Wheel World

The world is in danger. The ancient cycling spirits hold the key to salvation, but their legendary bicycle parts have been scattered through the world. A skilled young cyclist, Kat, is recruited to help find the parts and restore the world's balance.

Wheel World is a game with a odd setup and storyline. It's basically a bicycle racing game in an open world where you are guided to objectives by a sentient floating skull (as you do). The use of the supernatural plot to explain why you're taking part in a lot of cycling races is unconventional, but interesting. Would Forza Horizon be improved if there was a metaplot explaining you're working for the God of Drivers in order to save the world by winning races? Probably. It certainly gives Wheel World a unique flair even if it's weird.

The game is set in a moderately-sized open world divided into zones which you can cycle across. You have to defeat several "boss" cyclists in order to claim their legendary parts, but you can only challenge the bosses once you have built up enough Rep to do so. You gain Rep by winning races, finding collectibles and pulling off tricks. You can also upgrade your bike to be faster, more durable, better at cornering or capable of faster acceleration (but not all at the same time), which makes winning races and building rep easier.

The game has a gorgeous, somewhat cel-shaded art style that is always very entertaining to cycle through (and refreshingly undemanding on hardware). The controls are pretty responsive, and the different upgrades make your bike handle convincingly differently. This isn't a hardcore bike physics simulator, so there aren't tons of complicated things to understand about the upgrades and physics (the game is fairly forgiving on things like crashes), and you can wing it to an extent. You also don't need to do every race, or get 100% on every race, to get enough Rep to challenge the bosses.

There is no reason not to do that though. Going for a completionist, 100% approach to the game will only take you around 12 hours. Speed-running the main story path will take around half that. The completionist approach, where you have to find hidden words on each race course, will also take you to more corners of the map than just running through the essential races as fast as possible.

The worldbuilding is interesting, though thin: this is a world where cars exist, but the bicycle is still king, and people are revered for their cycling skills over all other forms of achievement. The first land you visit is all beautiful countryside, verdant fields, picturesque villages and one sizeable-but-pleasant town. A later city you visit is polluted, messy and squalid, a hint of what will come to the whole land unless you prevail. I would say the later city is a less interesting location, with twistier, tighter courses that are not as fun to explore, and a general downer vibe at odds with the sunny opening. It's not a major problem - this is still a fairly short game - but it does slightly mar the experience. The final section is also odd, taking place in a very large area but where there's not much to do, making it feel like the developers ran out of time.

Still, it's hard to argue with the game. Wheel World (****) is short and focused, has a great art style, a nice soundtrack, is relatively chill and overcoming weaknesses to win the races is fun. The game is relatively cheap, doesn't outstay its welcome and is genuinely amusing in places. A recommended palate cleanser between longer games. The game available now for PC, PS5 and Xbox X/S.

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Stray

A group of cats are enjoying living in the wilds. One of them falls into a tunnel leading into an underground city of robots and amenities, but no people. Assisted by a friendly drone, B-12, the little cat must find their way out of the city, uncovering and solving the mystery of the city's origin in the process.

Stray is a third-person action/adventure game with a twist: you play a cat. Not a robot cat or cybercat or cat-like alien, but an actual cat. Perhaps a somewhat more intelligent cat than most, but still a feline. Playing as a cat immediately changes the dynamics of how you interact with the environment: you can go into places far too small for a human, you can jump impressive distances and almost never miss or fall and you have excellent night vision. However, there are also limitations: you can only carry small objects in your mouth, you can't understand anything anyone says to you and you are too small to be effective in combat against most enemies.

As the game progresses, some of these weaknesses are overcome: the B-12 drone and its nano-manipulation system allows you to deconstruct larger objects and store them a harness, whilst B-12 also provides handy robot-to-cat translations. The designers cleverly avoid using B-12 as too much of a crutch. At one point B-12 gains the ability to destroy Zurks (small parasitic creatures who are the main enemy in the early going of the game) but this is time-limited and eventually runs out, leaving your feline hero to their impressive speed and dodging skills instead (hint: this is a game where "going serpentine" is almost always a good idea).

The environments are fantastic in design and filled with hidden nooks and crannies where you can jump, crawl and explore. The linear levels are broken up by several hub areas, where you can explore more widely, meet other characters and engage in a number of side-missions. You can also find hidden achievements, and even unlock extra parts of the soundtrack (by finding hidden music sheets for a frustrated robot guitarist).

Later on, when you encounter more hostile robots with ranged weapons, the game turns into a stealth title, with you having to avoid enemy vision cones and hide in cardboard boxes (a la Metal Gear Solid) to avoid being detected (alas, you can't move the boxes around).

Along the way you can knock things off shelves, miaow a lot, sit and look vaguely puzzled, curl up and go to sleep, drink water from ill-advised sources, rub robots' ankles to make them coo at you and generally engage in a lot of standard cat behaviour. The animation of procatonist is outstanding and worthy of applause. The only missing bit of cat behaviour is food: your cat never gets hungry or eats something they just found lying in the dirt, which is the only unrealistic part of the game.

Stray isn't a long game - I finished it in about seven and a half hours - but 100%ing the game is a much tougher proposition, requiring you to speed-run the entire game as well as finding every fiendishly hidden bonus objective. Luckily the budget price reflects the game's modest length.

Stray (****) is a pleasantly enjoyable video game which does exactly what it promises: it allows you to play a game as a cat, and have a good time doing so. It is available now on PC, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5.

Thank you for reading The Wertzone. To help me provide better content, please consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods.