Worms 2

Gameplay

Worms 2 is a turn-based tactical game. Players control teams of worms on two-dimensional landscapes, taking turns to act. At the beginning of each level, worms are placed randomly across the terrain. During a turn, only one worm from a player’s team can be moved. Movement options include crawling, jumping, using a ninja-rope to swing, deploying a parachute, teleporting, or using a bungee cord, provided the necessary items are available. The goal in a standard match or campaign mission is to eliminate all opposing teams by killing their worms, leaving only one team alive. When a worm is struck by a weapon, it loses health based on the weapon’s strength and how directly it hits. A worm dies if its health drops to zero or if it is knocked into the water surrounding or below the level. If a round lasts beyond a set time limit and multiple hostile teams remain, sudden death begins. During sudden death, either the landscape sinks into the water, or every worm’s health is reduced to one point. If sudden death is not allowed, the round ends in a draw. The game is mainly played in multiplayer mode. Here, a player picks a team to control and chooses one to five other teams, all opposing each other. These teams can be run by the computer or by other human players. No more than eighteen worms can appear on any level. Each team starts with the same number of worms, each having the same amount of health. The player decides how many rounds a team must win to take the match. Multiplayer can happen on a single computer, over a local network, or across the Internet with up to six computers. In network or Internet play, the options to draw a round or force sudden death early are turned off. Besides quick-start games, the player can also play single-player missions in sequence. The player first selects a difficulty level, and finishing a mission provides a password for the next one. These passwords allow the player to resume from where they stopped.

Development and release

Worms 2 was confirmed to be in development since at least April 1996. Initially planned as a minimal sequel with only a new engine and added online play, creator Andy Davidson felt these improvements would not justify a sequel, and he wanted to bid farewell to Amiga users. Team17 allowed him to work on Worms: The Director's Cut, an expansion for late Amiga computers. The two projects had separate teams. The Director's Cut introduced a level editor and additional weapons such as the Concrete Donkey, which formed the basis for Worms 2. Graphics and style were Team17's priority, as they believed the original Worms' dated graphics deterred potential players. They opted for SVGA graphics and limited the release to Windows due to memory boundaries. Danny Cartwright and Rico Holmes were the game's artists. Cartwright handled animation, using Photoshop initially but later switching to Cambridge Animation Systems' ANIMO, a spline-based software. Drawing the worms required up to 14,000 frames; using Photoshop would have taken three to four years, while ANIMO took months. Holmes was responsible for themes, landscapes, and backgrounds, which were sketched before being digitally scanned. Each of the eleven themes took about one month to finalize. Holmes described the visual style as a very clear-cut cartoon style at odds with his preferred style. The game uses parallax scrolling for battlefields and backgrounds.

Reception

Worms 2 shipped 200,000 units to European retailers at launch. In the U.S., PC Data recorded 68,396 copies sold in 1998, generating roughly $1.88 million in revenue. The game earned largely positive reviews, with critics highlighting its customisation options, built-in online play, level editor, and humour. GameSpot’s Trent Ward praised the destructible environments and described the physics as easy to learn but hard to master, calling that the key to its addictive quality. Fernando de la Villa of PC Top Player commended the sound effects, voice acting, and music, while Andreas Wallström of Tekno thought the soundtrack started dull but improved, as if tracks were ordered by creation date. The humour was described as tragicomedy rooted in the superiority theory, where laughs come from new players accidentally harming their own worms. Martin E. Cirulis of Computer Gaming World noted the game could grow tedious for those who dislike both the artillery genre and its comedy.

Reviewers nearly unanimously agreed that Worms 2 shines in multiplayer, not single-player, mostly due to the AI. Harald Wagner of PC Games observed that the AI sometimes seemed overwhelmed, hitting its own worms, but was skilled at ballistics; he considered it the game’s only letdown. Conversely, Games for My Computer argued the AI was balanced, pointing instead to the simple campaign with few objectives as the flaw. The updated visuals were generally well received. Gambler said the graphics and sound effects brought “a lot of life” to the game. Andy Martin of PC Zone felt the higher-resolution graphics gave it “character,” though he criticised the limited field of view and lack of zoom-out. On the other hand, Laurent Sarfati of Joystick dismissed the visuals as cute and the worm animations as “tasteless” and suited only for “snotty 3- to 6-year-olds.”