REVIEW: Wheel World - A chilled out open world where your PR is the hill to conquer

When I was young, I never understood the phrase "It's like riding a bike!" It's meant to show that no matter how long it's been, riding a bike will always come back to you. If you know how to ride one. I never learned.

I instead stayed inside and played tons of video games. And I played all kinds. RPGs, adventure games, extreme sports. And so, while I may not relate to the biking experience, hopping into Wheel World did feel "just like riding a bike" — it was easy to slide into its world and fall into a practiced rhythm. Its simplified open world exploration and arcade-y races, where you're competing against yourself above all, brought to mind classics like SSX and Motocross Madness, so finding fun in Messhof's cycling adventure was a breeze.

​Just the Facts

Developer: Messhof

Publisher: Annapurna Interactive

​Platform(s): PC*, PS5, Xbox Series *denotes platform reviewed on

​Price: $19.99

Release Date: July 23, 2025

Review key provided by publisher via popagenda.

I want to ride my bicycle, I want to ride my bike

Wheel World is Messhof's fourth major release, after the arcade 1v1 fighting Nidhogg duology and the intense maze game that was 2015's Flywrench. An indie legend in his own right, Mark Essen's works are certainly eclectic, and with his team of collaborators, Wheel World aims to be their biggest work yet. It's the team's first 3D project, with a proper narrative to follow and several big open world hubs for you to bike around in.

In Wheel World, you awaken as Kat, a voiceless avatar for the player's incoming cycling journey. Feeling compelled by a nearby building swirling with spiritual energy, Kat approaches a glowing bike and ends up tying their fate to an immortal being called Skully.

Skully is essentially Wheel World's ferryman, responsible for regularly performing a ritual guiding spirits to the moon to move on. But something's gone terribly wrong. Not only has Skully been dormant for way too long, leaving the world's spirits loose with no one to guide them, but somebody has stolen the legendary bike used for the journey and spread its parts across the land of Tramonto. So it's up to Kat to challenge fellow cyclists, gather Rep points that gain the attention of the island's biking legends (who also happen to have stolen those legendary parts), and challenge them to win back Skully's legendary bike and ultimately perform The Great Shift ritual.

Wheel World's narrative is little more than a reason to fit in bike puns and offer a loose framework for why you're wandering the lands of Tramonto. And that's perfectly fine for a game like this. Biking runs everything in this world, so as you bike around, you'll hear mutterings about pedal types, gaining watts, and why everyone new acquaintance's preferred biking style is the best around. Cyclists will probably get way more out of this than I did, but I found all the puns and references charming nonetheless, and ultimately was more enamored by the concept of a world whose DNA is tied to biking than I was bothered by the lack of any deeper plot.

Messhof's worldbuilding has always been top-notch, and their open world design is perfectly tuned between interesting to explore and fun to play in. This is where the, admittedly strange, Motocross Madness comparison comes in. I remembering loving driving my motorcycle around those free ride maps, catching some interesting looking hill in the distance, and eventually launching myself off of it with pure joy. Wheel World's environment is full of eye-catching cel-shaded landmarks that lead to fun gameplay moments: hidden off-road bike paths, huge jumps that launch you off of giant cliffs, and small towns of bikers dotting large open fields. With the game's other exploration hook — loose bike parts you can find hidden all across Tramonto — losing a few hours to just riding around the world's unique little nooks and crannies was always time well spent.

I can ride my bike with... weird handlebars

Wheel World's play experience is split into two distinct halves: a relaxing open world bike exploration game where you find bike parts to assemble the perfect steed and a flow-based racing game that emphasizes personal improvement over legitimate competition.

The loop is clear: explore to find new races and bike parts, race to gain Rep to unlock each region's boss race, optimize your bike build in between races, and repeat.

When it's working, this game managed to fully pull me back to my childhood, in that I physically found myself swaying my body around turns along with the character because I was so invested in nailing each turn and maintaining my speed (and my lead) as I did. Messhof nails the feeling of wind through your hair with simple tricks — wind lines that breeze past Kat at top speeds and an incredibly subtle but perfectly tuned whoosh of the air that drags on you as you drive — and when you're on the perfect line, the vibes are unmatched.

I felt this pure bliss early in the adventure, as Wheel World takes you on a tour of the varied regions of Tramonoto and the different types who inhabit it. Cyclists who excel off-road, velodrome cyclists, downhill cyclists, city cyclists. Each racer demands a different bike set and strategy, and you actually feel the difference as you go. Each new bike part you get contributes to one of five unique stats: Power (ability to generate power uphill and acceleration), Aero (aerodynamics that affect max speed), Handling (affects turning and speed loss when turning), and Grip (affecting your bike's skidding potential).

My off-roading bike made dirt tracks easy to handle but failed to get me through the tight turns of the city races. That city bike had much better handling but couldn't generate enough speed for some of the pure drag races. And my speed bike made any surface a danger to ride on, lest I risk skidding out and crashing every few steps of the way. It was fun to tinker with my bike, though I wish you could save specific presets, because having to change every part became cumbersome the more I unlocked. But I found over time that I could kind of ignore it... because your opponents are a little... dumb.

Whenever you're stuck in races, all other racer AI is tuned to make life fairly easy for you, and I often found myself finishing approximately 15 seconds ahead of second place. Other racers strictly follow the course as laid out. They rarely use their boost optimally. They get stuck on walls and cars. It wasn't hard at all to win most races, and if you build up an all-rounder bike, you can keep that set all the way through. Between the easy AI and the cumbersome bike tinkering, I ended up beating the game with just three or four unique bike formats.

I think this is partially an effort to make the game more accessible, in that you'll be able to get from end to end with one bike layout if you prefer and not be forced to engage with changing your bike layout again and again, but it kind of flattened the experience a bit. Different characters actively encourage you to stick with the bike set that's working for you and to only implement some of the more advanced systems (shifting gear trains for example) if you really want to, but with the 100+ unique parts you can collect, it felt like a missed opportunity to showcase the constant tweaking I know hardcore cyclists get into. I certainly felt the difference in each bike I built, but I rarely needed to change up my bike to win. (Side note: It's fun that you can truly Frankenstein a strange beast with mismatched pieces from a variety of sets if the stats suit your mood.)

The real challenge comes in accomplishing each race's set of extra goals, standing somewhere between Tony Hawk and SSX Tricky. Collect letters of Kat's name hidden across each race course — or beat a legendary biker's time on the course. These goals offer infinitely more trouble than any racing opponent, which feels like it echoes what I know about cyclists simply trying to beat their own personal bests and get better each and every time they ride.

Messhof's worldbuilding has always been top-notch, and their open world design is perfectly tuned between interesting to explore and fun to play in.

He's going the distance, he's going for speed

All that gets tossed out the window about four hours into your adventure, though, as the game's final chapter takes place in a much more urban location with tons of vehicles and features one of the most frustrating chunks of races that soured my bike adventures mightily. You see, whenever Kat collides with something (like a car) you are set back pretty far down your race path, allowing the CPU to get back into the race easily. Often, you'll find yourself plummeting all the way down to last place as a result of a crash. When the CPU racers collide with things, they kind of just bounce off or slide off, which gives them a tiny setback that they rubberband back from easily.

So as the game's winding down in its final hours, you're tossed these incredibly frustrating races that suddenly feature obstacles that affect its racers inconsistently. Tie that off with a final "boss" race that features several checkpointed segments broken up with narrative moments that put you at the back of the pack each time, no matter what position you entered each checkpoint at, and the game's finale was a definite low point. But none of that is enough to wipe away what is an otherwise enjoyable bike-focused adventure.

When I'm sending it down a long downhill stretch, gazing down the path of a cel-shaded soft-textured landscape, hearing a naked guy riding a bike with a frame made of an actual human torso tell me about why he's "freer" than I am, those frustrations slip away. When I'm listening to the vibey electronic pop soundtrack from Italians Do It Better and losing myself to the race — learning exactly when to stop pedaling before a turn, when to perfectly hit the brakes so that I'm able to set a new PR and gain some precious Rep — I don't think about anything else.

Wheel World is a joyous biking adventure that, despite some tiny frustrations, manages to showcase the beauty of biking. This half-racing, half-exploration adventure enters you into a flow state for 5-6 hours, and you exit it with a smile on your face.

And I think that's what biking's about or something. I dunno. I never learned to ride.

Video Games Are Good and Wheel World is . . . GREAT. (8/10)

+ riding feels incredible, exploring the map is a joy, building a bike is fun, vibes above all else

- building a unique bike is rarely necessary and is a bit cumbersome, some frustrating late game races sour the joy

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