Format: Flash
Developer: OneClickDog
www.fastgames.com/littlewheel.html

Not that you asked, but I think I’m getting broody. Some ancient genetic switch must have flipped deep within me, and I’m suddenly excited about collapsible buggy designs, suddenly strangely worried by air-borne kitchen germs, and suddenly planning a careful slipstreaming of nieces’ and nephews’ possessions, hoping to time the arrival of my new family to ride a wave of cast-offs from the cradle right through to university age. It makes sense, really: I’m in my early thirties, so it’s about time I started thinking of an heir. Who else will inherit the many boxes of old bottle tops, bent paperclips, amusingly shaped chunks of granite and rusty doorknobs I’ve accrued over the years, the spoils of an illustrious Western life?

At least, I assume I’m getting broody. Maybe I’m just yearning for an evening course in practical electronics. The first twinge I got was watching Wall-E several months ago – there was something about the chirpy little blighter’s careful pride in his own belongings, and the way he set himself rocking as he went to sleep at night, that hit me with a force I wasn’t expecting. I felt a little of the same feeling a few weeks back, this time with Silent Running – the fate of those brave wobbling tubs of silicon seemed unbearably poignant as they rushed headlong towards oblivion, with only the wild-eyed Bruce Dern for company.



And now Little Wheel has sealed the deal. I definitely want kids, and, if possible, I’d like them to be robotic kids: following me with a gentle clanking sound as I potter around the house looking for a misplaced notebook, chortling in bursts of scratchy static as I recount for the nth time the hilarious anecdote about that occasion when I got my tongue stuck in a chain-link fence.

Little Wheel, you see, is entirely adorable: a dreamy sepia-washed adventure game in which a lone robot, awoken by a lightning strike, sets off to jumpstart an entire mechanical civilisation 10,000 years after they accidentally disconnect themselves. Playing out in a series of art deco crows’ nests, it manages to be both rickety and graceful, sparse and lustrously elegant, and its interface – a smattering of bold luminous circles for the most part – is so beautifully employed that it’s amazing to discover that any of it serves a purpose deeper than mere decoration.



There’s very little to find fault with in this particular robot fairy tale, told, as it is, in a striking silhouette. Yet, if you really had to pick on a single aspect to complain about – this is the internet, after all, and we don’t want someone to come along and unplug it if they think we’ve finally become satisfied with something – you could always settle on the fact that Little Wheel hardly poses much of a challenge: the most complex of its conundrums can be solved in about thirty seconds, including the time it takes to call out to anyone nearby that – a-ha! – you’ve got it, and perform a swift victory dance (just me?), and most of the interactions seem like gentle character touches rather than real brainteasers, such as a sneaky early sequence in which you have to jump repeatedly on an ancient lift to get it to descend.

That kind of gripe would be entirely missing the point, of course: Little Wheel is web-gaming as a form of bed-time story, and the real thrust of the puzzles seems to be creating an analogue for the slow turning of pages. This is a simple treat, then, but one to be savoured; as its lonely hero stoically clanks towards his appointment with destiny, you may discover that you too would be happy to claim him as one of the family.