WORMHOLE was reviewed based on a pre-release copy provided by the developer, Pocket Moon Games. no money was exchanged, and all opinions are my own. thanks, Pocket Moon Games!
i was a little anxious about the planet-munching Snake riff WORMHOLE. the debut commercial title from new indie studio Pocket Moon Games bills itself, on its Steam page, as “a roguelike twist on the classic snake format,” which, at least for me, called to mind “Snake with builds.”
the 2020s have delivered all sorts of eye-rolling roguelite-ified Takes on perfectly good video game ideas, tiresome thousand-hour affairs with clever concepts buried under heaps of RNG, designed for infinite play over meaningful play. luckily for me, WORMHOLE is not one of those at all.
WORMHOLE’s roguelike packaging is largely a clever disguise cloaked over an incredible arcade game. there are upgrades, but buildcrafting seems like a low priority compared to raw system mastery. even more exciting: the levels aren’t randomly generated at all! they’re all handcrafted. and well-crafted!
i’d go as far as to say that WORMHOLE’s level design is the reason to try the game for yourself. the whole affair is based around carefully placed portals that warp your snake across the screen. at first, these portals are relatively easy to ignore - you can play the first few stages of WORMHOLE the same way you’d play any other version of Snake. once you’ve gotten used to their presence, though, WORMHOLE starts to demand mastery over the art of teleportation.
it took me a while to wrap my head around WORMHOLE’s spatial geometry, especially while using the first of the game’s three starting abilities, “Dash.” playing with Dash makes the game very fast-paced, and i found myself hurtling out of control every time i warped somewhere i wasn’t expecting.
things really clicked for me with the second ability, “Yeehaw,” which turns your worm into an adorable little cowboy with a six-shooter. when playing with Yeehaw, your bullets can pass through portals, and every time you hit a planet through a portal, you get a flashy trick shot. i love hitting trick shots, and that tiny incentive was enough to train my brain to understand the interplay between level layout and portal placement.
if you need a bit more help getting a handle on WORMHOLE’s movement, you can always check out marathon mode. where standard mode sends you to a new level every time you reach a certain goal, marathon mode lets you play a single level endlessly while you contend with ramping speed and a growing tail. marathon mode is both a more traditional Snake experience and a great way to practice specific screens that give you trouble - and trust me, some of these screens will give you trouble.
there are plenty of other small wrinkles in Pocket Moon’s fresh take on a tried-and-true formula, including skulls that will wander onscreen to munch on your planets, stealing valuable points if you aren’t quick enough to stop them. these little point thieves are a genuine annoyance when you’re trying to climb the scoreboards, which i find extremely refreshing.
arcade-style scoreplay has been deemphasized in popular game design for a while, so it’s been nice to see its resurgence in games like UFO 50, Xenotilt, pureya, and now WORMHOLE. “score” has sometimes been treated as a vestigial holdover from the arcade era, so to see points employed as a fundamental design element honestly feels a bit novel and exciting again.
i’m also a big fan of WORMHOLE’s combo system. chaining together moves isn’t exactly a fresh concept, but hitting every planet fast enough to hold onto your combo until the end of the level really does make the game feel substantially more frantic and tense. combos are just one more way to highlight the precision of WORMHOLE’s level design and movement options.
WORMHOLE sings in its presentation, too. you can see some of the visual flair in my screenshots, but it’s more impressive in motion. there’s lots of screen shake, all sorts of particle effects, things happening on every inch of the screen, but it always feels more involved than busy. when you do manage to whittle a crowded, constantly moving screen down to nothing, the feeling is absolutely incredible.
the music and sound design lend an awful lot to the experience as well. WORMHOLE seems like the kind of Steam Deck companion that you might play on mute while listening to podcasts or watching TV, and while it does serve that purpose, i’d highly recommend setting aside some dedicated game time to lose yourself in WORMHOLE’s music and hypnotic visuals.
i haven’t seen everything WORMHOLE has to offer just yet - i’ve still only unlocked about half of the levels, and i’m nowhere near the end of the standard mode - but i’ve played enough to say with confidence that WORMHOLE is an excellent arcade experience. that old “easy to learn, hard to master” formula has been all but perfected here, and if you’re a fan of the genre (or if you’ve played enough Snake that you’re starting to get tired of the same square map), i can guarantee that you’ll be sucked in.
WORMHOLE is available on Steam and Nintendo Switch now.