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Metro
23-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Metro
Wheel World review
The latest indie oddity from Annapurna Interactive involves a magic bicycle, a flaming skull, and some Sega blue skies to ride under. There are plenty of video games that make a virtue of their surrealism, ignoring anything as blandly conventional as trying to look like real life. Kentucky Route Zero's clutch of highly atmospheric liminal spaces and weirdoes, Suda51's killer7 and Killer Is Dead, and the more accessible but still wonderfully eccentric Psychonauts 2. All featured landscapes and action that were as far removed as they could be from any sense of realism. Wheel World's cycling-based role-playing game has been nurtured with a similarly high regard for the peculiar. The game's heroine, Kat, is accompanied by an immortal bike daemon called Skully, who looks like a floating cartoon skull surrounded by turquoise flames. He's in trouble because all the parts of his supernatural bike have been stolen, leaving him only with rusty, generic parts. That means he's unable to ride up the Sewer of Spirits to the moon, where he belongs. You soon discover that the stolen bike parts are being held by various cycling crews and have to be earned back by beating them in races. But first you'll need to open up the map by activating huge bell shrines, triggered by riding up to them and ringing the bell on your handlebars. They illuminate new sections of Wheel World, adding more races and stashes of bike parts. Each shrine also increases your boost bar; the cycling equivalent of nitrous oxide. The boost bar recharges when you get air over a jump or spend time drafting behind fellow riders. The legendary bike parts, once you've won them back and installed them on your bike, also regenerate boost slowly over time, but for the first part of the game that's not an option. Not that you particularly need it, because at least in the opening few hours, races are laughably easy. You're rewarded for a podium finish, beating time trial records, and finding the letters K-A-T hidden around the track. Each of those achievements earns a point of reputation, which is useful because the crews you have to race against to get the magical bike parts are all gated behind races based on reputation. At the beginning of the game you don't even have enough rep to be allowed into Velo City, where the toughest of the bike posses resides. As well as challenging cycle gangs, you can also take on lone wolf riders by riding up behind them and ringing your bell, beginning a point-to-point race that automatically grafts itself onto the landscape wherever you happen to be. It makes the most of its open world setting, letting you cruise around looking for people to race, or discovering hidden boxes of bike parts. Sign up to the GameCentral newsletter for a unique take on the week in gaming, alongside the latest reviews and more. Delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning. You can also complete jobs for Cyclorp, the big business biking company whose drones hover around the land. The tokens you win for finishing side quests are exchanged for yet more bike parts, that you see for sale almost everywhere you go. After only a few upgrades though, most new parts you come across arrive with pros and cons, boosting some stats, but lowering others. This means the overwhelming majority of parts you find are completely useless. You could potentially retool your bike for specific races, targeting handling or grip to make cornering easier, or adding parts that assist in travelling off-road, to make courses' frequent secret shortcuts more useful. In practise that feels too fiddly. You can't save configurations, so swapping out every part on your bike just for a three minute event rarely feels like time well spent. Artful use of DualSense's haptic feedback lets you feel the surfaces you ride over, and the adaptive triggers give you a sense of pedalling your way up hills. However, races also come with the impression that the bike is never entirely under your control, its distinctly wayward handling having a partial mind of its own, especially on corners. That's perfectly fine in the first part of the game, where you're touring its flat textured, blue skied open world, enjoying the views and smiling at the strange folk you meet and race against, and generally nailing every single event you take on. At that point the vagaries of the handling model go quite well with the dreamlike atmosphere. It's only when you reach the game's second open world area, The Wasteland, that the clumsy steering starts getting in the way. There you'll find Cyclocorp's minions have piled up endless heaps of rubbish everywhere, with many areas fenced off and industrialised. Once again you'll need to find bell shrines to open up the map, but this time races are a lot tougher. There's debris on the track, more oncoming cars and lorries, and a peloton of fellow racers that's far more aggressive and determined. They jostle you on corners, get in the way while you're trying to draft past them, and conspire to make races an ordeal of random obstacles and crashes that aren't your fault. More Trending Tracks are tighter and twistier too, highlighting the game's stutteringly low frame rate. Getting knocked off your bike by a piece of scenery that popped into existence a split second before you hit it feels unfair the first time it happens. By the fifth time, what used to seem quirky and mildly entertaining becomes actively infuriating. Wheel World has an admirable dedication to weirdness. If it had the same commitment to its racing mechanics it would have been a lot better game. As it is, the unusual setting and art style aren't enough to forgive the shortcomings in its control system and visuals, a sense that only gets worse as you progress. In Short: A quirky and offbeat open world biking RPG that works nicely until races get more taxing, at which point its mechanical limitations make it frustrating to play Pros: Glorious flat-shaded art style, plenty of amusingly outré characters and bike crews to meet, exploring its roads and countryside is initially pleasantly relaxing Cons: Controls don't feel tight enough for competitive racing, low frame rate makes faster races unnecessarily random, new parts you find are usually worse than the ones you have making the loot cycle feel futile Score: 4/10 Formats: PlayStation 5 (reviewed), Xbox Series X/S, and PCPrice: TBA*Publisher: Annapurna InteractiveDeveloper: MesshofRelease Date: 23rd July 2025 Age Rating: 3 *available on Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass from day one Email gamecentral@ leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter. To submit Inbox letters and Reader's Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here. For more stories like this, check our Gaming page. MORE: Nintendo Switch 2 beats PS4 and PS5 as fastest-selling console ever MORE: EA Sports FC 26 preview – rip it up and start again MORE: The Elder Scrolls creator Julian LeFay dies following battle with cancer
CNET
29-06-2025
- Entertainment
- CNET
Snap & Grab Is an '80s Glam Heist Game That's 'Hitman' meets Pokémon Snap
At Summer Game Fest, I tried out one of the more stylish, relaxing games that made me wish I had pals on the couch to play with. But instead of a co-op adventure, Snap & Grab, as it's called, is a heist title where players take on the role of a fashionista photojournalist who steals gaudy treasures from rich doofuses to fill her penthouse. Snap & Grab is the debut title for studio No Goblin, which held its demo in publisher Annapurna Interactive's closed-door area at the annual gaming festival. I ducked into Annapurna's area and was awash in 80s paraphernalia -- big wood-paneled TVs, boomboxes and piles of CDs ahoy -- which fit Snap & Grab's vibe. Booting up the demo on PC, I was awash in the game's world, a whirlwind of pop and glam vibes, like playing in a Madonna music video from the era. I stepped into the high heels of the game's heroine (or antihero, depending on whether you think stealing from ultra-rich jerks is a crime) Nifty Nevada, who uses her daytime job as a celebrity photojournalist to scan the homes of wealthy socialites for the best ways to snag their prize art pieces. The delightful angle of the game? Nifty isn't stealing the items herself. To preserve plausible deniability, she takes photos of the obstacles standing between her team of hunky minions and the art piece to steal. See a guard? Take a photo of a sink to have your minion overflow it so the guard slips and gets knocked out. See the rich doofus around the art? Take a photo of the record player to stop the music in another room as a distraction. "Big inspirations in terms of gameplay was Hitman meets Pokémon Snap, with that flair of Carmen San Diego, badass woman," said Cessia Castillo, level designer and artist at No Goblin, who led me through the demo. The full Snap & Grab has five stages to play, only one of which was available in the demo, but they each have reasons to replay. Rather than puzzles with one solution, they're sandboxes with multiple ways to get Nifty's minions to nab her prize. Castillo confirmed that there are a dozen different heists (items to steal) per level that are identified to players in the game but more things can be stolen if they want, plus photo challenges and new crewmates to add to your heist team. There's also a progression system that, as you steal items, will be able to unlock abilities. "Nifty will have the ability to throw a hot dog pretty far at a certain point," Castillo said. (I can't even imagine how that will come in handy.) One of the game's art targets is a giant key you can steal at the center of a dance floor. No Goblin In the demo I found one route to steal the piece of art (a gaudy gem-festooned skull) but Castillo noted that others who tried the game out at SGF had brought a couple of friends to try it out with them and they had a blast pointing out all the alternative angles of their heist they could. "We had a group that was just chaos collaboration, like "snap that, use that to distract this dude, use this to knock out that guy, you could use the lights to melt the statue," Castillo said. "They said it was such a comforting experience to be able to couch co-op it." But there are other reasons to replay levels, because overpriced art pieces are just some of the items you can steal for your collection. "In future levels, it might be like, hey, this penguin seems really sad at his aquarium and he's super duper talented. He actually knows how to paint. Let's take him home," Castillo said. Once you've taken a photo of a target, an intel screen will pop up giving hints for how players can extract it. No Goblin Later on in the demo I passed a group of Corgi dogs I could use as a distraction during the heist and Castillo affirmed that they, too, can be smuggled home to Nifty's penthouse. From stealing gaudy art to nabbing neglected pets, Snap & Grab is a satire lampooning the habits of rich dorks and their vapid party guests. The developers at No Goblin are pretty class-conscious, Castillo noted -- historical artifacts are ignored to take things the rich value more. And stealing something could even impress someone else in Nifty's life: the detective tracking her down and building a case against her. Perhaps … something more romantic for Nifty? "Perhaps," Castillo hinted. (It's optional.) There's a lot of individuality to Snap & Grab, from the '80s glam setting to the mechanics to the humor. With multiple avenues for play and no failure state -- you keep taking photos until you find a heist route that works -- the game is a chill sandbox heist with personality to spare. Every photo of an obstacle can be placed on a timeline blueprint to plan out your heist. No Goblin "It's definitely for people who are interested in puzzle exploration games, people who enjoy being completionist like me," Castillo said. "I'd also say it's for people who are into weird and bad humor. Like, there's definitely one crowd that talks about how they saved 1,000 ferrets from a fur coat factory or, like, how owls have legs." The game is pointedly non-violent, with more slapstick and oddball humor than anything. When I asked which gag was their favorite, Castillo noted that if you go take a picture of the toilet, the game will mention that something's living in it. "That's all me," they said. "I'm gonna go on the record and say it's for the weirdos," Castillo said. Snap & Grab is coming out for PC, PS5 and Xbox in 2026.
The Verge
07-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Verge
The best games we saw during the Day of the Devs showcase
Now that Summer Game Fest 2025 is off and running, it's time for my favorite part of the show: Day of the Devs. Day of the Devs is a yearly showcase highlighting the newest, quirkiest indie releases, and it is frequently the source of some of my favorite games SGF has on offer. This year is another banger slate of titles from your favorite indie publishers, like Devolver Digital, Annapurna Interactive, Panic, and more. I'll have more to share about these games once the show is over, but for now, here are my faves from the Day of the Devs Summer Game Fest showcase 2025. Snap and Grab is a slick-looking action puzzle game that mixes Ocean's Eleven with Miami Vice. Set in the hyper neon aesthetic of the '80s, Snap and Grab lets you live out your master thief fantasies. Case the joint with your camera, taking pictures of the merchandise you wanna steal while also snapping pics of the people, places, and things that'll help your team get the goods and get out. Coming next year to PC, PS5, and Xbox Series consoles. Big Walk It's time to take a gander at the next game from Untitled Goose Game developer House House. In Big Walk, House House combines the peacefulness of a walking simulator with the wacky hijinks of multiplayer party games. You and your friends will take a… well, big walk through the countryside finding and solving puzzles using the game's unique proximity voice and text chat feature. Sword of the Sea Sword of the Sea is from the makers of Abzu and The Pathless. It's a skateboarding exploration narrative game in which you cruise around a desert world doing flips off dunes and sandy half-pipes. Sword of the Sea features music by Austin Wintory and very much reminds me of Sable and Journey, but with a Tony Hawk twist. Escape Academy 2 I loved the first Escape Academy and I'm incredibly geeked that the team at Coin Crew Games is back with a sequel. In Escape Academy 2, the developers gave the people what we wanted: a bigger school with even more puzzles to solve. And now, instead of selecting levels, you can find the puzzles yourself in an open-world explorable academy filled with secrets and clues. Unfollow me now, this is gonna be the only thing I talk about for the next week. Dosa Divas Dosa Divas from Thirsty Suitors developer Outerloop Games is a spicy RPG that'll make you hungry. In the game, you collect recipes and use them in cooking minigames to make food for people who have been overcome by a violent case of the itis. Dosa Diva 's turn-based combat features dodges and parries, which makes the game well situated to take advantage of the turn-based RPG hype generated by Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. Consume Me Never before has a game attacked me so violently, but in a way that still makes me really want to play it. Consume Me is a coming-of-age story that pays homage to the unique hell of being a teenage girl. Stress about your grades (rude), crushes (also rude), and weight (RUDE AS FUCK!) via a collection of WarioWare -esque minigames. This game looks like it'll cause me a unique amount of stress. I can't wait. Possessor(s) Heart Machine, maker of Hyper Light Drifter and this year's Hyper Light Breaker, is back with its next game, Possessor(s). In the game, you play as Luca, who has been forced into cooperation with the demon Rhem. Luca uses Rhem's powers to fight demons that have invaded their city. Together the two must solve the mystery of their world while exploring their ruined city in a search action adventure game (what the kids are calling Metroidvanias these days). Relooted Another side-scrolling action game steeped in afrofuturistic fantasy? Don't mind if I do! Relooted is a new game from South African-based developer Nyamakop. It combines endless-runner action with an Indiana Jones -type story. In the game, you and your friends team up to steal your culture's artifacts back from the museums that stole them in the first place. As you run through each location, your friends are standing by, ready to use their powers to clear any obstacles to ensure you've got a smooth path.
Engadget
06-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Engadget
Lego Voyagers is a co-op puzzle game from the studio behind Builder's Journey
To view this content, you'll need to update your privacy settings. Please click here and view the "Content and social-media partners" setting to do so. Annapurna Interactive showed off a first like at Lego Voyagers at Summer Game Fest Live, the next game from Light Brick Studio, the developers of Lego Builder's Journey . Lego Voyagers is co-op puzzle game where you and a friend will play as two Lego studs, traveling through a realistic, brick-based world solving puzzles. The trailer showed off several different locales your studs will journey through, including a Lego speedboat and rocket launch. To make your way through the game's various challenges, you'll move and build new structures by picking up bricks with your studs. The game looks like it builds on the calming vibes of Builder' s Journey , but with a focus on co-op gameplay. Light Brick's first game worked like a riff on Monument Valley , tasking you with building a path for your bricks through a minimalistic Lego world. Voyagers takes things in a Split Fiction- direction, just with a lot more chill. Lego Voyagers is "coming soon" to PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X / S, Nintendo Switch and PC. You'll be able to play with a friend using only one copy of the game thanks to a feature called Friend's Pass.
The Verge
28-05-2025
- Business
- The Verge
Host Geoff Keighley shared a list of
Summer Game Fest might have a lot of games. more than 60 'partners' that will be part of Summer Game Fest, including Annapurna Interactive, CD Projekt Red, Nintendo, PlayStation, and Xbox. And the list is apparently just 'Round 1.'
