“Mon dieu…LOOK AT ZE SIZE OF ZAT PARMIGIANO!” shout the rats as they shuffle in graceful yet unquestionably hip fashion. They’re right. The giant cheese wheel I’m trying to roll past them to the safety of a fellow named the Mouseman isn’t small. That’s probably why its sheer girth is being conveyed by a handy circular status indicator which draws its form from The Elder Scrolls 4‘s infamous persuasion wheel. This is just one way the devs taking part in the latest Wheeljam have managed to shoehorn Oblivion’s unique minigame interfaces into their own little projects.
Building on last year’s edition, Wheeljam 2 took the goal of making a game that in some way incorporates Oblivion’s persuasion wheel, and expands it to include TES 4’s fiendishly annoying lockpicking minigame too. “YOUR GAME MUST HAVE EITHER THE LOCKPICKING MINIGAME OR PERSUASION WHEEL IN SOME CAPACITY,” the organisers shouted. “YOU DO NOT NEED TO USE BOTH, THOUGH YOU MAY.”
Cue 40 entries submitted over the course of last week. Their numbers include the likes of zombie-infested shopping trips, foxy rail shooters, and bureaucracy simulators all incorporating the wheel or lockpicking in some way. I’m very fond of ‘Meditations on Lockpicking’, which aims to make having your picks inevitably fail to poke the nubs at the right moment into a relaxing pastime.
Then, there’s The Big Cheese. It’s a simple game about rolling cheese across dingy and narrow cellars, getting it to the right spot while limiting how much of the wheel obstacles like the grooving French rats can pluck away in chunks before you get there. I cannot stop getting the cheese stuck on bits of wood, or taking 20 minutes to get it pointing at the right angle to roll up a short incline. I survive, but not without the outer crust of the wheel being stolen by the oui rodents.
I’m blaming Oblivion’s persuasion wheel for this, even though all it does is neatly show me how much cheese has been lost to my incompetence. It’s your fault, persuasion wheel, because without you this wonderful game wouldn’t exist.
It’s well worth checking all of the submissions for Wheeljam 2 out, then maybe firing up Oblivion Remastered to marvel once more at the wheel in its natural habitat.
