Team17 on why it decided to combine turn-based tactics with bogies and eagles in Worms Crazy Golf for iPhone and iPad

What do you get if you mix Tiger Woods with a bunch of homicidal invertebrates? Worms Crazy Golf. Naturally.

Turn-based strategy and plus fours may seem like an unlikely combination for an App Store smash, but Team17 is banking on this marriage in its upcoming iOS release.

And judging by the screenshots and trailer (below), it's looking like a 'hole' heap of fun.

We caught up with Team17's head of design John Dennis and Worms Crazy Golf lead designer Paul Dunstan at their local course to talk about magnets, balls, and old women.

John Dennis: I can have a go. If I could sum it up, I’d say Worms Crazy Golf is an irreverent mash-up of our own turn-based strategy game Worms and everyone’s favourite turn-based game of ‘hitting little balls with sticks’ (golf!).

But anyone expecting a straight golf game will be in for a bit of a shock. It’s got many of the favourites from Worms, including sheep, old women, moles, magnets, mines, and crazy chain reactions, is set across three surreal 18-hole golf courses, and contains a range of skill-based challenge modes.

Completing each hole in par or under unlocks the next one, but there’s a bunch of things standing in your way: increasingly puzzling hole design and an array of obstacles, such as castles that teleport your ball and cannons that shoot it across the landscape.

Based on the Worms gameplay mechanic of choosing shot power and trajectory, you also have a number of special powers, e.g. the parachute ball, the ability to reverse gravity, or the ability to slow time down to maximise the effects of top spin or back spin.

It’s pretty funny, and with four-player social multiplayer support, it has all the hallmarks of the Worms brand: the trash-talking, pressure to make the shot, terribly unhelpful ‘advice’ from opponents, and often hilarious consequences when that risky shot that could have won the game goes terribly wrong.

Paul Dunstan: Well, we can - ahem - tee off with the fact Worms is a bonkers game, anyway, ideally suited for a melding with ‘crazy golf’.

Couple that with the fact that both Worms and golf are turn-based games that share a love of hitting balls or throwing grenades at things, and it seemed only natural to us the two games should be married.

PD: The design process was quite lenient, with most holes being built from an idea rather than a strict rule-set. The large palette of artwork we had available to us allowed us to combine and create to produce whatever landscape we needed to see our ideas come to fruition.

It was important for the designers to be extremely familiar with the metrics of the game. This allowed us to take an initial idea from concept to completion with only minimal tweaking.

PD: You know, it’s not just customisation on offer for your worm golfer. Sure, there are some zany-looking hats, loony speech banks, and peculiar golf balls to kit your custom-named worm out with. But there’s also an array of golf clubs to choose from with a variety of different properties.

These clubs allow you to improve the performance of your worm in one way or another. Some clubs give more power, some are easier to control, but ultimately it all depends on how you like to play the game.

PD: One of the largest design challenges we encountered was ensuring the game felt quintessentially a Worms game. The initial concept for Worms Crazy Golf was closer to a golfing purist's dream game, but it quickly became apparent that idea was really missing the Worms spark that is synonymous with the brand.

The team worked extremely hard to reimagine the concept, adding just the right flavouring of Worms to give it that potent mix of Worms and golf. The results, we feel, are spectacular.

PD: Accessibility. Pure and simple. Worms Crazy Golf is a Worms game, yet it is also a golf game. So, there was much debate over the control methods and which one to employ.

Should it control like a golf game or a Worms game? In the end, it came down to making the game as accessible as possible, so some bright spark logically suggested we include both systems and just let the player decide which one he wishes to use.

PD: Whilst it’s true they are sometimes a hazard best left avoiding, they can be used to your advantage, too. Poor Fluffy the sheep and her woolly friends make excellent platforms onto which to bounce the ball (when they don’t eat it first, of course).

Even the old woman - traditionally quite contemptuous towards golf - can be coaxed to strike the ball and further your cause. The ones to watch for, though, are the underground menace: the mole has a tendency to pinch the ball and redistribute it, which isn’t always as unhelpful as you might imagine.

PD: It’s possible to play through the entire career mode and unlock all the courses and the holes. But unless you’ve completed all the objectives on every hole, there is still much to do. Try getting a hole-in-one on every hole. It can be done!

Even when you’ve conquered all those, there are still plenty of challenges and leaderboards to top, as well as multiplayer pass-the-handset games to compete in.

PD: Oh yes! Worms Crazy Golf lives up to that expectation tenfold. It’s incredibly fun. There’s plenty of scope for trash-talking to ratchet up the pressure to make the shot.

Then that there’s immense satisfaction you get from holding your nerve to pull off one of those miraculous awe-inspiring shots, the kind that makes you a golfing legend amongst your peers.

PD: Ah - yes! “Unhelpful caddying” is a polite way of putting it. Basically, it’s a bunch of cheeky but bad advice given to you by your peers as you try to decide upon the best strategy needed to make the shot.

It’s like having a little devil sat on your shoulder feeding you misinformation. However, it can backfire on those unhelpful caddies, particular when the shot comes off 'thanks' to the unhelpful advice.

The game has pass-the-handset multiplayer?

PD: Yes, for up to four players. A great part of playing Worms Crazy Golf is the rip-roaring social multiplayer experience when sat playing this game with friends. It really captures that sociable, competitive old skool feeling of playing Worms.

PD: We have some Carnival DLC planned for release not too long after launch. This includes the Carnival course with 18 new holes and new hats, speech banks, and new golf balls for further customisation.

We are also looking to provide more DLC in the form of new courses, some of which contain holes which are fiendishly clever. The Carnival course is included in the iPad version from launch, by the way.

PD: Britannia Hole 7. On the surface, it's a simple hole to complete under par, but for those wishing to complete all the objectives, it is a real test of all the player’s skills.

Why 2D and not 3D?

PD: Worms started life as a 2D game and, yes, we have occasionally made the leap to 3D. But it only seems right that Worms Crazy Golf starts life in 2D. In that way, it retains all the charm and accessibility of its 2D cousin.

PD: Well, I’ve not really got any pro tips for real golf, but for Worms Crazy Golf I certainly do.

Mind your surroundings, for one thing. Skilful deployment of the game's utilities, too - as weird and as wonderful as they are - can make or break a seemingly impossible shot.

PD: In some ways they do. Each course introduces new elements such as new hazards to overcome or new interactive objects to use. Each course unlocks new utilities, too. These utilities increase the possibilities of your shots, allowing you to produce some extraordinary golf play.

Once you have the new utilities, go back to previous courses and try them out. You’ll find you can make shots that grant access to locations previously beyond reach.

Thanks to John and Paul for their time.

Worms Crazy Golf will teeing off on iPhone and iPad later this year.

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