The recent spate of job losses across the video game industry in recent weeks and months is set to continue at Worms creator-turned-indie publishing powerhouse Team17. The UK company behind Worms, Blasphemous, Overcooked, Dredge and more is reportedly facing “significant” job losses and has seen its CEO depart as it looks to restructure.
]]>Team17 CEO Michael Pattison has addressed allegations by staff that the company underpays and overworks staff, and failed to address HR complaints. In a company-wide meeting held last Friday, details of which were shared with Eurogamer, Pattison said that "action has to be taken."
]]>Last week, Team17 announced Worms NFTs and then, amid an enormous backlash from their audience and business partners, cancelled them the following day. Now several staff at the publisher have spoken out about low pay, overwork, and management failures in a new report by Eurogamer.
]]>When Team17 first teased a new Worms game coming in 2020 they called it "worms like you've never played before." They've now officially announced Worms Rumble and yeah, it is definitely not your traditional Worms game. I was joking when I said "Worms battle royale confirmed" months ago but, well, here we are. The 32-player Worms action game will host a beta later this month and release in late 2020.
]]>Slapstick strategy series Worms has got something planned for ya this year. So grab your bats and explosive sheep. You'll probably need them. Team 17 have released a teaser video announcing that Worms is properly back since the first time since 2016. "Things are getting real in 2020," they say, though things still look pretty cartoon-y to me.
]]>Team 17, the mob who make Worms as well as publishing games like Yooka-Laylee and Overcooked, have bought games studio Yippee Entertainment in a £1.4 million deal.
If you haven't heard of Yippee before, they predominantly work on licensed games for companies like Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon and the BBC. They've also made a platformer series of their own, Chimpact, which is mostly for mobile but has jumped on PC too.
]]>Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time.
A long time ago, deep in the cyberyear 2000, came a turn-based multiplayer war game called Hogs of War [Steam page]. It was essentially Worms in 3D, with pigs. But whereas Worms spawned an undying horde of sequels, to the extent that the franchise is now a bonafide industry joke that nobody knows how to address, Hogs of War never saw a sequel. Perhaps it's just as well, fond as it was of puerile humour and cheap national stereotypes.
]]>I must confess that, despite my tiny, shrivelled heart, I feel a wee bit sorry for Team 17. For over 20 years they’ve been pitting wriggly, pun-loving invertebrates against each other in turn-based cartoon wars, while making considerable changes to the formula, but all anyone really seems to want is another Worms Armageddon. If you are one of the 7 billion people living on Earth: good news, because Worms W.M.D. [official site] is what you’ve been asking for.
]]>2016 being a year which ends with a number, Team17 have released a new Worms game. But wait! Worms W.M.D. [official site] looks more interesting than many of its squillion squirming predecessors. Possibly. Maybe. So The Internet says, anyway. And I'll believe anything the Internet tells me. Did you know that you get proper super-high by tucking a hearty dip of Marmite in the inside of your lower lip? True story.
]]>When Worms WMD [official site] launches later this year, it'll come packing 80 weird and wonderful weapons fit for wanton worm-walloping, say developers Team 17. By my count, the latest trailer showcases just 21 of them, however does include outlandish armaments such as Concrete Donkeys, Dodgy Phone Batteries, and Agile Old Ladies. It's looking like Worms as we best know it, then, with this extended arsenal owing itself to the latest iteration's new crafting suite. Hop below to discover just over a quarter of the ways in which Worms Must Die.
]]>Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.
Worms feels like a joke now: by my count there have been 23 games in the main series, and that's not including the Facebook version or pinball and mini golf-themed spinoffs. It feels like so much iteration - or milking - glumly undermines the simplicity and silliness of the original I loved as a kid.
]]>Over 3,000,000,000 worms have met their fate since the eponymous Worms launched its first turn-based strategy/murderfest iteration in 1995. So say its developers Team 17 anyway, and given the fact there's been 20-some-odd variations of the banana bomb and kamikaze combo released in the last 21 years, I'm willing to accept that claim as true. This week, the upcoming Worms WMD [official site] peaked its head above the soil-covered parapet for the first time in a while with a new multiplayer trailer.
Aye, it's worms as you know it. But there's tanks this time too.
]]>Team17 have once again announced that they're making their game once again and- hey, wait, this latest version of Worms will actually do a few things different.
With over twenty Worms games in the bag and few changes to the turn-based annelid artillery annihilation formula in yonks, Team17 are shaking things up a bit with next year's Worms WMD. It'll introduce concealing buildings, for starters, only granting internal vision to players with a worm inside. Its new art style is pretty cute too. Oh, and it has tanks. Driveable, hopping tanks.
]]>Which Worms game is your favourite? Over the last twenty years, creators Team17 have released more than twenty Worms games and spin-offs, but most folks I've known seem to favour either 1999's Worms Armageddon or 2001's Worms World Party (boy, the series peaked a while ago, huh?). If you're in the latter camp, good news: your favourite Worms game is being revamped!
Team17 have announced Worms World Party Remastered [Steam page], which is WWWP prettied-up with support for modern Steam bits. It's due to launch on July 8th.
]]>Last week, I visited Team 17 and was the first outsider to have hands-on experience with their latest game. It’s a Worms game because, on the whole, that’s what they do. Unlike the previous release, Clan Wars has been designed specifically for PC and while it’s the multiplayer league system that worms its way into the title, the additions and tweaks to the physics system may be the necessary game changer.
]]>I'm a huge admirer of the gentleman's sport of crazy golf, or as I prefer to call it, Bedlam Roughage & Greens. Combining that most elegant of pursuits with the antics of Team 17's Worms, forming some kind of Worms Crazy Golf, seems a sensible plan and a few videos of the (mercifully) 2d title have now appeared online. It all looks very agreeable, although I hope the puzzle-type layout of the levels doesn't mean there won't be plenty of room for a more chaotic approach. The game is due on Steam on the 19th of this very month of October and there are several videos of golfing worms below.
]]>Back in 1937, a man called Andy Davidson came up with an idea. That idea was to copy a game called Artillery, but to put worms™ in it. He took that idea to the visionaries at Team 17, and from then on the world would never be the same again.
Since that day there have been over three hundred thousand games based on the Worms™ license, because when an idea is as fresh and original as Worms™, it is imperative that it be repeated as close to infinitely as is humanly possible. And when you've got an idea as good as that in your locker, you never need think a new thought again. But that's not enough for some. Some strive to go further, to take perfection and refine it, reshape it, reinvent it. And so it is that Team 17 have announced Worms™: Crazy Golf.
]]>A Eurogamer story earlier today got RPS a-chatting. Basically, it was the news that the original Rayman actually spent five whole years on the UK Top 40 charts. That's 269 weeks. Worms had a 239 week appearance. Theme Park had 172. Loads of more stuff in the article, always interesting - in terms of what sells lengthily rather than immediately. What the feature doesn't mention is what actually links those three particular games. They're ones who existed as five-quid PC budget games indefinitely. There was a time in the UK where you couldn't go into a shop - in fact, didn't always have to be a game shop - without seeing piles of the big conked little fella there. And, it's also worth noting, that PC-sales never get their new sales cannibalised by the (non-Top-40-influencing) second-hand market, which is another reason why you end up seeing this enormous longevity in some games.
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