The wind is in your face. Gear shift noise. Cold in the steering wheel with skulls. All the sensations that cyclists around the world seem to enjoy can be experienced in the game behind door number ten: Wheel of the world!
God, I needed World of the Wheel. Not in the sense that I was craving an open world cycling game. But for several reasons, July 2025 turned out to be a difficult month in a difficult year, and Messhof's light, bright racer proved to be an unexpectedly powerful salve for the mood.
There is no evil in this game. Sorry, frame. What is this does You have a charming oddity: your opponents are squads of farmers, businessmen, baristas and robots, and your own bicycle is wielded by a disembodied but otherwise cheerful skull, as well as a determined commitment to giving you a good time. And you'll have a great time driving through gorgeous autumn forests and sunny coastlines with a carefully chosen synth soundtrack playing in the background. Stop to challenge a ragtag gang of racers, and even the trash goods are peppered with winking cycling puns while Messhoff's writers cackle loudly behind the screen.
After you've done well in a few of these races, you might get the feeling that Wheel World might be trying too hard to lubricate potential sources of friction. Most competitions can be won simply by not crashing, and since victories provide a healthy supply of new parts to tweak your bike's performance, I never felt the urge to engage in the wider hunt for new forks and seats that may have been on the card for me.
Again, though, it's all about keeping things fun, and bombing can primarily be a purely tactile pleasure. There's something about the heaviness of the corners and the increasing noise of the accelerating chain that makes the car a constant pleasure to drive, even when you're piloting a sloppy Frankencycle.
Basically, it's a good time. And, despite all the fantastic elements, an effective representative of real cycling; I'm not currently involved, but the influence of Wheel World has kept me flipping through the Brompton catalog repeatedly. Only each time I was overcome by the knowledge that I lived in London and would immediately be crushed.
