Critical reception was mixed, with some reviewers praising its addictiveness and others criticising its sounds and artificial intelligence.

[9][16] The frozen pond's main obstacles are cracks in the ice which, if crossed over enough times, become holes that destroy toys that fall into them.

The arena where the game takes place, the toys in the players' toyboxes, the difficulty level, and whether powerups are available can be customised.

[12] Frank Lantz and Eric Zimmerman at R/GA Interactive designed Gearheads;[19][20][21] it was produced in co-operation with Philips Media.

[19] Due to the discovery of effective toy combinations, Zimmerman and Lantz coined the term "engine" to describe them.

[19] Engines were not written into the game's rules, but were playing patterns that arose from the attributes that defined the toys.

[6][10][9] PC Zone lauded the game's addictiveness, saying it features the planning aspects of Tetris and plenty of options, including "bizarre" powerups.

[10] Steve Wartofsky of Computer Games Strategy Plus said that Gearheads is just what it claims to be: "a furious war of wind-up toys".

[33] These sentiments were echoed by Garrett Rowe of The Irish Times, who said the multiplayer mode's fun factor was "endless and chaotic".

[33] Similar views were held by Victor Lucas of The Electric Playground, who described the game as "sweet as honey" and praised the toys' animations.

[9] Other compliments included Lucas's approval of the music as "perfectly suited" to the action, and the sound as "truly wonderful".

[37] Criticisms included those of Mike McGrath of Coming Soon Magazine who commented that the game is "far too mindless", describing the sound and music as "annoying".

[6] Michael Bertrand of Gamer's Zone also criticised the sound and music as "repetitive", and disliked that the game only has four arenas.

[10] PC Gamer's Dean Evans believed that Gearheads has a "childish" nature and is "dull and overpriced".

[2] Bob Strauss of Entertainment Weekly's criticism was the difficulty of controlling the game with a keyboard due to the speed of the action.

[26] The concept was found to be uninteresting for hardcore gamers by Joystick's reviewers, and one was not optimistic about the game's life span.