hit from last year.

I have to make another mention of the racing, though, as luckily for me, the difficulty isn’t too harsh, meaning I could complete the game with only having to restart a couple of races. Wheel World doesn’t set out to be the game for hardcore gamers; even the record times are sensible enough to beat quite easily. That doesn’t mean that the races themselves aren’t fun, though. There’s a nice variety to them, with some focusing more on twisty, curvy tracks, while others are more straightforward, where your ability to use your boost wisely is very important

There was one big frustration I had with the races, though. As you can imagine, at times there’s a bit of pushing and shoving going on between racers, and apparently, Kat has zero power. When she comes into contact with another racer, you will always be the one getting shoved to the side, and this can completely ruin your race. Especially with the game putting you so far back after a crash. There was one race where I was in the lead by quite some margin, but then I crashed, and I was put back to fifth position (out of eight racers), which made no sense to me. This was particularly frustrating just because one such setback can instantly cost you the race.

I was slightly disappointed as well with how little story we were given. There’s a lot of flavour here, with the worldbuilding being a highlight for sure. But the actual story? That felt a little limited. It also seems like Kat has no personality of her own, and she’s just there to do whatever is needed for the story. This didn’t ruin the experience for me, but it takes the game down from being one of my highest scoring of the year to just slightly below that.

In the end, I had a lot of fun with Wheel World. It gave me most of what I was anticipating, having played the demo and from what we saw in the trailers. It’s a game I will definitely start up again just to drive through its landscapes, taking in all the details of both the countryside and the big cities. I just wish there was a possibility of getting more attached to its characters.