Death Worm erupts from the ground to eat iPhone owners - impressions

Somehow in the excitement of last week I missed the release of Death Worm, which as the name suggests is effectively the same game as Super Mega Worm, released back in September.

Both are based on existing Flash releases - in this case Death Worm is a port by JTR of its original, published by PlayCreek. The game places you at the controls of a huge worm, which you move around underground before breaching the soil and munching down whatever is walking above.

One of the most discussed points of Super Mega Worm was its controls - the default was a slider which you move left and right to control the direction and tightness of your circular movement.

Death Worm goes for an analogue joystick, which I personally don't like much.

Another obvious difference is that the graphics, which don't have the blocky pixel charm of Super Mega Worm's and are much, much smaller, making it harder to target enemies. This isn't helped by the more detailed backgrounds.

However, where Death Worm is an improvement is its progression. Instead of placing you on an endlessly scrolling level, you start in a fixed area, with enemies - camels, tigers, people, cars - moving from one side to the other.

Not only does this provide more of a challenge in terms of catching them, but the game also enforces specific challenges to get you to the next level. These start off as typical 'eat X people', but quickly become more difficult - e.g., 'eat X people and don't take any damage'.

You also get points for eating things, while achievements and leaderboards are supported via Game Center.

Filling out the gameplay are the two power-ups: spitting fire, and boosts, which enable you to zoom much higher into the sky for a period of time. Neatly, the camera zooms out so you can get a better idea of where you're going, albeit at the cost of making the graphics even smaller.

Over time, you also earn upgrades so you can RPG-lite up your worm, making it bigger, tougher etc.

The game comes with 45 levels spread across three backgrounds, and there's also a Canabalt-style mini-game if you get bored of munching camels, people, cars, planes and the rest. More of these will be added in future.

Death Worm is now available, priced 99c, €0.79 or 59p for a limited time. It will be released on iPad too.

You can check out how it plays in the following video.

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