Wheel World is out today, a ride-your-bike-around game by Nidhogg developer Messhof. Its demo back in February covered most of the mechanics I’ve seen so far in the full game, though it did not make clear that there would be cars. I will forgive it for this, because it is mostly bikes and those bikes are very cool and fun to ride, but as is the grand moral duty of every cyclist, and in the allegiance to bikes the game revels in, I reserve the right to huff indignantly.
Wheel World takes place in a magical world dominated by bikes, and at its start you’re tasked with helping a burning skull spirit recover their stolen bike parts so they can perform the “Great Shift” and move the “Chain of Life.” (These are bike references, you see.) It’s as good an excuse as any to send you out into the game’s world, where once you cross a bridge off the tutorial island you’re set loose in a lovely landscape that begs to be explored by bike. Areas feel different from each other–forested mountains, rolling farmland, busy cities–and all of it is delightful to discover and speed around on, with changing terrain that constantly brings your attention back to your bike. Everywhere you go you meet cyclists, either alone or in groups, many of whom you can challenge to races. The goal here is to earn enough “Rep,” or reputation points, to take on the riders who stole the bike parts and win them back.
I’m just at what happens in the game’s narrative after you recover all those bike parts, which you can, like all the parts you find in the game, slap on your bike. Bike parts are scattered around the world, or they can be purchased from shops with tickets you earn from floating corporate drones for doing challenges. The bike parts change how your bike handles, how fast it goes up or downhill, or how tightly you can turn. Charmingly, when you swap a part in, it shows up on your bike itself, letting you build and then admire some kind of Frankenstein’s monster that reminds me of one of my own bikes, a small vintage racing bike I slapped mortifyingly gigantic pedals on because they were the cheapest ones at the shop.
I appreciate the way this isn’t overly technical, demonstrating a breadth of bike knowledge without requiring you to have that knowledge too. Wheel World is obsessed with bike lingo and subculture; the groups you can race all fit into rider archetypes like gravel riders, gearheads, elite racers, or people just out for a spin to the pub or coffee shop. Being a bike guy, they often gave me a chuckle, but they didn’t require any specialized insight to get the core joke. Similarly, the racing feels just the right amount of technical: beyond managing a boost meter via drafting, or riding closely behind other racers, there isn’t the high-fidelity fiddling or drift control you sometimes see in other racing games, and the gameplay is easy to pick up. (An exception: you can find drive trains around the world with gears you can shift; managing your gearing during a race would present more strategic challenge, but Wheel World makes it clear these parts are optional, and I haven’t spent much time with them.)
Instead, the races feel about speed and stakes, jockeying for position or trying not to fly off the turns in a velodrome. The courses are clearly marked and easy to follow, something sometimes lacking in other racing games, which lets you enjoy the speed and drama rather than frantically having to scan for the next checkpoint. I appreciated how different courses felt in different areas and even from each other, with some being laps or loops and others an end-to-end sprint. In some races I dominated easily, while in others I was dropped almost instantly or when I careened off a turn, or I lost in the final stretch by not saving enough boost. I’m not the biggest fan of racing games due to the aforementioned technicality featured in many of them, but I really enjoyed Wheel World’s take on them, and especially the sensation of biking around with others in a big, lovely world. Races have various goals that earn you rep, so there’s incentive to replay them with those in mind.
But then there are the cars. Just look at the bastards.
Cars are clearly present in the above press screenshot that's been sitting on Wheel World’s Steam page for a while, so I wasn’t hoodwinked here, but the first time I biked over the bridge from the tutorial area to the main world, I gasped with cyclist fury when I arrived at a roundabout full of cars. One of the reasons Wheel World changed its name from Ghost Bike is, as the developer explained in a press release last October, that it was originally about being hit by a car and ending up in a cycling afterlife. “Ghost bikes” are worldwide memorials to cyclists killed in accidents, and the developer says they were aware of the association but felt that it fit. Such a solemn reference would be out of place in the lighthearted game Wheel World ended up being, so I think it was a good choice to change the name. But the idea of a world of bikes remains in the final game, and this made me shocked to see cars on the road. There aren’t nearly as many of them as there are in my urban bike commutes, and I understand why they’re here: They present challenges that spice up your rides and races, and drafting them or zipping through them refills your boost meter. I get it. But still, their intrusion into my biking paradise made me as furious at them as real-world cars do. A character in one race even agrees, griping about having to share the road with them.
My reaction, however, does further highlight the vibe of Wheel World inducting you into a special two-wheeled world, one set in opposition to the four-wheeled world of cars, so I’m not going to demand all the virtual cars get off the road the way I used to do in my younger, more confrontational Critical Mass days. The fact that the game puts you so firmly into the cycling headspace that this emotion comes up feels like a point in its favor. It’s a game that has a lot of love for bikes and the people who ride them, even when it’s sending some of those people up. It reminds me of what I love about bikes, and it makes me want to get out and ride, though its races are also a tragic reminder of how I am the world’s slowest cyclist. At least I can live my hopeless dreams for speed as I keep playing the game.
