Worms Blast

I went in expecting Worms Armageddon with a coat of paint. What I got was something closer to Bust-A-Move wearing a Team17 costume, and whether that surprises or disappoints you will define your entire experience with this game. The core loop is genuinely distinct from its obvious inspiration: you pilot a character in a small boat along the bottom of the screen, firing a bazooka upward at a grid of coloured blocks. Hit a block that matches your shell colour and it falls; hit a different colour and the block repaints to match. Fire off the edge of the screen entirely and a random heavy object drops on your head. That last penalty is a small design decision that matters a lot, because it forces you to actually think about shot placement rather than panicking and spamming rounds. The 60-mission Puzzle mode is the centrepiece and it tries harder than most games in this genre to vary the formula. Some missions ask you to clear only specific colour groups, others impose tight shot limits, and a few replace block-clearing entirely with tasks like dodging a snake made of stone blocks or shooting down block-shaped spaceships. The variety is real. The difficulty curve, however, is not. Multiple critics and players flagged that the game hits punishing precision requirements within the first few missions, and being even slightly off on a bazooka angle can mean restarting outright. The kid-friendly cartoon presentation implies a gradual ramp that the puzzle design never actually delivers. Unlimited continues soften the blow, but the mismatch between visual tone and mechanical severity will frustrate a specific kind of casual player. The multiplayer side holds up better. Eight versus modes cover Deathmatch (two lives each, last boat floating wins), Star Collection, Tide Trial (rising water, frantic and short), and others unlocked through progression. The split-screen setup lets players occasionally shoot through gaps in the dividing barrier to directly attack the opponent's boat or repaint their blocks, which injects genuine chaos that single-player never quite matches. The weapon roster lifts familiar Worms toys into the puzzle context: the shotgun travels in a straight line without power gauging, the laser cuts through a whole column, and dynamite clears a wide radius on a countdown. None of these are deep build decisions but they keep individual rounds feeling varied. There are real problems that cannot be waved away. The Tournament mode, despite its name, is just eight score-attack challenges from Puzzle mode recycled, and the controls lack the precision needed to meaningfully improve your score over repeated attempts. Character selection feels cosmetic rather than strategic, with the nine playable characters (including Superfrog, a Team17 mascot cameo) differing mostly in voice clips. The Steam version, which arrived as a re-release of the original 2003 PC build, has attracted consistent complaints about low-resolution output and crashes on modern Windows setups. There has been no compatibility patch to speak of. That is a legitimate purchasing risk in 2024, and one you should research against your specific hardware before committing. For a strategy-minded player like myself, Worms Blast offers almost none of the depth I normally demand. There is no mod ecosystem, no AI worth analysing at a mechanical level, no build order to optimise. What it does offer is a well-constructed, genuinely distinct take on the Puzzle Bobble formula with a multiplayer mode that earns its weekend-couch-session reputation. Go in expecting a compact arcade puzzler, accept the technical fragility of the Steam port, and your expectations will land close to reality.

Diego · Scout Team

Strategy & simulation

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