Worms?
Teach your worm, then watch what it makes of it.
▶ Play Worms? free, in your browser, nothing to install
David S. Maynard's Worms? (Electronic Arts, 1983) is built on Paterson's worms, a mathematical game: worms crawl over a grid of points, eating the paths between them. Whenever a worm meets a situation it has never seen, it has to be told which way to go, and from then on it always does the same there. A worm that eats the last path of a point scores it; a worm that reaches a point with no path left dies.
Up to four worms share the grid: taught by players, played by the computer (AUTO), wild (random from the start), or worms taught in earlier games and saved under a name. While no one plays, the computer's worms give a demonstration.
This port follows the Commodore 64 version, translated word by word from its Forth source, which Maynard released under the MIT license. Online, each worm can be a player of its own.
Screenshots
Controls
| F7 | Start a game (and end the demonstration) |
| F5 | Select the next worm |
| F3 | Change the selected worm: none, NEW (taught by a player), AUTO (the computer), WILD, or as it is (its name) |
| Space | When a worm asks: show the next free path |
| Return (or any other key) | Take that path; the worm remembers it |
| 0–9 | Speed (9 fastest, 0 slowest) |
| Esc (RUN/STOP) | Pause; again to go on |
| F1, F3, F5, F7 in a game | End the game (F1 starts the program over) |
| L, S, U in the menu | Load a worm into the selected one, save it under a name, update its file |
| Online game (beside the picture) | The lobby: up to four players, one worm each |
The original
Worms? (1983) by David S. Maynard (C64 version with Steven Hayes); Commodore 64. This port follows Commodore 64 version ("MASTER OCT. 9, 1983. COMMODORE 64 FINAL", savetz/worms), the same rules, levels, graphics and sounds, running natively in the browser. License: MIT (Licenses & source). Players: 1–4 (on one computer or online).
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