WORMHOLE: Squirming through the arcade cosmos

My inway to arcade games was through the Game Boy. During that era, there were arcade ports left and right for pretty much everything. Pac Man? Naturally. Space Invaders? Of course. But one pre-existing arcade-type game was never on the handheld: Blockade. Of course, most people probably better recognise Blockade by its successor: Snake. Unless you go homebrew, Snake action isn't anywhere to be found - a niche that fortunately the Nokia mobile phone handily made use of.

Many years later, WORMHOLE is a game that has a new and interesting arcade premise like Snake in a nostalgic one-bit package. In short, the player is a worm chomping down on planets in the cosmos that pop up throughout the zone, which replenishes energy. Players have a limited amount of energy to speed across each zone eating a specific amount of planets. If the player chomps on themselves, or runs out of energy, they lose a life. Once all lives are depleted, it's game over.

Of course, there's more bells and whistles to WORMHOLE than an old-fashioned arcade game. For one, the titular wormholes add an additional dimension to movement and help - or hinder - players moving through the zone. Creatures move throughout the zone, with some carrying items worth additional points, or scurrying around to eat the planets before the player can. As the speed and size of the worm increases, things naturally get quite frenetic and challenging.

There's a nice progression system too. Every few zones, the player can select a perk that grants them benefits, including more planets to eat, more efficient energy replenishment, or more lives. Completion of a round of WORMHOLE tallies up the points earned as experience that accumulates across playthroughs, increasing levels to earn cosmetic goodies, including new backgrounds and color schemes for the game, and the full game will include new skills to unlock too.

The game's presentation is right on the money, and WORMHOLE conjures the image of an arcade Snake game that never was. The one-bit sprites are simple enough to be period-accurate but aren't crude either. It's also got a great little chiptune ditty that runs throughout, with its sine melodies reminiscent of a Game Boy. The dithered vocals that announce the start and end of the game also add to the mood.

WORMHOLE is the project of Pocket Moon Games, a four-person studio based in Ontario, Canada including Jeffrey Newton-Evans, Ren Burke, Than More and Tyler Bay. The game is their second after working on unreleased rhythm game Phantophone. More cited arcade games including Snake and Galaga as the inspiration for the design behind WORMHOLE.

A demo of WORMHOLE is available on Steam, with a release date yet to be announced. The full game is expected to include achievements, a marathon mode, over one hundred levels, and additional unlockables.