Worms is a turn-based strategy game developed by Team17 Software Limited and published by Ocean Software for the PC.  The game is a 2D artillery game where players control a team of worms in a military battle against other teams of worms.  The game is broken into rounds where players can use various weapons to kill the other team of worms and win the round.

Featuring up to four teams that can be controlled by either the computer or human opponents, players aim to destroy the other teams on a generated terrain.  Teams are made up of four worms with each character having 100 hit points.  The worms die when their hit points reach zero and explode upon death, causing damage to any nearby soldiers.

The gameplay is turn-based where players take turns controlling one specific worm from their team to perform a strategic attack on an opponent.  Players are given a 60 second time limit to complete an attack on an opposing team.  Only a single attack can be made during each turn where a player can move one of their soldiers and choose a weapon for attack.  After attacking the player’s turn ends and their opponents get to respond.

There is a variety of weapons available for use such as a bazooka, grenades, fire punch, dynamite, and air strikes.   Weapon attacks are affected by wind and gravity which need to be accounted for and factored into the player’s approach.  Utilities such as rope and girders are available to assist the characters in crossing the battlefield’s terrain.  The worms can crawl left, right and jump however if the worm falls from a great height, they will lose health and the players turn ends immediately.  If the character falls into water or offscreen, the soldier dies.

The game offers ten styles of terrains ranging from forest and deserts to candy land and the moon.  The terrain in each round is affected by battle where explosions will create craters in the ground and tunnels can be formed.

The concept for the game was conceived by Andy Davidson, who began working on the project in 1990.  While attending high school he began experimenting with the idea of creating a simple game based on early 8-bit tank games using a Casio graphing calculator.  Davidson named the game Artillery and created it as a passion project to play with his friends.