By Alec Meer on July 28th, 2010 at 11:15 pm.

We all loved DEATH WORM. DEATH WORM! It’s one of the first indie games we ever posted about on RPS, and mentioning its hallowed name remains the only known way to make Jim Rossignol use an exclamation mark.
Free browser game Worm Food is not DEATH WORM 2.0, nor is it officially related to DEATH WORM, but it is a lot like it. Probably too much like it, to be honest. Still: death worms.
It’s more visually elaborate (i.e. da grafficks is betta) and by including a starvation system rather than simply a combo score, it’s perhaps a little more polished and focused – though in some ways that’s to its detriment. DEATH WORM’s simple purity was its all.
Still, you’re a giant worm. You eat stuff. This involves acceleration, tunnelling and trying not to starve to death. Vis a vis, DEATH WORM! (But not).
Oh, what the hell. Here’s a DEATH WORM video too.
Here are some other death worms. People on YouTube are weird.


DEATH WORM
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what a shaDEATH WORM!report
My DEATH WORM is augmented.
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DEATH WORM
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Here is a picture of my friend, the DEATH WORM!
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DEATH TO WORMS !
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MONSTRO!
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DEATH WORM! Your turn.
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Unatco?
No.
DEATH WORM!
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“Oh my god JC! A DEATH WORM!”
“A DEATH WORM?”
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HARD SURFACE.
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HEARING IMPAIRED WORM
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I spill my DEATH WORM!!!!
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How about a nice hot cup of DEATH WORM!
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Mmmmmmm, Shai Hulud~
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I shall call it snakeoid! … graboid?
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You’re gonna be sorry if you don’t give it a name.
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Staying in the topic of death worms, here’s a nice death worm game that just came out too. It’s VERY easy but that doesn’t mean it’s not fun!
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/542845
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Holy christ I’m never going to Mongolia.
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It probably doesn’t exist:
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Mongolian_death_worm
Um… the death worm, that is – I’m pretty sure Mongolia exists.
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Pics or it’s not real.
(Mongolia, I mean.)
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Mongolia is just a conspiracy of cartographers.
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Ah, Death Worm. The brilliance underneath a billion rip-offs.
Even Miami Shark is a bit of Death Worm, though at least they gave it an original look.
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How interesting! Worm Food takes an awesome game and somehow manages to make it unfun!
Stupid ‘kill every villager within time limit’ mechanic turns a pleasing ‘wreak havoc!’ game into a matter of flailing wildly around with the bad control scheme, trying to get that one last guy hanging on a rope bridge in the middle of nowhere.
Sigh.
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Agreed. It doesn’t even have a combo system! Death Worm was pointless fun, this is even more pointless and less fun. Pretty though.
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No blood and silly time limit!
NO SALE
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I agree, can’t get past the second level.
It’s fiddly while DEATH WORM was merely chaotic
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But… I thought it was actual more DEATH WORM. I remember playing that nearly three years ago, in my first-year room at University… I might dig it out again. DEATH WORM!
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Actually, looking at that post (with its one ghost comment) I realise I can’t have read about DEATH WORM on RPS. Shocking! It must have been through a PC Gamer disc. Point stands, etc etc.
By the way, all your old posts have been spammed mercilessly. It’s quite funny to see a bot selling shoes agreeing that they would pay £30 for the entire id back catalogue though.
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Story? Levels? Death Worm has no time for such things.
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Oh, what mindless fun the original was. YOU ARE DEATHWORM. DO DEATH!
But this? This is somehow so pointless.
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This is no death worm. This is at most a feeling slightly feverish worm.
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what is this crap
give me death worm
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Give you death worm, or give you death?
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eats, shoots and leaves
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Took long enough.
I’m happy that gaming blogs have finally caught onto nitrome’s awesome.
though I still have that strange feeling like someone discovered a band you like.
I’m happy for them, but it doesn’t seem so… private. anymore.
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I’ve always hated Nitrome. They so clearly are more interested in trying to make neat pixel art than making fun games. The games are rarely all that creative, and the gameplay is almost always kind of weak.
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It’s certainly no Death Worm. When it comes to pixel art death worms also have a look at Tremerz for having Kevin Bacon in it.
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The Estate of the worm in Tremors will object on the grounds that this DEATH WORM too closely resembles the late gigantic Invertebrate.
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I GET IT
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Praise to Shai-hulud
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I quite like some of the level design; bursting out of the sides of cliffs is rather enjoyable. But I agree everything else isn’t as fun as Death Worm, especially just controlling the thing.
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i like the art… when static.
but in gameplay, the limited palette, jerky scrolling and tiny sprites make it really hard to see where people are. having to use a minimap = sucky.
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So much grumbling. It’s a pretty solid little game. Tough, but fair – it’s about coming up with a plan, more than Death Worms kinda effortless random frenzy of destruction.
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Fair enough, but learning curve is pretty brutal. The first level is just fun, the second level is bloody impossible.
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I lost once on the second level, and realised why – I was working my way up. The level is hugely vertical. You’re expected to tunnel right up to the top, and then dive the whole length of the mountain to catch everyone you can on the way down.
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http://www.miniclip.com/games/worm-food/de/wormfood.swf
can’t play it on nitrome – here is miniclip fullscreen …
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Death worm is awesome but I’d like it more if it could play it windowed. 640*480 or whatever on a modern monitor makes babies cry.
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Hmm it appears I suck. v1.04 has a function to switch from fullscreen to windowed. Must download at home later this evening!
I blame Steam for making me lazy about game updates.
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My son used to play Death Worm a lot. He was 4 at the time, and he loved it. Right up until the time he had a nightmare about being eaten by the worm, and from then on he won’t watch anything to do with anything involving giant worms. He’s 6 now and he still occasionally asks me “Dad….death worms aren’t real, right?”
He nearly crapped his pants when he was watching me play Lost Planet and one of those giant worms burst out from the ice.
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Please, get him to play Penumbra Overture, and film his reactions
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My wife of two years is from northern China, unfortunately within that time we have not been able to travel to china to visit and celebrate with her family. We had planned on going next summer. “Had” because now that this game has enlightened me to the horrors brooding only meters beneath that scenic Chinese landscape, I’m never setting foot there. Never. Fuck that shit.
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