Ghost Rider. Wheel World game review

I don't know how Annapurna Interactive chooses games to publish (in case anyone has forgotten, this is the gaming arm of Annapurna Pictures, the film company of Megan Ellison, daughter of Oracle founder and multibillionaire Larry Ellison), but every time it's, if not a masterpiece, then a high-quality work of art that stays in the memory for a long time. What Remains of Edith Finch, Gorogoa, Outer Wilds, Kentucky Route Zero, The Unfinished Swan, Stray, Cocoon, Flock... well, you can add the publisher's recent release to this list - Wheel World.

Wheel World is the story of cyclist Kat, who is chosen by an ancient bicycle spirit to collect the legendary parts of a rover stolen by intruders, which are needed to get into the sewers of spirits (don't even ask), lead them (the spirits) to the moon, make the Great Turn, and save the Wheel World from a terrible fate.

Yes, the plot is a bit strange, but it actually has its own logic, especially when you remember that Wheel World originally had a darker mood and was about a cyclist who died in an accident and ended up in Valhalla for fans of two-wheeled vehicles. Plus, there's definitely some analogy here with Philip Farmer's "River World," where all the dead end up.

To get legendary parts (and then, in another world, there will be super-legendary parts), you need to defeat the same thieves who appropriated the rover parts, and to do this, you first need to gain the appropriate level of reputation by winning regular races.

So Wheel World is a kind of NFS / Forza Horizon with rover in the open world. We open new areas, look for new races, win new parts and reputation, and move forward in the story.

Each type of race in Wheel World requires rover settings. If the track has many straights and runs on asphalt, you should focus on speed, if in the forest, on cross-country ability, if there are many turns, on handling. Moreover, in each race you can get four awards - for getting on the podium, for winning, for beating another racer's time, and for collecting the letters of the name Kat, which are hidden in very inconvenient places for passing the track.

So you'll have to constantly re-tune your rover. Parts for this can be won during races, found in the open world while traveling, or bought with coupons obtained for completing tasks. There are a lot of parts, they significantly change the behavior of the bike, so experiment. In general, it all looks a bit like a kind of action/RPG with racing.

The dynamics of the rover in the game, although arcade-like, feel good, the inertia, grip, and changing settings. The only thing that's a bit frustrating is the physics of collisions between bikes.

Most of the tasks in Wheel World are easy, small problems only start in the second world. 100 reputation points for the battle with the final boss (he cheated!) is easy to collect. Overall, Wheel World seemed to us too simple and too short a game. There are only 4-5 hours of gameplay (but you won't have time to get bored), and we would like to see more tracks for races and tests, especially since the potential for expanding the number of tasks in this world is definitely there.

The world of Wheel World, although small in size, is interesting to explore and very pleasant to look at. The game uses low-poly graphics with light сel shading, like the recent Dungeons of Hinterberg, they can generally be taken as projects of the same studio or the same series. But despite the seemingly simple graphics, Wheel World looks nice.

Wheel World is worth adding to our list of vacation-themed games, it really feels like a mini-vacation in the World of Wheels. Breathe in the virtual air, feel the virtual wind on your face, meet the inhabitants of this strange world, hear their cycling jokes (yes, there's n+1 here too) and ride along amazing tracks on a magical rover. And all this to a pleasant soundtrack from the independent indie label Italians Do It Better. It's really cool!

Until August 6, 2025, Wheel World is available on Steam at a discount of only 350 UAH. In addition, the game is in the Game Pass library, such a short format is ideal for indie games on this platform. Pay attention.