Worms Pinball

I went in expecting a throwaway reskin and came out genuinely surprised by the table design. Worms Pinball started life as the Worms table inside Addiction Pinball, a two-table sim from 1998 that Team17 built with real pinball consultants in the loop. The Steam version strips that package down to just the one table, which is the first thing any honest buyer needs to know. What you get is a single, densely packed playfield with transparent ramps, slingshots, multiple flipper positions, a ball-storage cavity, magnetic fields, tilt mechanics, bang-backs, and a 3D LED scoreboard display that runs its own mini-games. The mission loop tasks you with collecting weapons and winning bouts to earn promotions through five themed zones - Arctic, Mars, Jungle, Desert, and Hell - which gives the table more structure than a pure score-attack game. That structure is the thing it does exceptionally well. The Worms branding pulls real weight here. Sound effects and animations are lifted from the original game, a Super Sheep mini-game lets you steer the woolly missile with your flippers to chase down point balloons, and themed sub-games like Worms-Fu and Mars Attack pop up as LED events when you trigger the right sequences. None of it feels pasted on. The table was clearly designed around the IP from the start rather than reskinned after the fact, and that shows in the layout. The negatives are straightforward. There is one table. One. Players who picked up Addiction Pinball back in 1998 got a World Rally Fever table alongside it; the Steam release drops that entirely. The camera is fixed, though you can cycle through five angle options including a vertical mode. Controller setup requires manual config file editing if you want sensible flipper mapping, and a known audio bug kills the music after pausing - you have to restart the game to get it back. Steam reviews land in mixed territory at 66 percent positive, which feels about right. Who actually enjoys this? Worms series completionists, people who grew up with late-90s pinball sims like Pro Pinball or Pinball Dreams, and anyone who wants a low-commitment score-chaser to leave open in the background. It runs fine on modern hardware and is light enough for a Steam Deck session once you fix the controls. As a standalone purchase it asks too much for what it delivers. As part of a Worms franchise bundle, the table holds up surprisingly well for its age and the mission progression gives it more legs than you might expect from a 1998 pinball sim.

Alex · Scout Team

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