; width: 100%; height: 500px; background-color: #000; }

Worm Food Review

Rating:

Nitrome continues to make beautiful, well-designed games, that handle some very interesting ideas with admirable confidence.

Additional Info

DeveloperNitrome
GenreAction, Puzzle
PlatformsN/A
EngineFlash
FilesizeN/A MB
Webpagehttp://www.miniclip.com/games/worm-food/en/

Full Review

Worm Food is all about murder. Particularly the murder of helpless tribesman, who run in panic at your very sight, and try inevitably to stop you laying waste to their religious symbols and their children.

The challenge of the game emerges because you are a giant, nigh-uncontrollable worm. I, and I think most player's, have trouble relating to that experience, so it's initially difficult to manoeuvre yourself,finding the right angles to leap out of the ground and swallow any unsuspecting people whole. Simply controlling your hulking worm-beast is far more challenging than the ineffective defence the hopeless population puts up.

To try and stop you the villagers use a variety of different tactics, which in the hands of the game designer become interesting gameplay mechanics. Villagers set up barriers, take to the air, and use archers to attack the worm, which keeps the player on their toes and forces them to re-evaluate their tactics every few levels or so. It's simply great design: teaching the player skills, then asking them to contemplate those skills throughout the course of the game.

Aside from how it plays the game is absolutely beautiful. Firstly, it's readable and intuitive: the ground you can travel through is distinct from the ground that you cant, and everything in the game world looks, sounds, and reacts according to the player's expectations. People run and scream, buildings crumble realistically, and huge mounds of earth are displaced as you move your character under the villager's feet. But beyond that, the pixel-work on display here is phenomenal. It was made by Nitrome after all, the developer's of Faultline, and other such beautiful, interesting games.

Nitrome are definitely on my radar. Worm Food looks great, plays great, and handles some interesting ideas with considerable confidence. I'm certainly interested in whatever they produce in future.

Posted by Joseph Gribbin on August 11, 2010 Comments (0)