Annapurna makes its first new game announcement since staff exodus

By Tomas Franzese Published October 17, 2024

We got a look at Wheel World, a game from Nidhogg developer Messhof and publisher Annapurna Interactive, during Thursday’s Xbox Partner Preview. This marks the first major game-related announcement Annapurna Interactive has made since a massive staff exodus in early September.

Annapurna Interactive made a name for itself as a publisher behind premier indie games such as What Remains of Edith Finch and Stray. Reports say that its leadership disagreed with how Annapurna Pictures owner Megan Ellison was running the company, and after a planned spinoff failed and a deal was made with Remedy Entertainment without Annapurna Interactive leadership’s knowledge, 25 staff members resigned. While Annapurna voiced its intention to continue publishing games and honoring preexisting contracts after this happened, Annapurna Interactive is not the same as it was just a couple of months ago.

As a result, Annapurna Interactive has not made new announcements since this happened. That finally changed at October 2024’s Xbox Partner Preview, as Messhof and Annapurna Interactive unveiled Wheel World.

Wheel World technically isn’t a new game, but a rebranding of one. Annapurna and Messhof revealed this game at a 2023 showcase as Ghost Bike, a game about someone biking in the afterlife after getting killed in a car crash. Throughout development, Messhof says the changes were made to make the game more fun to play and lighter in tone, so the name Ghost Bike didn’t quite fit anymore. Now, Wheel World is an open-world game about a cyclist named Kat competing in various races to “save Wheel World from total collapse.”

With a slight delay and new title, Wheel World will now release on PC and Xbox Series X/S via Game Pass, as well as PlayStation 5, sometime in early 2025.