Team 17 has announced a new entry into its long-running Worms game franchise. Worms Rumble is quite a departure for the series as it shifts seismically from turn-based to real-time competition. Heralded as "Worms reinvented," this latest outing takes Wormy characters and weapon favourites like the Banana Bomb and Holy Hand Grenade, makes the combat real-time, and adds a sprinkling of modern gaming genre buzz-terms such as; arena-based, 32-player cross-play, deathmatch, and Battle Royale.
Above you can see the official Worms Rumble announcement trailer. You will see what looks like a frantic and explosive real-time game being played. The game characters look like the modern Worms of recent games, and some signature weapons are used in the game but, as mentioned in the intro, the real-time game play is a very big departure.
You will observe that the battle takes place in what appears to be a 2.5D arena, which seems to be mostly missing another key Worms feature - environment destructibility. In the comments on the video, Team 17 says that the game environment does feature some destructible elements and elements that can be destroyed in the battles varies between maps.
I enjoyed the original Worms game on the Amiga, adding humour, slick graphics, and a team-based twist to the destructible environment artillery genre popular in shareware libraries at the time. Having tried various PC and console incarnations since then, none have managed to provide the same hook to keep me playing. Worms Rumble is so different from the original premise that it is hard to decide, at this early stage, whether it would be a fun pick up and play title or not.
Worms Rumble is coming to PC, PS4 and PS5 later this year. If you feel like an early taste and would like to help shape the shipping product, PC users can sign up for the Worms Rumble Steam Beta which will become available from 15th July.
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