Ceci est une ancienne révision du document !
Website: https://agateau.com/projects/pixelwheels/
Code: https://github.com/agateau/pixelwheels/
Price: Free!
Blurb: “Top-down retro racing game for PC (Linux, Intel-based Mac, Windows) and Android. Race for first place on various tracks. Pick up bonuses to boost your position or slow down competitors!“
We are talking top-down racing today, around a track, with pixel cars. I mean, who does not get a bit nostalgic around Christmas? I want you to conjure memories of Supercars 1 & 2 (1991), Nitro (1990), Roadkill (1994), Overdrive (1993), Turbo (1989) on your home computer. Hell, even the clones, like Apogee’s Death Rally (1996). I want you to think about Sega’s four-player arcade game with four steering wheels that would rob you and your mates blind on weekends. This does not include things like Ironman Stewart’s or Badlands or any of the slightly twisted / isometric racing games, or I’ll be at this until next year. (I stopped counting at 712!!) However, if this makes you happy, please DO think about it, I just won’t be talking about it.
Now, when you talk about something, somewhere, along the line you have to compare it to something else, because if you have no point of reference, how do you know if you are moving?
These days, you can find top-down racers everywhere, from your phone to steam. It makes it difficult to write about where you, the reader, won’t just write it off as another top-down racer. (Believe it or not, but this is the FOURTH iteration of this article.)
We will head over to itch.io for this one, as the Flathub version is two versions behind (https://agateau.itch.io/pixelwheels). Not only is it free, you can grab the source code and modify it to your twisted desires. Which is why we are talking about this specific one today.
Back in 1983, my first top-down racer was written in BASIC on a ZX spectrum and the red ‘car’ flicked from 8×8 cell to 8×8 cell. That put me off programming for years and I don’t think I ever gave it another thought until the Amiga racers in the 1989-1991 era, culminating with Codemasters’ excellent title, Micro Machines, for the PC. The top-down genre, either had your car speed around a simple single screen track or had the camera fixed to your car with the track extending out of the screen. Think of something like Rally-X.
Pixel Wheels falls into the latter category. It is a single developer game (by Aurélien Gâteau), so we can call it an Indie game. It works great on Linux, and plays buttery smooth on my potato laptop. Considering the game is written in Java!! It has that 16-bit aesthetic but the sprites are definitely not 16-bit. By this, I mean that they don’t conform to the little 16-bit memory-limited sprites you got to see on those machines. They look good for an Indie game; they are not great, and don’t jump out at you. That said… You do get to drive the Batmobile! <insert fanfare here> P.S. The Batmobile is a locked vehicle at the beginning, so you will have to play a bit!
What was that you said? Sorry I could not hear you over the awesomeness of me driving the Batmobile. What more do you want to know? Go get the game, it has the Batmobile for you to drive… OK, I suppose Ronnie will discard this article if I don’t tell you more.
Now, I have not played this with friends like I used to with Supercars or Micro Machines, I just moved to a new city and have not really made that type of friends. Thus, this article will be based on single-player experience.
I’d like to mention that this project is an ongoing one, and seems to be a labour of love. Unlike ‘Real World Racing’ – another top-down title I was really hyped for that died once it went to steam and people paid $15 for it. The developer gives an update every month and it is inspiring to read (https://agateau.com/2022/09-update/).
The music, though fun, needs something, I can’t put my finger on it, However, I did not get hearing fatigue like you do on games where the tune repeats ad nauseam. The sounds were also OK, though I would like some things to be a bit more ‘punchy’. Now, before I get crucified here, the game is in version 0.23 – nowhere near version 1.0, so things may change in the future and for 0.2 it is more than adequate! If you are a muso, why not offer to help out the guy??
The gameplay caught me by surprise. Unlike the other titles mentioned before, you have no accelerate, only brake (like another title on itch.io called ‘HELP, NO BRAKE’, 
). Firing your weapons also had no brake. You do one action and it completes. This is an interesting mechanism, and one that makes the game a lot more fun. The pickups are sorta crappy crates that litter the track; however, they allow for sprite transitions. Awesome touch! I picked up a crate that had a missile bonus and immediately I had a large red and white missile strapped to my vehicle. Not just overlaid, the surfboards on my roof were replaced by the rocket! I am a big fan of things changing in-game when you do something like don armour, and your character sprite changes too. These are the quality changes that make a game great. Unlike any of the titles mentioned above, the cars in this game are not uniform, You have large pink Cadillacs and skinny rockets too!
The game is written in Java, but the sprites are done in Aseprite (you can grab a trial version at: https://www.aseprite.org/). You can alter the .ase files with LibreSprite too (https://libresprite.github.io). Let’s face it, at the moment, the sprites are a bit weak, so how about you change them to UFO’s and have some UFO racing? XD
If you just want to play some now, you can grab it on your phone via F-droid and see what it is about.
If you want to tell us anything: misc@fullcirclemagazine.org