Wheel World is a universe that cyclists would view as a utopia. Cycling is life in this open world adventure game, so much so that if an ancient bike ritual isn’t upheld, it will be the end of this cycling paradise! That’s where you come in. You play as Kat, a resident of Wheel World who has been chosen by the Wheel Gods to help perform the Great Shift, a ritual that keeps Wheel World alive.

With your campion Skully (a cute ghost-like skull that hangs out on your handlebars), you have to race four professional cyclists and their crew to win back the legendary parts that are needed to pass through to the spirit world. However, these pros won’t give you the time of day unless you have as much/more REP than they do. This can be gained by completing races against bike crews, which are numerous in a world devoted to cycling.

Let’s ride

In these races, there are several objectives to complete, and each will give you one REP point. These include coming in 1st place, coming in the top 3, completing the race in a specific time, and finding the three letters of KAT scattered around the course. The courses are also labelled as Hard, Medium or Easy, with Easy courses being the norm at the game’s beginning but becoming harder to find as you progress.

Because of the variety and different skill levels of these objectives, it gave me a good incentive to play some courses more than once, to obtain more REP. Finding the letters for KAT was the hardest objective, as you had to force yourself out of the flow state you get when riding to purposefully swerve or jump to access a letter. It helped that Wheel World’s courses are super fun and feel so natural to zip around.

From my first boot-up, Wheel World encouraged me to use a controller whilst playing, and I can see why, as they have made racing an immersive experience through the way the controller responds. When riding, I could feel the tension of my wheels as I turned corners, felt a rock sway my wheels, and felt the break in pressure when I propelled over a jump. Wheel World does an amazing job of making you feel like you are right there in the action.

The world of Wheel World

Another element that improves on the feel you get when cycling around Wheel World is the setting itself. Messhof have used a Moebius-inspired art style to create their cycling oasis, which gives it a very similar look to indie darling Sable and is usually found in sci-fi and Dystopian settings. Using it here, however, gives the universe of Wheel World a more dynamic vibe, as Moebius’ art provides deeper opportunities for riveting storytelling and world-building.

Most of the landscape of Wheel World is lush and seems to be set in Autumn, with lots of dark oranges and browns, but also lots of bright green grass. When cycling through the tall grass, the game uses diegetic sound well, incorporating the sound of your wheels breezing through the reeds, again making the world feel immersive. Another element that conjures up this immersion is the way you can see how the world has been developed for cyclists in mind. There are jumps you can find randomly around the map, skate park-style obstacles and Bell Shrines, which work like viewpoints from the latest in the Assassin’s Creed series. When you ‘unlock’ these shrines, a spirit that looks identical to Skully will welcome you and also give you some extra ‘boost’ strength.

The NPCs also play a big role in making Wheel World feel like an actual world. This is because the world is built around this intense love of cycling, so there is a big sense of community amongst the residents, but also between each cycling ‘gang.’ These gangs usually have something other than cycling in common, such as being sommeliers, coffee addicts or into wearing brightly coloured caps (I kid you not there is a bicycle gang that is hyper-fixated on their leader’s red riding cap) These ‘gangs’ show the lighter, humorous side of Wheel World, with one gang using the infamous Justin Timberlake DUI line, “This is going to ruin the tour” to explain his gang’s current REP status.

Lootin’ and buying spare parts

Though you will gain access to the four legendary spare parts, Wheel World also includes loot boxes, which you can find scattered around the world in the form of gold glowing boxes. The inclusion of these boxes comes from Messhof’s creative director’s desire to give Wheel World players the opportunity to create their own Frankenstein bike. He fell in love with putting together random bike parts to create his own masterpieces in college and wanted to incorporate those ideas into Wheel World.

I’ll be honest, whenever I see a loot box in any game, I get a bit excited. This excitement was there for the loot boxes in Wheel World; however, after a while, and especially after you obtain your legendary parts, these parts became kind of useless. They provide specific stats that alter your drift, handling and acceleration. But with only a tiny difference in these stats, it didn’t give me the motivation to experiment with how they altered my performance.

Part finding becomes a bit more purposeful in bike part stores, but they were hard to navigate and also never contained parts of interest. I would have liked to see Wheel World do something different with their bike part management system, something that gave the player the ability to swap/sell/trade their parts to other cyclists or even to the many part shops. This would have made the whole experience a lot more fun, and would have encouraged me to experiment more with parts and how they change my overall stats.

Music is better with…. Italians?

Of course, no good racing game is complete without a banging soundtrack to get you pumped for your rides! The developers worked with the record label, Italians Do It Better, a label out of Portland/West Hollywood that specialises in poppy electronic beats. They specifically worked with the band JOON, who took the game’s concept art and collaborated with them to produce music that would fit with the energy of the high-paced races. The instrumental versions of JOON’s songs play whilst you’re exploring Wheel World, but the full song with lyrics included plays when you are competing to win back Skully’s legendary parts.

The songs that JOON has created are total bops. They are fast, energetic, catchy, and work well with the vibe of racing. It reminds me very much of how the Sayonara Wild Hearts album connected so well with the vibes and flow of the rhythm game. With Wheel World, you control the flow and rhythm, but the soundtrack definitely pumped me up to slay my challengers. This highlights once more the ways Messhof have thought about all aspects of their cycling game to make Wheel World an immersive cycling experience.