Wheelborn

Вы — одно из колёсных существ в атмосферном разрушенном королевстве. Ваша задача — исследовать мир, полный тайн, сражаться с врагами, собирать ресурсы и развивать свою деревню.

Игра 'Wheelborn' оставляет смешанные впечатления. С одной стороны, оригинальный концепт передвижения на колесе-машине и исследования руин пост-апокалиптического мира захватывает с первых минут. Атмосфера упадка и запустения отлично передана визуальным стилем и музыкой. Собирание ресурсов и крафт необходимых деталей для улучшения колеса придают игре ощущение выживания. Однако, геймплей кажется несколько однообразным. Постоянное повторение одних и тех же действий – сбор, крафт, исследование, – быстро утомляет. Боевая система оставляет желать лучшего, она ощущается неточной и неуклюжей. К тому же, в игре встречаются баги и проблемы с оптимизацией, что негативно сказывается на общем впечатлении. В итоге, 'Wheelborn' – это игра с интересной идеей и неплохой реализацией, но с заметными недостатками. Она может понравиться любителям постапокалиптических сеттингов и игр на выживание, однако ее стоит приобретать только в том случае, если вы готовы мириться с повторяющимся геймплеем и техническими проблемами.

I'm giving it a recommended rating because there are interesting ideas, mechanics, and a surprisingly good production value for a free game. But before playing you should be aware that it has a lot of issues, to the point that it feels like a work in progress more than anything. Anyway, you're in a world of sentient cars, being a car yourself, collecting resources, talking to various characters with some interesting dialogues and world-building. The combat consists of bumping into other vehicles while using your boost, which works pretty well, although I would have appreciated some kind of locking system. I didn't go far into the game though, because the accumulation of small flaws made the experience a bit tedious. For instance the camera often went left or right for some reason, even when there was nothing to see there. Or the inputs displayed in the instructions didn't match the ones on my controller. None of those ruin the game by any means, and I may give it another shot if I ever hear of an update. But in any case I still recommend.

What a genuinely fascinating little experience Wheelborn is a very pleasant surprise that, frankly, only a free project driven by stubborness and passion could deliver because the idea would otherwise seem simply too "unmarketable", touching on too many niches that don't intersect enough, would likely not pay off as a commercial project to exist. And I am damn glad it does. It's sense of exploration is genuine, there are things to discover in this weird world and that, I'd say, is by far Wheelborn's greatest strength besides the sheer weirdness of the concept and the creativity in world building that results from it. While I wish the vehicle driving was more in-depth to take full advantage of it - involving actual progression with customization, more "stylish" maneuvers like drifting and air tricks, etc. what is here serves it well enough and there are absolutely sections which take good advantage of its nature as something of a vehicle driving sim. Visually it's bloody inspired, though I swear I can feel some late 2000's cartoon energy in there. Slugterra, perhaps? Regardless, it has a visual identity and I love the bizarre character / enemy design when contrasted with the more grounded architecture and environment. As something you can easily beat in three hours, even if trying to get all the secrets and easter eggs? Absolutely worth every second of it.

"Wheelborn" is surprisingly one of the least awful amateur projects here on the "free" section of Steam Direct. This is a console-esque third person driving/brawling game with retro graphics, but unfortunately while this shows promise, it turns out to be a bit of a shallow experience and it's riddled with bugs that can turn out to be game breaking. What do you do in the game? Choose one of five distinct character types, explore following your own path by driving around the semi-open world (you're like a vehicle animal thing), build a cave village, face foes, meet characters, discover the lore, there's a welcome bit of narrative here. And I think it's easy to point out when an obviously awful game is awful, it's actually a lot harder when you come across a game that maybe even could have been okay, but falls short. Visually, this has some fairly mediocre/dated looking graphics that will understandably be a turn off for a lot of gamers, and it's a big contributor to the failure of the game to attract gamers despite having no up-front cost. Now on to pricing and value for gamers. Most "free" games on Steam aren't really free. There's usually some kind of monetisation, from nasty mobile app cash shops, or content locked behind DLC, or donations being requested, to any other number of shady pricing schemes that could mislead gamers, but in this case I'm glad to say this really does appear to be a fully free game. Nothing demonstrates a developers belief in themselves and their work than giving it away without any remuneration. This is a service to themselves, and the gaming industry, and should be applauded. Of course, just because something is free, doesn't necessarily mean it's valuable, or something you might want to spend your time on. In terms of public reception, this failed. There's over 130 million unique gamers visiting Steam every month. SteamDB showed the game peaked at [b]only 9 concurrent players[/b]... this is a dismal public reception. This was so bad they couldn't even give it away. Since free games don't contribute to your game collector badge and other profile stuff, is this a worthwhile addition to your Steam library? I think you should give this one a miss. Although it's free, your time and storage are valuable resources, and the market is filled with superior options.

pretty fun, loved the twist in the plot

The game is a remarkable freeware collect-a-thon, with a great deal of lore that's a bit like if Bionicle centered around creatures from Spore. You play as a rescued Wildling baby who was nursed to maturity by the princess of a fallen nation. Your goal is to gather the resources necessary to build a village capable of supporting the beginnings of a new civilization. In opposition to this goal is the myriad number of Wildlings and the Dark Shaman who led them to new power in exchange for the sacrifice of wheels. Movement feels great, if a little clunky with regards to some surfaces, and combat is a reasonably intuitive pattern recognition game. Lore is presented in the form of these darling music-box shadow play theaters found throughout the wasteland, that help contextualize what your enemies are and who they were before. You also get to meet with survivors of the calamity and engage in light conversation. It's really good, I had a great time with it!