QB Accelerator Reviews
  One small difference changes everything
    Wormer Developer:Joe Antoon

  Something about the games which came with DOS 5 will forever ingrane themselves into the minds of everybody who was there. Among those games were NIBBLES.BAS and GORRILAS.BAS, and both have been
QBXL Extra
When good tweaks go bad
Okay, you get the picture -- this game is really fun because of a few small tweaks to the gameplay. There have been other times when tweaking something results in a horriby evil bastard of good and bad which is just really nasty. For instance;

Massacre:

Take one perfectly good shooter, remove the gameplay, the guns, the story, and everything which isn't killing, and you have a recipe for the scariest game of the damn year!

Barney:

Yes, that goddamned purple dinosaur. Mixes the worst qualities of Stalin, Pee-wee herman, and Micheal Jackson. We don't know what it originally was, but tweaking a dinosaur to suit children has proven deadly in this case. No wonder everybody hates him!

Brittany Spears:

Take one Madonna, remove the small amount of intelligence inside, any remaining singing ability, and add two silicone inflated breasts, and you get a pop star so obnoxious, you can't even watch her videos for the breasts, simply because the music is so bad!

Madonnas' American Pie:

Q: how do you upset an entire generation in one gesture, while making tons of money on soulless Gen Y'ers?

A: Redo the previous generations greatest song, leave out the "boring parts".

translated many, many times into games with better graphics and slight gameplay tweaks. Wormer is one of those translations, with a few differences which make it a lot more challenging, and a lot more fun.

For the uninitiated, the gameplay is the model of simplicity. You are a snake, and you must collect several numbered tokens before you can make it to the next level. The challenge comes in when you find that your snake grows with every apple eaten. You must ensure that you don't hit your tail, and that none of the hazards on each of the levels hit you either, which becomes quite difficult as your tail grows.

Wormer takes this gameplay, and tweaks it slightly, to great effect. For instance, rather than limiting you to four directions, the snake has nearly full freedom of movement. This makes avoiding yourself somewhat easier, but it also takes a lot more work to accurately get powerups and tokens, thanks to a rather large turning radius.

Another change is the removal of the concept of "lives". If you die, you die. Considering how difficult it can be to accurately steer, this makes this game incredibly dificult at first. The way that the game is challenging while remaining playable is a large part of what makes this game fun. It takes strategy, timing, and reflexes to succeed at this game, especially when you start getting longer, and most will find that they die a few times on the first level alone..

The powerups in this game aren't nearly as easy to pick up as they are in other games of the sub-genre(of NIBBLES clones). The powerups cycle between three states -- good, bad, and worse. They will increase or decrease your tail length, depending on which one you pick up, and the worst one will mess up your snake. The powerups end up being very balanced, and generally don't make the game too much easier to play.

The graphics and music deserve some mention, but not much. While the graphics on the title screen are colourful and bouncy, the in-came art is merely functional. The sound is just some of the same public domain crap we've been hearing in freeware like this since the beginning of time, and will probably incite you to turn off your speakers to escape the racket.

All I can say, is to download this game and play it. It's not the prettiest game on the block, but it sure is a fun ride, which is more than I can say for a lot of other Nibbles clones I've played. It's graphics and sound may leave someting to be desired, but they are not the worst I've ever seen on such clones, and can be forgiven because it's so damn fun. Give it a shot if you have some free time -- it won't let you down.

-SJ Zero loves this game, but can't make it past level 2
       

Verdict    
  Graphics: Lots of bouncy stuff in the intro, unremarkable sprites in the game. Score
  Sound: Irritating QB sounds. Yeah, they're wave files, but they're also the same public domain crap we've heard too many times now. 6
  Gameplay: This game redefines the classic worm game simply by adding actual steering, removing the concept of lives, and making picking up powerups a gamble.