Last week, Imgnation br released the first alpha gameplay footage for its upcoming combat racer, Monowheels VR. In the footage above, you can see high-speed races, dystopian environments, and brutally chaotic action across the wasteland of Monowheels‘ world. Calling it F-Zero meets Mad Max feels all-too-appropriate after watching the gameplay video.
In F-Zero or Mario Kart, two popular Nintendo racing franchises, you race around different tracks, battling your opponents through each curve and checkpoint, in a constant struggle for first place. The hallmark of the Mario Kart series, in addition to the classic Nintendo characters, has always been the various different power-ups you’ll find to enact your punishment on the foes in front of you.
By utilizing a much darker and more mature setting, similar to that of Mad Max in terms of style, Monowheels evokes a very different setting. Rather than hurtling turtle shells and banana peels at your adversaries, you’ll ride up beside them and pummel their faces in with brutal weaponry.
The vehicles in Monowheels are large, circular cars that appear to be powered by equal parts gravity-defying physics and rocket-boosted engines. In the gameplay teaser, we can see that the two Vive controllers are being held as if you had your hands on an actual steering wheel, which is an interesting mechanic.
In one portion of the video, we see the player reach behind his back, similar to how you switch from a gun to a shield in Space Pirate Trainer, and pull out a hammer that he uses to bash the racer next to him. Since this is still very early footage, it’s hard to tell if power-ups like those in Mario Kart or Wipeout will make their way to Monowheels VR, but the possibilities for track and racer variety alone make this a great title to keep on your radar.
According to the developers, Monowheels is being built as a competitive multiplayer racing game “for all major VR platforms” aiming for a Q2 2017 release on Steam. I’d imagine that means HTC Vive, Oculus Rift with Touch, and PS VR with Move, but only the first in that list is shown in the video. They also intend to create a smaller mobile version of the game for Gear VR as well.
