Worm Wars review

[Minuous]

Apparently Worm Wars 8.57 was reviewed in the latest Amiga Future, I was wondering what score it got and what comments were made? As I'm considering making a new version.

I would buy it but as I am literally starving there is no way I could afford to do this.

Thanks in advance.

[Graham Humphrey]

I wrote that review so I suppose I'm probably in the best position to pick out some comments from it. We don't have a rating system at Amiga Future so if people want to find out what we think of a particular program they actually have to read the text rather than look at a number at the bottom of the page

Anyway here are some quotes from the review...

"There's certainly a lot in it... in terms of variety, it unquestionably scores very highly indeed."

"I spent at least the first five rounds bewildered by it all. The play area is pretty big, and there always seems to be so much going on and on my machine it fairly flies along, which results in the game being hard to follow and things just appear to happen for little or no reason... frankly I found it all rather overwhelming."

"...it's possible to change the speed of your worm, which you do by tapping the joystick the way you're facing or the opposite direction to speed up and slow down respectively, and it's so easy to do you inevitably lose track of where you are, as suddenly you seem to be flying along at a speed which makes control very difficult and the next thing you know you're dead. Such is life."

"...in time, you'll start to get used to things such as controlling your speed, and techniques like jumping become easier. You might even - shock horror - win the odd round. And you'll enjoy it, to a point. Yet you never really feel like you're getting anywhere or you're achieving anything. It all just happens. One round ends, someone wins, then onto the next until everyone dies, then it's game over... it perhaps all feels a little too clinical and a more 'fun' atmosphere is desperately lacking."

"...add some more human opponents and the fun does, indeed, increase - naturally, you want to beat your friends and the competitive nature of playing against real-life, actual, living people keeps the game's appeal alive for a while longer."

"...there's a lot in it, and with a really nice editor... it really ought to keep you going for ages... you can tell loads of effort has gone into this, but arguably there's too much in it, and it all feels a bit random and soulless. It's unfortunate, but while Worm Wars clearly tries hard, it just isn't close to being as compulsive as many of the Amiga's party games, and thus earns itself a place on the ever-growing ‘Nice try, but no cigar’ pile. Unlucky."

That's just a part of my review. If anybody wants to read the full review amongst many other fabby articles you can order Amiga Future 80 now.

End of plug

[Minuous]

Thanks for your help, I will consider what you have said and will ponder ways to make the game more accessible for new players :-) .