Wheel World Review

Wheel World is exactly what’s printed on the tin; a pleasant game about riding a customisable bike and racing cycling gangs across a large and idyllic open world. I’ve been keen on it since it was announced with its former name, Ghost Bike, and it keeps its broader story of collecting legendary parts to help your pal Skully bridge connections to the Spirit World.

While Wheel World has the refreshing feel of a game not trying too hard, I really wish it had tried a harder.

At the centre of this story you play Kat, recruited by Skully to ride a rusty bike around the map and gradually replace parts and enter challenges to earn Reputation. It makes sense that Kat was previously intended to be a dead person, because in this iteration she is merely a ghostly presence who seems to have no history or future aspirations outside of riding a bike.

To preface, I think my critiques can be explained away pretty quickly by acknowledging that the developers stuck to a small scope which could have easily ballooned. The focus here is on vibes, and the vibes are all right.

The coolest mechanic here is by far the customisation of the bike. I enjoyed finding and purchasing parts and getting closer to maxing out my power and stats, and I liked novelty parts such as the hotdog frame and horse saddle.

The races are not overly challenging, so once I was happy with my stats I focused on the actual feeling of riding the bike; using slip streams to gain boost, learning sharp corners, and going down hills fast. For any game where you ride a thing (horse, car, skateboard) the movement has to feel satisfying. Here, the controler rumbles, you feel and hear differing things depending on the terrain, but the bike in Wheel World is far from emulating the thrill of riding a real-world bicycle.

And how could it, it’s a video game after all. How could they capture the joy of finding, mastering, and making a bike your own, the power over environments, the joy of movement. I suppose what I get most from cycling is a sense of freedom, but even in this vast open space of hills and winding roads, as Kat I never felt free.

(My second preface is that I’m going through a breakup at the time of this review, and one of my great solaces has been the ability to hop on my bike and both freely escape and inhabit the world)

There are moments that help to fill a lack of intrigue and friction. The races contain different achievements including coming first, being top three, beating a certain time, and collecting the letters K-A-T. Across the lands there are lost gang members to find, robots to talk to, and after your first map you are suddenly in an icky dystopian nightmare land with its own new vibe.

unlikethe faulty in-race collision system, it just didn’t stick to me. I wanted to fall in love with the world, its lore, its characters, but every interaction and moment of exploration felt forced. I assume the makers love bike culture and want to celebrate it through this game, it’s obvious through specific lingo and the way bike parts work.

But Wheel World gave me, I hate to say, distinctly millennial vibes. Sure, moments of dialogue were repetitive (the portaloo guy repeats the same lines and you need to speak to him often), but more frustratingly, the need to make jokes about bike culture and the people in it came at the expense of making many characters uncomfortably snarky – even Skully comes off as a bit of a dick. In an effort to be quirky and aloof, combined with Drive-soundtrack-esque music and a vague narrative about dystopia, there is a lack of sincerity that felt at odds with what I like about being a semi-bike-freak.

Final Thoughts

The breadth and length of the game is impressive; the sheer quantity is there. For a decently priced game there’s a lot of bike to ride, customise, and maps to cover in its 4–6 hour play time. There is a level of polish that is absolutely due to how developers Messhof small-scoped it, I just wish Wheel World had a bit more focus on integrating the wheel and the world.

Reviewed on Steam Deck // Review code supplied by publisher

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