'I sit in terror looking at the 750,000 wishlists': A nervous dev brings a classic Flash game to Steam
"Moments before this release of Happy Wheels, I sit in terror looking at the 750,000 wishlists statistic.
"I realistically was thinking maybe 5k at best, and then maybe it would gain some momentum as it casually settles into its new environment. After all, the game has been publicly available for 16 years.
"As a 20+ year Steam connoisseur and a game developer with zero contacts in the industry, it's both shocking and supremely welcoming to get this type of reception in the form of this absurd number 2 weeks after adding it to the store. Thank you so much to those that, for some unfathomable reason, still find Happy Wheels at least somewhat interesting."
In 2021 Chrome finally killed Adobe Flash and with it countless fantastic browser games.
That's why it's always great to see a Flash classic survive, like Happy Wheels, the mega-popular ragdoll physics racing game-slash-bloodbath. Its developer, Jim Bonacci, created a Javascript version in 2020 so the classic game could live beyond Chrome and Adobe's murder party, and this week it finally arrived on Steam, too. I'm already having a bloody good time with it:
It's just as fun as you remember and it only costs $5 on Steam. Hopefully all those folks who wishlisted it will dive back in for some gruesome nostalgia, and maybe some younger gamers will find it for the first time.