Review of Worm Up!

Worm Up! is a short and fun family game published by Gryphon Games, a new spin-off of Fred Distribution. It's a classic by Alex Randolph.

Players: 3-5
Playing Time: 15-20 minutes

The Components

Worm Up! comes in a small box with a handful of components.

Worms: Each worm is made up of 7 wooden half-spheres painted in a player color (yellow, green, red, blue, or brown). They look cute on the table, and you can of course position them however you want.

Numbered Tiles: Each player also gets a set of 5 small tiles numbered 4, 5, 6, 7, or X. They're all printed on linen-textured cardboard.

The Race Course. You can set out the course however you want. It consists of four posts, which are large black cylinders, and one finish line, which is a linen-textured bit of cardboard which lies between two of the cylinders.

Overall, the components of Worm Up! are cute and good quality, but not particularly notable due to their small size. I've given them a high "3" out of "5" for Style: slightly above average.

The Gameplay

The object of Worm Up! is to get your worm across the finish line first.

Setup: The start and finish posts are put about two feet from each other. The finish line is placed between the finish posts. All of the worms are placed behind the start posts. Each worm consists of seven segments which are placed touching each other in a line.

Each player also takes a set of five bidding tiles.

Bid!: Each turn begins with a bid. Each player takes one of his tiles and places it face-down in front of him, then they're all revealed simultaneously. Any players who bid the same tile as someone else don't get to do anything; only the players who bid a tile that no one else did get to move.

Movement: Movement (for those who get to) is done in numerical order from 4 to 7. When a player moves, he moves that number of segments forward, taking each segment from the end of his worm and putting it on the front.

Worms do not have to move straight. They can veer back and forth to block other worms behind them (and probably will).

The X. The X is a special tile. You get to turn it into any number that no one else picked and go at the appropriate time. In addition, after you move you can also move the finish line by putting your finger on one of the goal posts, then rotating the other around it.

Starting the Next Round: There's one slight catch to the bidding: if you were able to successfully use a tile on a turn (e.g., no one else picked the same number) then you cannot use it on the next round. You leave the used tile out, face-up in front of you.

Ending the Race: The race ends as soon as one worm touches the finish line (or else the finish line touches him).

Relationships to Other Games

Alex Randolph was one of the earliest professional game designers, publishing over a hundred games during his lifetime, most of them in the 1970s and later. His best known works are probably TwixT, Enchanted Forest, and Inkognito. His games generally foreshadowed the later German game movement with their emphasis on stout strategic mechanics. Worm Up! was one of Randolph's later publications, from the 1990s. It's usually been themed as a worm race, but it was also released as Blazing Camels, a game of racing caravans.

Mechanically, Worm Up! is a blind-bidding racing game (and a pretty simple example of the genre).

The Game Design

Worm Up! is an entirely light, largely random game. The second guessing of which tile to use doesn't necessarily have a lot of depth to it, and as a result a lot of how well you do comes down to luck.

With that said, it's a fun light game. The tactics of cutting other people off as you race are very amusing, while flipping over your tile and seeing if you get to move at all is very exciting. Even the theming of a worm race seems to be quite successful with many players.

On the whole I'd give Worm Up! a high "3" out of "5" for Substance: slightly above average. However I'll go on to say that's it a very good game for families and to play with children, as it'll be amusing to adults, but kids will have a fair chance to win it.

Conclusion

It's great to see another of Alex Randolph's little novelties back in print. This one is light, amusing, and generally fun to play, though it doesn't have much in the way of depth. It'll be best appreciated by families.