What are the threads that connect Nidhogg, a multiplayer dueling game that thrives on bloody chaos and theserene and wonderfully picturesque pedal-bike racer, Wheel World?
Well, both are developed by U.S. indie studio Messhof and, as explained by company co-founder and creative director Mark Essen, both are video games he wanted to play but couldn’t find anywhere else.
During a chat with Game Developer earlier this year, Essen outlined how the studio designed its supernatural sojourn (ancient cycling spirts are very real in this painterly reality) and the challenges that came with swapping the 2D arenas of Nidhogg for the verdant three-dimensional plains of Wheel World.
Open-world development is a bumpy road
Essen explains Messhoff ramped up Wheel World production slowly over the years and had around ten people working on the title at the peak of development—though he notes that other staffers came and went as needed. He says the pivot from 2D to 3D wasn’t exactly a “walk in the park” and took longer than expected, not least because the team couldn’t effectively assess how macro gameplay elements were taking shape until they had fleshed out a good portion of the playspace.
“We wanted this to truly be an open world that players could explore in any direction they wanted. It’s a technically challenging genre to work in, you don’t really get a sense of the macro gameplay until you’ve built quite a lot of stuff. We had a variety of strategies to edit things in rough broad strokes or edit localized areas at a time,” says Essen.
“Nailing the average bike speed was something we tried to get early on, because it impacted the distances between everything in the game, which also factored into the pacing. We did use some tricks like making the bike feel faster using FOV (field of view) and camera angles. The kph gauge has a multiplier on it so that it was still in the realm of how fast a real bike can go.”
Essen says Messhof spent a huge amount of time reshaping the landscape to ensure that objectives and collectibles appeared at correct intervals. With so many moving parts, however, making even small tweaks became increasingly expensive. Spend too much time tinkering with an open world project and you might start unraveling the very fabric of your game.
Discussing how Messhof sought to gently steer players through their island realm, which can largely be explored at will (although that might present some challenges players aren’t equipped for), Essen explains the core narrative—which requires players to outrace bike-riding bosses to collect sacred bike parts—provide some semblance of structure without feeling too on rails.
Additional bike parts can also be found scattered across the landscape, which pushes players to keep moving in search of shiny new components that can be used to trick out their cherished two-wheeler for specific events.
“We encouraged players to explore quickly, but story beats naturally guide you to easier races in the Farmlands first—where you can also face the first boss. Velo City is the toughest area, with tight turns, aggressive AI, and heavy traffic, so we gated it with ‘bike snobs’ who won’t let you in until you’ve upgraded all five bike parts,” continues Essen.
“Beyond that, we left room for player strategy. The BMX track, for example, might be easier with a high-handling, high-power bike for sharp turns and quick acceleration, but you could also choose a drift build that grants boost on slides, or use the Cucaracha frame to jump rolling bumps. We made sure tracks varied in elevation, turns, obstacles, and surfaces so different builds felt viable.”
Messhof’s ultimate aim was to craft unique and diverse open world that actually rewards exploration. “We wanted a large open world with towns, countryside, and lots to explore. The style had to be achievable by a small art team and feel like a cohesive, believable place—not something thrown together from stock assets,” he adds.
“The game’s world is an alternate universe where life and death revolve around bicycles. Visual inspirations included old Tour de France posters and early 20th-century travel posters—thick, hand-drawn outlines and bold shapes. We also looked at comics including Moebius, John Singer Sargent’s landscapes, David Hockney, and Pop Art in general. And of course other games too like Jet Set Radio.”
It was a lofty goal considering the studio’s art team oscillated between two and three people throughout production, but I think it’s reasonable to say Messhof delivered on that promise. There’s plenty of fun to be had in hurling your haunted bicycle through breakneck races but, during my time with the title, I found nothing quite compared to simply taking in the sights under Wheel World’s gleaming topaz skies.