WheelMates Guide: Full Walkthrough Kitchen to Backyard

Quick answer: WheelMates runs Tutorial → Kitchen → Hallway → Neuro-Void: Fragments → Garage → Neuro-Void: Fragments again → 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. Use the Void puzzle solution for the symbol-lock wall, all puzzles for the other puzzle types, collectibles for optional pickups, and achievements for unlock requirements.

Video walkthrough: jump to each area

Prefer to watch? These timestamps jump straight to each area in a full-game co-op recording on YouTube (about 7 hours to the credits, with commentary):

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): the symbol wall

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. You're pulled in straight after Hallway.

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

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. After that, the story sends you back into the Neuro-Void to pick up a new ability.

Neuro-Void: Fragments (second visit): the steam pipes

The return trip is built around a steam pipe routing puzzle. Each player works their own side of a pipe network, and steam has to pass through both sides to reach the pipe that opens the gate. Some pipes are dead ends no matter how you turn them, and in the recording the solving move came from swapping which pipe the steam was fed into, not from turning the same pieces over and over.

The tip that saves the most time, straight from the recording: a nozzle placed on a pipe blocks it, so "you can literally put a nozzle on every single one and then remove the one" on the route you want. Talk through where your steam is coming out — you often can't see your partner's side, and the gate only opens when both halves line up (3:25:44). There are also optional grates in the same room that the pipes can open for extra collectibles.

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. Backyard also has mini-game stations; playing them all is its own achievement.

Shed: keypad walls, lasers and void portals

Shed is effectively an underground facility rather than a room in the house — expect more platforming-style gaps and laser-grid trap corridors you'll need to time your driving around.

• Harder keypad walls. The symbol walls come back here with plus and minus signs, including one in a hidden upper area. The rule that finally cracked them on stream: a line means a whole row of three, plus lights cells and minus turns them off. Step-by-step on the Void puzzle page.
• Phase Shifter portals. Void portals you pass through with the Phase Shifter lead to the back ends of other levels you couldn't reach before — as one of the players noticed, "it brings you to other levels." Worth taking for the collectibles behind them. The grapple swings inside work best in a straight line — if you're not in sync, you end up spinning in circles.
• Paintgun. The paint sections start in the Shed and carry on into the last Backyard stretch.

Backyard (return) and the ending

From the Shed you come back out into the Backyard for the final stretch. If you skipped ducks or antenna work on your first pass, this is your chance to catch up — when you complete the Backyard level, your ducks get beamed up as part of the finale, and the credits roll right after (6:54:19).

The credits aren't the end of the save: you can keep driving around afterwards to mop up remaining Neuro-Cores, scannables and custom parts, and to go back to symbol walls you skipped now that you know the rules. See collectibles and achievements for what's left to find.

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.