C&VG
1st August 1984Wonderworm
Remember those square glass tanks which you used to put worms in at school? The ones where you could watch them wriggle through the soil when you were supposed to be looking at the diagram on page 58 and copying the notes from the blackboard?
Well, Thor have computerised it. No, they haven't made a robot worm, but they've turned the glass wormery into the setting for a game.
You are Wonderworm, and you have to guide yourself through the garden, avoiding collisions with the other aliens which share your comfy glass case.
Once you've loaded the game, the instructions appear. They shoot up the screen letter by letter and it's quite impressive. If you're an experienced player, then just press any key and you move straight on to the game.
At the top of the main screen is your status and a pointer which shows your current energy level. Your score and the highest score so far are also shown.
Wally the Worm as he's known is super tough. He grows very quickly and, as he gets longer, so he becomes more difficult to control. A growing worm has a healthy appetite and Wally is no exception. There are good pods scattered around the screen and these will restore the energy pointer to its full value. If you don't manage to find food in time, then you lose a life when you run out of energy.
The food pods are only there for a few seconds. If you don't eat them in time, then they change into skulls and must be avoided. At this point, the game gets a little harder, the worm grows a bit and some small dots appear on the screen.
If Wally hits one of these dots, then he will change direction. You must guide him so that changing direction like this won't force him into a skull.
Everything stops while the dot and the skulls are drawn. You can't move the worm during this time which is bad programming, and annoyed me.
In the wormery there are twelve beans whose roots start to grow one at a time either upwards or down towards the bottom of the glass case.
You get a bonus of 250 points by stopping a root from growing, by interrupting it with your body - but it's tricky. If the root hits you, then you're dead, but it you hit the root then that's different.
There's nothing really oustanding outside this game, but it's quite fun to play. It's certainly nowhere near the standard of Jack And The Beanstalk, which is available from Thor for the Spectrum, but it's worth trying if you fancy something different for a change.