Wheel World, an indie cycling adventure game by Messhof, pushes the boundaries of smaller development teams. Utilizing procedural generation with Houdini, the game creates large biomes, allowing a small team of around ten people to design accessible open-world environments. This tool significantly eases the workload of artists, giving designers freedom to customize assets dynamically. Drawing inspiration from major titles like Breath of the Wild, Wheel World demonstrates how indie developers can leverage modern technology to approach expansive game development without being limited by team size.
"Even for a reasonably sized art team, I think building a city is quite daunting," says co-art director Dan Hunter. "For a small team like ours, it meant that I could create a tool that, for example, creates barriers like a wooden fence, and then I can give that to Mark [Essen, creative director] or other designers and they can specify the length and colour. Rather than me going, 'You need a fence that's 10 meters long,' you can just say, 'Here's a fence, build it three miles if you want," and then you build on that."
"Not to be confused with generative AI, procedural generation relies on providing rules and parameters, which, in the case of building a town, could mean determining width and length of buildings and how far apart they are from each other, but which can also include some randomisation to add variation."
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