Review | Van Wheel Gone
For those experiencing loss…
…were the first words that filled the screen of the trailer for the adventure platformer game Van Wheel Gone. I am, unfortunately, experiencing loss. Those four words felt like a missile to the heart. What followed were the varied and lush landscapes that you would traverse in this small indie title, made by one person, Zhengyu Ye. The point of the game is simple: your van lost its wheels, but it never needed them to begin with. When the game flashes “Stand Tall”, the van wiggles upward with orange legs. You have 9 circles of Hell to explore, searching to regain the wheels that were pulled away from you and into the great unknown.
You may lose the wheels
Beyond the poignant message of the story, the gameplay of Van Wheel Gone was pleasantly surprising. The platforming and combat are all items you gain throughout the levels, like the scissors to swipe at enemies, or headlights to dispel them. As an avid platformer fan, the game truly kicks off when you get the triple jump item, allowing you to explore the levels however you please. Luckily, that concept of progression builds with each level you progress, also matching the narrative of picking yourself back up after losing something (or someone) essential to your everyday life, and finding unlikely ways to grow stronger amidst the fallout.
My favorite item of the game is easily the ability to speed up time, making all of your gained abilities stronger and more developed. Don't we all wish we could speed up time, sometimes? I found myself scraping all areas of the different levels when I had this unlocked, enjoying the dense vistas scattered with unusual landmarks that all fit the theme of each level. Lust, for example, is full of bodies stacked amongst each other, whereas Heresy has crosses along every mountain that surrounds you. Each level presents a unique challenge, some more simplistic than others, but they're all memorable and distinct in visual design.
You may face Hell
There are nine levels to explore in your journey to find your lost wheels. I've shown a few in the screenshots above, but would prefer anyone to jump in without seeing much like I did. Besides the first and last level, I found them all intriguing enough to wander around, and there's a secret for true explorers to find amongst most of them too. As someone who loves visual spectacles in games, I found the levels satisfying in the same vein as Journey, or more recently Sword and the Sea. However, the broader theme of this game left a much stronger impact, and maybe it was a right-time-right-place thing for me, but I think it will speak to others in similar circumstances.
Van Wheel Gone is a game soaked in the vibes and viscera of the worlds you explore. Like many of these games, a great soundtrack will enhance and round out the experience. Every world presented in the game has accompanying music that accomplishes this task and more. I even sat at the menu screen for minutes to hear the full track before playing, a melancholic overture to the game’s themes felt apt. Within each world, however, the mood and genres shift according to the level, keeping your ears as open to discovery as your eyes. I wish I could share the soundtrack here, and this paragraph is a plea to have it available to listen to externally. But for now, it must be heard in its most appropriate environment, within the game.
Stand Tall
I feel I’ve described enough of the game for anyone who’s interested. I didn’t want this review to be descriptive, but it felt right to at least give some baseline for what to expect from Van Wheel Gone. The heart of the game and the reason it was made, however, culminates after beating the final level (and boss). It is obvious it was made around the experience of grief, a loss all too human but still unfamiliar, and hard to navigate for anyone in the throes of it. Things may ease with time, but even on a good day, a simple memory or personal item can swirl the emotions back, a complex storm of thoughts and feelings that cannot be ignored. There is always a learning experience through life, and through death all the same. Facing grief and overcoming it are herculean tasks, but this game manages to capture the profoundness of that feeling, and the ways we scrape and climb out of it, if even for a moment.
I made a promise to myself to find a healthy way forward after losing my best friend, and in writing, I’ve been able to explore a once forgotten hobby that I find deeply therapeutic. Many people describe loss as a physical condition as much as emotional. My partner described losing her brother as feeling like a limb being taken from her. I now know that pain, unable to function the same way as I did before. However, we find ways to continue, not forced by life but earned by waking up each day. This game speaks to the unlikely ways we all confront and grow around our grief, through meaningful art, friends and family for support, or keeping the ones we’ve lost alive in every action and step forward we take.
Thank you Zhengyu, for making this game, for others and for yourself. I hope they were able to find their own peace through creating Van Wheel Gone, and I was lucky enough to be looking for meaningful art and stumbled upon this game in particular when it felt I needed it most. There is a bright future for Zhengyu in game development, and a bright future for us all if we can work our way there. There will still be days where we feel like a van without wheels, but there will be days when we're lifted by something greater. Getting the wheels back is within our grasp, no matter how hard we have to fight for it.
This review is dedicated to my best friend
1994-2025
