Wheel World Review | You Call That Hunk of Junk a Bike?

I can’t remember the last time I rode a bike. It was something I absolutely loved as a kid. My old neighborhood was shaped like a circle so it was easy to go around and around again with my portable CD player (ageing myself a little bit here) tucked carefully into my jacket pocket. It’s fun to revisit old memories and Wheel World from developer Messhof and publisher Annapurna Interactive definitely encouraged a trip down memory lane, but after what felt like a painfully long wait for the game, it wasn’t exactly what I was expecting. 

In Wheel World, you play as Kat, a young cyclist who is unexpectedly recruited to save her beloved Wheel World from total collapse. And you definitely can’t save the world with the rusty old bike you’ve got at the start of the game. Thankfully, Skully, the flaming skull mounted on the front of your bike, has legendary bike parts that should do the trick and help you beat, not only the competition, but allow you to jump into the spirit world and save your own precious world. The catch is, you’ll have to find those parts first. 

Before you can get started racing around the world, Skully will introduce you to “rep” points. These are points that run everything. Kat, unfortunately, starts with a big fat ZERO in reputation so she’ll have to race some folks in order to boost that reputation. You can earn reputation points by challenging groups of racers all around Wheel World. The races vary in difficulty from Easy, Medium, Hard and Extreme. Races can also take place on different types of terrain which can influence how your bike does against the competition. 

For the most part, each race goes the same way. You have four main challenges to strive for: complete the race in the top 3, win the race, beat Tom’s time (Tom is a legendary biker in Wheel World so he has some super fast times on certain courses) and collect K.A.T. and win (find the letters “K” “A” and “T” while racing and then finish in first place.) Each race, apart from a handful of special races, have the same four challenges for you to achieve and each will award you a small amount of reputation.  

Your main goal, as mentioned, is to gather Skully’s lost legendary parts for his bike and those have been borrowed (*cough* stolen) by three racers in three different locations around the world. In order to get them to challenge you to a race, you have to have a certain number of reputation so that’s your main motivation for finishing the challenges on your races. Wheel World is pretty open so you can go wherever you want from the very start. Around the map are bellshrines, which in a Breath of the Wild-like way, will reveal a certain area of the map. Once you’ve done that you can see locations for each race, store and more on the map. Activating bellshrines also increases the boost for your bike.

Something I noticed quite quickly about the races in Wheel World is that they all feel pretty similar. They take place in different locations so the courses themselves are technically different, but not much changes in terms of how difficult the race is for you to win. Despite the change in terrain, the different twists and turns on the courses, I didn’t struggle to win a race until the very end of the game. Terrain, in particular, seems like it’ll be a big problem for you if you’re not using the right tires, but even when competing in a BMX focused course, I didn’t struggle with my normal wheels. If you are having a difficult time winning races, there are ways to upgrade your bike parts while you’re on the path to getting those legendary parts. 

Throughout the game you’ll have some passive challenges that you can complete in order to grab tickets for yourself. Some of these challenges include: finding hidden jump points around the world, or completing races. Once you’ve finished some of your side quests, you can find little drones that will award you with tickets. You can then take those tickets to a few different shop keepers and grab new parts for your bike. You can also find bike parts scattered in random places on the map so you’re rewarding for doing a bit of exploration. Each part affects four different elements of your bike: aero, handling, grip and power. And you can definitely tell how these four aspects change the way your bike moves. Once you find a combination you like, you’ll be a master of the roads.

Other ways that the game challenges you is by adding cars on the road, or small obstacles, which are particularly annoying. Most of the time, these are easily avoidable, but other times they can be a huge pain. I wouldn’t have minded this extra little challenge much until I noticed that my opponents were rarely affected by these obstacles. I once saw one of my opponents run directly into a car, something that would cause me to ragdoll, fall off my bike and be pushed back on the course, and they bounced off of it like rubber, completely unaffected. 

There are a lot of small things like this in the game that I wrote down while I was playing because they started to really bother me. For example, one of the ways that you can earn tickets in order to purchase more parts for your bike, is to challenge lone wolves. Lone wolves are single bikers that ride around town and you can randomly challenge them. More than once, I would be racing a lone wolf, and the path we were meant to be racing on would suddenly disappear and a few seconds later I would lose the race. There were also times that I would be riding closely to a car and the game would push me away from it causing my bike to spin 360 degrees around as if I’d run into it. Sometimes my bike would spin around when I wasn’t touching anything at all.

While I had some fun with Wheel World, my biggest gripe is that it really felt like something was missing. For example, all you do is race. I get it, it’s a racing game. But in something like this, with an open world begging to be explored, it seems like it could have really benefited from more. Admittedly, there is an unexpected twist that really surprised me and made me hopeful that there would be more to offer, and there was, but without spoiling, it was pretty much more of the same, just with a slightly different atmosphere. 

I was very excited to play Wheel World and I wasn’t exactly disappointed, I played the entire game from start to finish and was happy to complete it but, it really did feel like some things were missing. To me, the world didn’t feel alive enough. Differences in racing challenges, a bit more dialogue, a mini-game or two could have really boosted the game that much further, but without any of that, it was just fine. And the variety of glitches and bugs are quite frustrating and often discouraged me from wanting to retry races. I do want to mention that it has a fantastic soundtrack that reminded me of the brilliant soundtrack in Sayonara Wild Hearts. It’s a great backdrop to what is mostly a very chill game. In the end, I’m glad I got the chance to try out Wheel World, but I don’t think I’ll be itching to go back to it again.

Breakdown

Game: Wheel World

Developer: Messhof 

Publisher: Annapurna Interactive

Availability: PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox Game Pass for Console and PC

Game Length: 4-6 hours (for main quests), 6+ for completionist

Reviewed on PC

Final Thoughts

If you’re a big fan of racing games, Wheel World is completely fine, but it’s not as exciting as I’d hoped it would be. The storyline is cute, but isn’t really elaborated on enough to keep the players invested. The game’s surprising twists are charming, but didn’t do enough to fully impress. I just found myself wishing that there was a bit more there. A bit more to play with that wasn’t just race after race after race. Wheel World can be entertaining, but it doesn’t finish first for me.