Project Wheelie

About the Project

Project Wheelie is a prototype I made in a few weeks around January 2025 in my free time. It is my own take on the idea of a “car platformer”, heavily inspired by Edgar Mendonza’s “HELP! NO BRAKE”.

Level design is inspired by Super Monkey Ball and its stages that mix challenges of speed, balance, timing and routing. There are also some elements from Trackmania games which I’m a big fan of as well.

Features

• Arcade car physics that are challenging to master;
• 16 different stages with increasingly difficult layouts;
• Bronze, Silver, Gold medals to obtain, as well as a secret Author medal.

Project Details

Development Tools

The game was made in the Godot Engine, v4.2, using the Cyclops Level Builder plugin for level design. The prototype has no sound assets and no visual assets that aren’t solid boxes.

Development Process

The concept stage actually began mid-2024 after playing “HELP! NO BRAKE”. It’s really fun and more people should try it!

Well, the game has a Steam version in the works, but no news on its development (at time of writing, it’s 2025 and ETA for the game is still 2024). I wanted more, though, so I thought of trying to make something similar myself. I don’t have the skills or time to beat Mendonza to market, but it would be a fun dev exercise. I built an initial project that replicated the basic car mechanics, including turning, boosts, jumps and the wall-bounces that redirect the car (which aren’t in Project Wheelie anymore). Then shelved it for a bit.

I picked it back up during winter break (summer break in Brazil) as I wanted a pet project to play with for a bit. I was also playing through Super Monkey Ball at the time and thought, “Replaying these stages is surprisingly fun. Can I make a game like this?”. Then I picked the car platformer project back from the metaphorical shelf, moved some stage and timer scripts from Movement FPS and got to work.

Challenges and Solutions

Development was smoother than usual, likely because I ignored most of the aesthetics matters (excluding the car animations because… I felt like doing them :3), but at time of writing I didn’t have many opportunities for other people to test my game. I didn’t feel great uploading it to RPG Beta Testers discord server, my friends were a bit busy, and I didn’t take the game to any conventions or events. Still got some friends and randoms testing the game in front of me though, which led to some controls tweaks for the prototype, like a brake button or turning in place.

Future Plans

This is so far the project I’m most proud of for its toy-like nature and very satisfying gameplay. I think this game, given more level gimmicks and an art direction, could find a target audience on Steam, but I can’t develop it yet as I need to focus on my studies first.

If I do ever pick this up, it may make sense to get an artist, make a vertical slice, and fund the game via Kickstarter. We’ll see.

Download

You can find Project Wheelie in my Itch.io page.