WheelMates Preview: Joy Ride | The Gamerheads Podcast

I love puzzle games, and one of the games I checked out during Steam Next Fest was WheelMates, a two-player puzzle game that has you and a friend playing as remote-control cars.

The first thing I noticed about WheelMates was its environment. The developers created a world where I really felt like I was driving around a house. The demo had me racing through a kitchen, navigating air vents, and exploring a garage. The attention to detail in each area adds to the immersion, and it's one of the things I loved most about the demo.

The puzzles are clever, too. Like any good two-player puzzle game, WheelMates requires both players to be on the same page in order to solve them. One of my favorites involved using a crane to lift a metal tank and place it into a container. To accomplish this, one player had to use their car to operate the up-and-down controls on one console, while the other controlled the crane's arm from a separate location. Of course, before we could even use the crane, we first had to figure out how to restore power to it.

I personally had an issue with driving the car at first. I don’t blame the game’s design so much as my own brain trying to grapple with the controls. There’s a forward and reverse function, along with a separate handbrake button. I would often try to stop my vehicle by hitting reverse, which changed the camera angle and, of course, didn’t stop my motion. It simply reversed it. Once I got it through my head that I needed to use the handbrake, things became much smoother.

The demo includes the first few levels and does a good job showcasing what WheelMates is all about, while highlighting the types of puzzles players can expect in the full release. If multiplayer puzzle games like It Takes Two are something you enjoy, give WheelMates a try.