When was the last time we had a truly great cycling game? It’s been a while, but Wheel World is looking to fill the gap in its own quirky ways. With an open world chock-full of secrets, visuals just overflowing with style, and a delectable soundtrack complementing it all, it’ll keep you pedalling like a madman for hours on end.
Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX, Mat Hoffman’s Pro BMX, Downhill Domination. We used to be a real society. Alongside the best-selling Tony Hawk’s games, we once were blessed by a litany of other ‘action sports’ titles to keep the adrenal gland pumping.
While Wheel World certainly isn’t looking to replicate the trick-heavy, flip-friendly style of the early 2000s, it harkens back to that era where riding a bike wasn’t just an offshoot feature but the very core of a gaming experience.
Here, the entire project has been built around our protagonist Kat and her bike. The characters you meet, the collectibles you find, and the story woven throughout, it all revolves around cycling.
What is Wheel World?
Wheel World is a tale of two games. On the one hand, it’s an intense rush downhill as you zip past checkpoints on the way to the finish line in any number of races. On the other hand, it’s a tranquil ride through a serene yet otherworldly landscape as you soak up the atmosphere and vibe to the charming soundtrack.
Balancing those two halves was a great challenge throughout development, as business partners and life partners Mark Essen and Kristy Norindr of Messhof told me. But the game dev couple assured that no matter your preference, you can still make plenty of progress. You don’t have to become a gold medal-caliber cyclist to unravel the mystery of the plot or unlock some of the wackier collectibles, of which there are a great many.
“What if Zelda: Breath of the Wild had a baby with Burnout Paradise,” as Essen put it. “Like Burnout Paradise, but the chill moments are maxed out.”
It’s a stark departure from their previous work on Nidhogg and its sequel. Where those games were chaotic eruptions of 2D, multiplayer-driven thrill and agony, Wheel World exudes a sense of zen through its 3D, singleplayer only, atmospheric design.
Dropped right into the mysterious open world, it’s up to you to pace the experience. Would you rather follow a cyclist off the beaten path to track down a hidden item, or are you eager to test your skills against a local crew right away?
For others, like me, you might just want to casually bike around while blasting the utterly divine soundtrack hand-crafted by electro legends at Italians Do It Better, Johnny Jewel’s record label. Chromatics fans will be all too familiar with the name, but for those who aren’t, do yourself a favor by checking out their work.
What the devs say about it
The original idea
“When I started prototyping, I played Golf Story. I thought that game was just amazing all the way through. I wanted to take something from that, go deep on a sport that people don’t play many games about or think too deeply about,” Essen said.
“I was doing a lot of biking, I love bikes. At the time, there weren’t really any games about bikes. Riders Republic came out, but it’s also an everything game. So it felt like something I wanted to play, we started making this game that was freeform, ‘do bike stuff in an open world.’
“Along the way it became clear, ‘this isn’t the game, that’s not the game,’ that was sort of the process. For better or worse, we didn’t have a game design document that outlined exactly what we were making from the start.
“The game was kind of like this tree that was finding sunlight in different directions. I wouldn’t say we were ever a different plant. It’s just always been mutating. There were a lot of paths we didn’t take.”
Getting weird with it
“Because it’s an open world, there’s a lot you can do to progress without racing. We have seven categories of bike parts, and there are dozens of parts for each category. I have the final count somewhere, it makes millions of permutations.
“We have silly bikes like the hot dog bike, the horse bike, a gamer bike with an old CRT. There are secret tracks to uncover, other cyclists you can race against for a brief period, maybe they’ll lead you somewhere you haven’t been before. There’s a lot to see.
“I think it’s the kind of game a lot of people won’t finish because they’re getting what they want from the open-world experience.”
The Johnny Jewel effect
“During the pandemic, I was listening to a lot of music, curating soundtracks, just trying to hype myself up,” Norindr said. “I like to deep dive on different genres. A long time ago in New York, I used to be a party promoter. My deep dive during the pandemic was electro. I started getting really excited about throwback electro.
“Italians Do It Better, huge fans of them. I kind of just cold-called. Megan and Johnny, who run the label together, they got back to me and said ‘Yes, we’re interested in doing this collaboration!’
“We landed on Joon and Orion, not just for them being interested, but the two of them separately had worked on games before, be it soundtracks or sound effects for games. Then Johnny Jewel was interested in doing the soundscape.”
“I think Kristy set them on the genre, then I was giving them cues on the various moments, the environments,” Essen chimed in. “At a certain point we had concept art they could work with. Then later on we were iterating on tempo.
“The races were really intense, the exploring was less intense. We had to figure out what can fit where and which tracks can be adjusted.
“A lot of them were on tour for big chunks of the game. So we’d have intense collaborations, then we wouldn’t talk for a while, then we’d come back to it.”
Eight years on from Nidhogg 2, and two years on from its reveal under the name Ghost Bike, Wheel World is finally set to launch on July 23, 2025. You can play the game across PC, Xbox Series X | S, and PS5.
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