Game Reviews

Fearless Wheels

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iOS
| Fearless Wheels
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Fearless Wheels
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iOS
| Fearless Wheels

Olympic athletes are an energetic bunch. When they're not competing for medals, they slip back into everyday routines of exercise, training, and creating dirt bike racing games for the App Store.

At least, that’s what Latvian BMX cyclist Arturs Matisons does - and the fruit of his labour is the surprisingly catchy Fearless Wheels.

No handlebars

The concept of Fearless Wheels will be immediately familiar to anyone who spent time with Excitebike, Joe Danger, or just about any other dirt bike-racing game.

You tear through courses replete with ramps, bumps, hills, and other inclines to launch off of and you attempt to do some tricks in the air, and maybe pop a wheelie or two, before remembering that you should focus on coming in first place.

Despite the familiarity of the mechanics, Fearless Wheels makes the concept feel peppy - if not entirely fresh - with its cute character design and physics-focused controls.

Two buttons on the left of the screen allow you to lean your bike forwards and backwards, which becomes integral to sticking landings and clearing small obstacles on the track.

While the initial purpose of these two buttons is to help balance your bike during the race, irresponsibility soon takes over and you'll use them to execute backflips on just about any jump that will support them.

Intrepid Tyres

Once the controls are mastered, Fearless Wheels really becomes an enjoyable little game.

Every track features bright, unique graphics, and it's clear that the developers took every effort possible not to simply reskin or reuse the same five levels.

In terms of challenge, Fearless Wheels hits the sweet spot of making the AI competitive but not overwhelmingly so. There's some push to upgrade different aspects of your bike like its wheels or shocks, but these are - for the most part - optional upgrades.

Once you've completed a few races you'll come to realise that the upgrade system is a perfect microcosm for the game itself. You can easily dive into everything that it has to offer and chase down first places finishes on every track, or you can content yourself with clearing just enough races to advance to the next set.

Fearless Wheels isn't a particularly deep game, but it satisfies, entertains, and challenges in all the right ways.

Fearless Wheels

Fun and low-investment, Fearless Wheels is a great dirt bike racer to keep around for idle moments
Score
Matthew Diener
Matthew Diener
Representing the former colonies, Matt keeps the Pocket Gamer news feed updated when sleepy Europeans are sleeping. As a frustrated journalist, diehard gamer and recovering MMO addict, this is pretty much his dream job.