Life is a cycle. Literally in the universe of Wheel World—after death, your soul goes to the moon, and then you are reborn to again live as a cyclist. It all keeps spinning. People are at peace with death. Life’s purpose is finding your style, beating the odds, gaining reputation, and being part of one of the many unabashedly intense communities. Once every so often, someone must perform a Great Shift, leading the spirits to the moon and back, to keep the Chain of Life going and move it to the next Gear.
Kat wakes up to find an old wreck of a bike inhabited by a ghost, and is chosen as its next rider. Legendary parts required to traverse the spirit stream have been stolen by celebrity cyclists to upgrade their rides and they must recover them. Popularity is a form of currency in Wheel World (aside from the actual currency of coupons), and if you want to approach these bigwigs, you must win a few races and make a name for yourself.
So I did, and found that Wheel World controls perfectly. There is an absolutely beautiful friction to its turns and drifts, punctuated by a slight rumble when playing on a controller. Jumping feels fantastic too, flicking the stick up after pulling it down for a bit. The slight control mid-air allows you to reposition so that you can start moving in a certain direction as soon as you land.
There is also the ghost bike’s boost, which fills upon drafting behind cars or other cyclists, staying in the air or near-hits. This is your starting moveset, but in the second area I chose to explore in the game’s open world, I found a part that allowed me to switch to multiple gears to further control my speed levels, upping my involvement and control over how I wanted to approach turns.
The bike can be customized via seven parts and four different attributes. I personally always went for high “Aero”, which helps preserve momentum and ups overall speed, but you can dig deep and customize bikes for each race. You can see the track when hovering over them on the map, so if you see lots of tight turns, you might prefer to invest in “Power” to quickly regain speed or “Handle” to not slow down as much during turns.
If you follow the recommended path, starting on the left side before moving to the right and eventually ending up in the big city in the middle of the map, I think Wheel World has an ideal difficulty curve. That does not mean you cannot challenge yourself. Say you found a part with a perk that supports off-road driving, you might want to head to the forest and immediately start tackling the more challenging tracks there. Or, if you are finding races too easy, downscale your bike to have lower stats. It fits perfectly into the modern, player-oriented difficulty approach, though goes a bit overboard with it when it comes to exploration.
Though some bike parts can be bought, most are random, found in boxes around the open world. Coupons used to purchase them are acquired via side gigs: finding jumps, secrets, winning races, etc. While I would say the world is largely fantastic to drive around, these searches do not feel right for the type of game Wheel World is. For one, you always need to get off the bike to pick things up or talk to someone. Second, there is only a hint system for parts, and it is still limited. Third, the small render distance on objects makes it impossible to use elevation to your advantage. Good luck spotting crows among the fields for one of the gigs.
Wheel World’s aesthetic is this cel-shaded, pop-art mix of mystical and realistic, leaning towards the latter. You will ride through farms, forests, and cities, feeling like you are in the real world, only to look up and see the gigantic green asteroid-like moon in the sky or spot distant remnants of a magical ruin. The details feel almost unnecessary compared to those grand concepts; dark pebbles on roads or lights suddenly flashing onto the screen from a car or bike behind you pop in unnaturally to further pollute the already uneven atmosphere.
The biggest thing keeping Wheel World from greatness is that its magic cannot seem to keep itself together for too long. The music is too upbeat here, too relaxed there, and just could use a more controlled implementation. It cuts off when I do not want it to, just because Kat stepped down to pick up a collectible. Only in a few moments does the game benefit from that lack of a soundtrack, when you hear the pedals and spokes turning at high speeds over a calm stretch, but most of the time, you miss it when it is gone, even if it can get repetitive.
In important races, vocals kick in to the few tracks that rotate randomly during other events. It is a nice touch, but overall, I could only fully jive with one. Tonally, I think none stuck the landing, and the lyrics get a bit cheesy. It often feels almost like TV commercial music: some weightless ambiance that you come to expect, but hardly ever enriches the situation.
Part of it could be that the game itself never feels truly confident in its style. Perhaps the team’s switch from a somber tone to a more upbeat one during development caused some discrepancies. Whereas the exploratory discoveries of how old traditions persevere in the modern landscape try to get you into a contemplative mood, the dialogue consists of forgettable and one-note silly lines. Where the races excite and controls feel great, the open world collectibles stop you from immersing yourself in all that depth and friction.
Toughest races are where things start to fall apart dramatically. Small spaces, plenty of cars—a recipe for disaster. The racers start crashing into walls and objects, bouncing and flying around the screen like reality was falling apart, but also annoyingly stopping you during an otherwise perfect run. Cars have very uneven hitboxes; you can crash into bigger ones without even touching them. Touch a wall for too long while driving and you will suddenly get spun around, as if Wheel World’s deity Cog intervened to play a prank on you with a little flip. Hopefully, these things will be ironed out soon.
As the game generally struggles to create an identity for its characters and present the more poetic aspects of its world passionately, I found myself a bit detached by the end of my 11 hour playthrough. Booting it up again to beat my scores, however, I realized that the core is good enough that it does not need anything to elevate itself. Jump into a race, do your best, and I guarantee it will all make sense.
Should our world be as kind of a place as this fictional, heavenly cyclical road, I would love to see Wheel World enter its next gear: a game that could explore that core in a more complete sense or interpret it in a different style. I am slightly disappointed with what could have been, but filled with determination to push this game further and revisit it with newfound determination to find some shortcuts and craft another nasty bike. It just feels like neither I nor the game has quite reached their personal best yet.
Mateusz reviewed Wheel World on PC with a provided review copy.
