We’ve had all sorts of open-world games in recent years – bombastic third-person action adventures, JRPGs, car titles, fights in space, water-based shark shenanigans…I could go on. Now it’s time for a bright, comic-style indie romp, where we get to explore various lands and compete in races on our… upgradable and somewhat magical bicycle! This is XboxEra’s review for Wheel World, available today and on Game Pass no less!
This bike can talk! Well, sorta
It’s quite a simple, if slightly odd premise. Our protagonist, Kat, is a capable rider who finds a mysterious glowing bicycle in a shrine. Turns out the whole world is at risk of getting destroyed, because this bike used to possess legendary powers that were stolen – and this, somehow, would lead to total annihilation. So, we get to explore the surrounding lands on a beautiful and colourful island, as we tackle races, exploration, and more to re-obtain the godlike legendary bike parts, all in a bid to restore the balance. And, well, to have a hell of a good time, hopefully.
With visuals reminiscent of certain comics, and the visual style of legendary artist Moebius in particular, we get to ride around various biomes like a forest, a town, and the countryside. The riding style is quite simple – perhaps, too much so. You can only really accelerate, brake, and use a turbo boost. The latter is collected by using slipstreams, narrowly missing objects or traffic, jumping, and so forth. There are no advanced techniques like hops, drifting, or anything fancy – it’s a quite chill biking game. Well, except when it isn’t.
Adrenaline and relaxation
There are two kinds of activities in Wheel World – racing and anything regarding exploration. The former is quite intense, with quite high speeds reachable in downhill segments, making it often quite hard to keep our bike glued to the ground and ourselves not thrown off it. There’s no complicated physics system to dictate our movements, but some of the track designs can get quite tricky, with multiple jumps, shortcuts, and more to handle. With how powerful slipstreams are, we not only have to make sure to abuse our opponents’ lines, but also avoid leaving giant windows for our opponents to recharge their boost and pip us to the line.
The other half of the Wheel World equation is the open world, which is quite fascinating thanks to its art style, yet also quite formulaic. There are bike parts to find, race events to complete with optional achievements as well, but also collectibles, ramps to find, scarecrows to scare, and so forth. Aside from the map in the menu and some icons on screen, there are no arrows to navigate us, there are limited fast travel options, and there’s very little variety to what goes down in the open world. For how unique the game’s art style is, and how rare such chill biking games are, perhaps more courage wouldn’t have hurt its good-looking game island.
The depths of the game’s depth
The biggest variety probably comes via the game’s customizable bikes. Aside from the story’s mandatory legendary bike parts, there’s just a huge amount of elements to find, unlock, or even buy. From individual wheels, the frame, and more, there are even unique bonuses and special perks attached to these increasingly effective parts. These upgrades become quite mandatory eventually, with the difficulty of the races increasing, and our rivals’ bikes also becoming tougher to beat. The story has us beating various biker groups, with some funny dialogue that accompanies these competitions.
In an era of ridiculously massive open-world games, just think of the recent Assassin’s Creed: Shadows with its 100+ hour launch state with more content to come, it feels nice to have some bite-sized open-world experiences. Wheel World is one of those – a reasonably sized area that can be explored fully in only a dozen hours or so, with even less needed to finish the mandatory races to see the end credits. With the game not featuring a ridiculous depth, replayability, or multiplayer options, that may sound like not a lot – but at least it doesn’t overstay its welcome.
Low ambitions but plenty of fun
Perhaps some more variety and polish wouldn’t hurt the overall experience. The game’s physics, collisions, and animations are quite janky, and exploring the open world reveals a lot of places where the bike misbehaves, glitches out, or even falls through the ground. Even during races, our bike can do some… rather unnatural tricks, lose speed, turn around in seemingly incomprehensible ways at times, which can murder our chances of winning, or at least, unlocking certain advanced objectives. I’d also note that, due to my main gaming PC dying during my review window (not due to Wheel World, mind), I hopped over to a decent gaming laptop, with a GeForce RTX 3050 on board, and I would have expected it to run quite smoothly with such a simple graphics style – yet, it struggled on any setting I tried, so hopefully the Xbox version will be smoother than that.
Ultimately, Wheel World is a small and charming open world, presenting a stylish look, an enjoyable biking gameplay loop, and various high adrenaline races, up and down the hills of this magic island. With rather formulaic open-world activities and slightly unpolished physics, the game doesn’t quite reach its full potential, but it’s also a pleasant experience that ends before some of its shortcomings could start to bore or frustrate. And, well, it’s out today and is on Game Pass, so it doesn’t cost much to give it a shot yourself. So, hop on your magical apocalypse-avoiding bikes, and let’s roll!
Wheel World
Played on
PC
PROS
- Lovely art style
- Exciting racing
- Chill exploration
- Impressive bike customization
CONS
- Simplicistic riding model
- Formulaic open world activities
- Some form of multiplayer would have been nice
