Damn, everyone’s doing an XCOM these days. Star Wars is making an XCOM. Rainbow Six is making an XCOM. Warhammer 40K made about four XCOMs. These squeaky hits of Worms are there too, with Worms: Galactic Tactics, a turn-based grid combat game which will be released sometime in 2027.
So it’s a very busy genre, although there might well be room for this one too. I played a few rounds with the developers at Absolutely Games at Gamescom last month and it shows real, nifty promise, despite culling some of the sacred sheep of the wider series.
It’s in 3D, obviously (gasp). And, while a full complement of online and local multiplayer modes are planned, it’s “single-player focused” (gasp), with a campaign that takes three named worms through a televised murder tournament in a roguelike structure (gasp). Bloody hand grenades? Concrete donkeys? The mighty Prod? They’re there, but take the form of future upgrades for which you’ll likely save money over multiple runs.
It’s a bit surprising that Team17, who publishes, gave this the green light – with the original developers apparently having sworn 3D Worms games for two decades. I liked what I played, but there’s a very good chance that Galactic Tactics could straddle the line between offering something new and that more intangible quality of still feeling Dewormer.
Aiming, for example, maintains both the precision and the potential for violent disaster that the mainline games have always relied on. Rather than clicking on a target, judging a percentage chance of hitting, and cursing your idiot sniper for missing 95%, Galactic Tactics’ projectile weapons are aimed manually. Then, regardless of weapon type, there is a one-tap, timing-based mini-game to determine accuracy by your hand alone. Hit the sweet spot and you’ll be rewarded with critical damage, but fill the green area entirely and your ammo will open wide, perhaps even blowing up your teammates. It’s a smart system: one that preserves skill while ensuring that all the slapstick bullshit is entirely your doing. The brief window to perform the click also injects some urgency where the lack of a turn timer (gasp) had taken it away.
Positioning is also as important here as it always was at Worms. In particular, Galactic Tactics almost always offers a height advantage; While there are defensive bonuses for staying behind cover or next to shield generators, this aiming system makes it much easier to land critical hits when monitoring enemies. Which, in turn, will have more difficulty responding effectively. Instead of cowering behind crates, I would regularly spend my movement points to aggressively secure elevation, trading the safety of easier retreat for the glory of multi-shot bazooka blasts.
All this does in fact feel wormyespecially once these views are compromised by even more standard terrain distortion. Arenas are small and, ultimately, still grid-based, rather than destructible on a pixel-by-pixel basis. But toppling perches and destroying the ground always opens up new tactical possibilities and wacky new risks. In a late round, one of my Big Lad Worm’s flaming fists wasn’t quite enough to hit an enemy on attack damage alone. However, moving alongside him and knocking him into the pool of lava – revealed by an earlier explosive chain reaction, ignited by my own breathed bazooka – finished him off instantly.
It’s this interplay between clever moves and stupid accidents, between strategy and improvisation, that always ended up bringing me back to Worms, even with pauses of several years dividing these bursts of interest. And, at least recently, the games themselves. I’d still like to see how the multiplayer plays out, but Galactic Tactics seems to understand and respect the heavy lifting that makes these games work, roguelike remix or not. And if it is doesn’t work, small, are absolutely Also create a classic style Worms game to launch later. That’s a lot of squeaky hits.
