WheelMates Guide: Full Walkthrough Kitchen to Backyard

Quick answer: WheelMates runs Tutorial → Kitchen → Hallway → Neuro-Void: Fragments (visited twice) → Garage → Backyard → Shed → Backyard, in that order. Each area is gated by a gadget you pick up along the way — Grapple, Magnetic Grabber, Magnet Wheels, Phase Shifter and Paintgun — so you'll backtrack through earlier rooms once you can reach places you couldn't before.

This walkthrough is based on a full co-op playthrough recording, cross-checked against Steam's official achievements page for level and gadget names. If you're stuck on the symbol-lock wall specifically, that has its own page — this guide covers the rest of the house.

Tutorial: the basics

Before the house proper, the tutorial covers the controls you'll use all game:

• Accelerate with the trigger (R2 on controller), brake with the shoulder button
• Jumps have a charge-up — hold before releasing for a bigger hop, useful for gaps later on
• Co-op mechanisms need both players pressing their button at the same time; one player alone can't trigger them
• Stuck, flipped, or wedged somewhere? Press Start to self-destruct and respawn — it doesn't cost you progress or count as a death

Kitchen: watch the green field

Kitchen is the first real area. You'll collect Neuro-Core orbs and Napkin Sketch story pieces scattered around the counters and cabinets.

The one hazard to know about: a green toxic force field (an in-universe hazard called BH-19 in the game's lore) sits in part of the kitchen — this is what the search term "kitchen force field" is asking about. Touching it doesn't just hurt, it instantly destroys your car, so route around it rather than trying to drive through.

Hallway: sync and lift

Hallway introduces a "Sync Track" minigame — a short track section where the two cars need to move together rather than separately. There's also a scissor lift that only rises if both players activate it at the same time, similar to the co-op prompts from the tutorial.

If you're the type who checks every corner, there's a duck collectible tucked away here — it's a small easter egg, not required for progression, but it's the first of several you'll see before Backyard.

Neuro-Void: Fragments (first visit)

This is the surreal level — official screenshots show a purple sky and a tornado of broken furniture, and it's unlike anything else in the house. Two puzzles live here:

The symbol-lock wall. Several wall panels show "bar and dot" symbol equations. It looks like math, or Morse code, or a 12345-style number lock — it's actually none of those. The full solve, including the trick that fooled two experienced streamers for about 40 minutes, is on the Void puzzle page.

Steam pipe routing. Separately from the symbol lock, each player works a panel of steam pipe valves, and together you have to route steam to the side that needs it to open a door. It's trial-and-error alignment — there's no fixed answer key, just keep adjusting valves on both sides until the pressure reaches the right pipe.

Garage: hoist and power

Garage introduces the Magnetic Grabber gadget in earnest: you'll use a magnetic hoist to move a battery from where it's stored to where it's needed. A power panel later in the area needs both players lighting up connections together before it activates — another two-person, same-time interaction like the Hallway lift.

Backyard (first visit): ducks and antennas

Backyard has the game's biggest collectible push: 15 ducks total, 8 yellow and 7 camouflage, tied to the "Right where they're belongs to be" achievement (more on that on the achievements page). They're easy to miss if you're focused on the main path, so it's worth a slower pass through the yard.

There's also a three-antenna puzzle here, confirmed by name in an official Steam hotfix ("Fixed additional progression issues in the Shed and the Backyard's three-antenna puzzle"). In the recorded playthrough, the mechanic was: align each of three radar dishes to the right angle, power them, then activate — the game confirms each one with "third antenna is aligned. Got all three points" once all three are done, and that opens the way to the final story beats.

Neuro-Void: Fragments (second visit) and Shed

The second Neuro-Void visit and the Shed area that follows it are where the house gets its most maze-like: another symbol-lock wall (same mechanic as the first, see the Void puzzle page) and laser-grid trap corridors you'll need to time your driving around. Shed itself is effectively an underground facility rather than a room in the house — expect more platforming-style gaps than earlier areas.

Backyard (second visit) and the ending

The route loops back through Backyard a second time on the way to the ending. If you skipped ducks or antenna work on your first pass, this is your chance to catch up before finishing the story.

Honest notes from the playthrough

A couple of things worth knowing before you start, straight from the people who streamed a full run: the controls "take getting used to," particularly with a controller in tight spaces, and there's a fair amount of backtracking once new gadgets open up old rooms — the streamers themselves called it "tedious" in places. Neither is a dealbreaker, but it's worth knowing going in rather than being surprised by it. For a fuller sense of how the game holds up overall, see the review.