Worms Armageddon Overview

Worms Armageddon Cover Art This is the game's ugly cover art, but it still doesn't compete with Mega Man 1's US cover art in that regard.

Worms Armageddon is a 2D, turn-based combat game. It was released in 1999. It has some strategy elements, lots of wacky weapons, and some pretty awesome physics. You assume control of a team of up to 8 worms, and your objective is eliminating the other team(s). I've been playing it since 2004, it just never gets old.

You can get this game on Steam, GOG, or probably some other places I'm not aware of. It goes on sale pretty often, and you don't need to actually own a legitimate version to play online, so if you'd prefer pirating it, that's an option too.

The great thing about the GOG version is that it's on par with Steam, and you can even install your copy on a different computer, with no restrictions. It's yours to keep.

I've made a few things for this game, I've got that in a different page.

Contents:

Overview

In-game screenshot In-game screenshot, featuring a custom terrain. The green team is in quite a pickle.

I'd describe Worms Armageddon as kind of a party game (a pretty much perfect one), where you shoot tiny worms with some pretty absurd weapons. It's kinda hard to summarize it in a short sentence since there's so much you can do in this game.

As I already said, you assume control of a team of up to 8 worms. Your objective is eliminating the other team (or teams) by shooting them with a large variety of weapons, ranging from your typical Bazooka and Grenade, to farm animals like Super Sheep and Mad Cows, and it gets even crazier than that. If violence and war crimes are not your thing, you could also learn how to use the Ninja Rope and challenge someone to a race. Combat schemes are typically played on a randomly generated map, but specialized ones like races, rope-based schemes, forts games, among many others, are played on handmade maps. The community has come up with many schemes (and maps for them) over the more than 25 years of history that Worms Armageddon has.

Depending on your style of play, you could make a scheme that's all about blowing everything up with little thought involved, or you could make something that's meant to be played more strategically. My favorite strategy schemes are Capture The Flag and Forts.

The game supports up to 6 players in a single game. You can play either locally by sharing the same computer, or online through WormNET (or directly through IP and port forwarding, but that's not common). Latency is not usually a problem, you can play with someone on the moon if you'd like, the game will function the same due to its turn-based nature, with added waiting time between turns and perhaps some hiccups. These waiting times are to sync the game's state with the other players, but you won't lose control in the middle of the turn because of it. Instead you'll wait a few moments before your opponent's turn starts as your movements get sent to them.

When I started playing this game, it was rather basic, but thanks to the work of Deadcode, CyberShadow, and countless other community members, it became the best Worms game available, thanks to a plethora of fixes that made it possible to run the game on a modern computer, and also thanks to the huge amount of community-created content available.

The Worms2D Wiki is a great resource to learn about the many schemes that you can play. It also contains information on Worms Armageddon's versions over the years, some documentation on bugs, and useful tools you can use for a variety of things. Obviously there's more to it, so check it out.

If the game feels kinda confusing at first, that's normal. The menus can be kinda awkward to navigate at first, and there's no tutorial or anything that teaches you how to play. You gotta understand that this game came out in an era of gaming where games came with a manual, and you were expected to read the manual in order to learn how to play.

Customization

An important customization feature is being able to create teams, where you can give the team and each worm a unique name. You could make a team inspired by a TV show, or a video game, or people you know, or whatever you can imagine. When you make a team, you can also choose a team weapon (I recommend Mad Cows), a grave for your dead worms, a voice for your worms, a fanfare that plays when you win, and a flag. There's some pretty funny voices to choose from, and a generous selection of flags and graves. You can also make custom flags and graves if you want, but with some limitations.

WormNET

WormNET screenshot The WormNET welcome screen. #AnythingGoes is the only channel that's really used at all.

WormNET is the online system where you can find and play games with other people around the world. The welcome screen shows 4 channels that you can join, but #AnythingGoes is the only one that really gets any use.

#AnythingGoes screenshot The #AnythingGoes channel. Here you can chat with others (or see others being clowns in the chat), view open games, or host one yourself.

Earlier in its existence, WormNET supported a ranking system where better players would be ranked higher, and this rank would be visible to everyone else, but that got axed after a few years. The only way to change your rank display nowadays is by spoofing it with a special WormNET client. It holds no real meaning.

Schemes

For a big list, check out the Schemes page on the Worms2D Wiki.

The basic scheme is Intermediate. A scheme is essentially a game mode. Schemes are specific configurations of the game's settings to fit a certain way to play. With that out of the way, Intermediate is what the game defaults to in all its single-player game modes. It gives you a generous selection of weapons, and has no complex settings enabled that might be overwhelming for a beginner. Some people play this scheme exclusively, it can be quite fun.

Some other schemes that I recommend you check out:

Forts

Forts is a scheme similar to Intermediate that puts two teams in their own fort, on either side of the map. Later Worms games added their own Forts mode, but Armageddon lacks such a thing, so instead it's played on custom, usually symmetrical maps. Your objective, as you could've already guessed, is eliminating the other team. It's a bit more tactical than Intermediate.

Capture The Flag

Capture The Flag is similar to Forts in that each team starts on their own side of a symmetrical map. It has the additional objective of destroying the enemy team's flag, so both teams strive to invade the other team's side, while defending their own. You win this by either destroying the other team's flag, or eliminating all their worms. Some rules apply, so check the linked page if you're interested.

Bazooka & Grenades

Bazooka & Grenades (or BnG for short) is a skill-based scheme that uses only the two aforementioned weapons (big surprise). Your worms are anchored to the terrain so you have to rely entirely on your aiming skill to take out the other worms.

Hysteria

Hysteria is a hectic scheme with 1 second turn time. Your weapon variety is reduced to 1 weapon per slot, so you definitely have to learn how to switch weapons with the F1-F12 keys. I haven't played this in years, but it's really fun with a lot of people.

Mine Madness

Mine Madness is kind of an unserious scheme that places everyone in a large map, where the terrain is just a bunch of scattered dots, and it's littered with instant mines. Shooting a worm will typically make it drop onto a mine, triggering a big chain reaction that can have hilarious results.

Supersheeper

Supersheeper is a mindless combat scheme where you exclusively use Super Sheep. It's fun for a short while.

Shopper

Shopper is, or at least used to be the ubiquitous rope-based scheme that everyone would play. It's a combat, roping-based scheme where you first have to grab a crate that appears somewhere on the map, and then you have to attack the healthiest team while mounted on the Ninja Rope. Some rules apply, so be sure to read up on that before deciding to play with others. I personally find it kinda boring, but that's because I'm not a big fan of roping schemes.

Rope Race

Rope Race is the other ubiquitous roping scheme, and it's much more skillful than Shopper. This is played on large, custom maps where your goal is simply getting from start to finish, with no combat elements present. Until very recently, this was typically played with 30 second turns, but some crazy genius managed to implement real-time gameplay into the game. Sadly it's only good for racing, but it's still a massive improvement over going by turns.

Battle Race

Battle Race can be described as racing the other player(s) around an obstacle course. You rely solely on basic movement with no other utilities, turns are short, and your opponents can attack you, so you have to clear as much distance as possible, while also making sure you can't be massively set back by an enemy grenade. If played with the real-time module, the combat aspect is eliminated and instead you race from start to finish. I prefer playing this with real-time enabled, since otherwise it can take a few hours to finish a race. I once played a 6-hour race with someone, it's a memory I cherish.

Getting started

If you got interested in the game and you'd like to play, the following sections will assist you in setting it up and getting ready for an online game.

Things you should know before playing

Controls

Worms Armageddon should be played with keyboard & mouse, trying to play with a controller will result in much frustration. Additionally, you probably want a full-sized keyboard, or at least one that's missing the numpad. Compact keyboards that require you to punch key combos in order to hit the F1-F12 keys, or god forbid, the arrow keys, will likely result in a bad experience unless you can somehow handle that.

Later in this page, I give a brief explanation on the very basic controls that you need to know.

Compatibility

The latest versions of Worms Armageddon have great compatibility with both modern and old systems. That being said, you should probably play this on Windows. I don't know if anyone has managed to run the game without issues on Mac or Linux, your mileage may vary.

If you want to run older versions of the game, you'll probably run into compatibility issues with your system. Be ready for at least a small amount of troubleshooting.

Updates

If you're the kinda brainless gamer that needs constant content updates to a game in order to keep your interest, look elsewhere. Worms Armageddon used to get updates frequently in the 2000's, but that's not a thing anymore. The last update we got was in 2020, which was pretty big and brought some fantastic improvements to the experience, but that was a very specific occurrence and is unlikely to happen again. The game's in a really good state, and while any further improvements are welcome, it's good enough as is.

Unlocks

The game has a few unlocks that are tied to progression in the single player modes. The unlocks are merely scheme options, so if you don't wanna play the single player modes to unlock all the customization options, type boggysentme from the main menu. You should hear a sound effect if you did it successfully. Note that this was added in the 3.8 update, so to unlock everything on older versions of the game, you have to use a third-party program.

Just so you know, your progress is stored in the same file that holds your teams: [WA base folder] > User > Teams > WG.WGT.

The Worms Armageddon Noob Guide

Main menu screenshot The main menu. Hover over an item to see its description. The bottom right frame takes you to options.

Without further ado, let's get into setting up the game. This assumes you already have a copy ready to install.

Install and setup

  1. Install game
  2. Run game
  3. Click the bottom right frame to go to Options, then click on Advanced, then enable the following:
    • Skip intro
    • Offline rope knocking
    • Load WormKit modules
    • Turn off VSync
    • Renderer: Direct3D9 (Shader)
    • Windowed mode on
Advanced menu screenshot My advanced options look like this.
  1. Restart the game
  2. Install the following modules:
  3. Make a team. This is available in the Options menu.
  4. When making a team, name all your worms, choose a voice that's not English (the default one) because it fucking sucks, and choose an appropriate team weapon. I recommend Mad Cows, but Super Sheep and Holy Grenade are also good choices.

To play online

Netplay menu screenshot The netplay menu. WormNET options are to the right. The top right frame is clickable.
  1. From the main menu, click on the bottom left frame, it'll take you to the Netplay menu
  2. Once in the Netplay menu, click on Configuration on the right side of the screen
  3. Disable Word filter and go back. If you don't do this, you won't be able to say fuck, or shit, or... porksword. Yeah, that's a filtered word.
  4. Click on the top right frame to join WormNET
  5. Take off your headphones
  6. Double click on #AnythingGoes and wait for a game
  7. If you see an open game that interests you, double click it to enter
  8. Once you've joined, pick your team and wait for the host to set up the game, then press the lightbulb to confirm you're ready

Important: The name of an online game's lobby usually tells you what scheme is gonna be played. If you're a beginner, try looking for Intermediate games. Check the Schemes page on the Worms2D wiki to find out more about specific schemes. Make sure you follow WormNET Etiquette if you're gonna be playing with strangers.

Hosting an online game

If you'd like to host your own online game on WormNET, your options are downloading WormNAT2 from the downloads above and clicking the Host button inside #AnythingGoes, or doing things manually by following the Hosting Guide.

Additionally, if WormNET is not available, you can also try hosting a Direct IP game. Follow the instructions from the link above to set up your computer for hosting games, and instead of joining WormNET, click the Direct IP button from the Netplay menu. You'll need to give your IP address and port number to whoever you're playing with.

Basic controls

No, you don't move and aim with WASD, you do it with the arrow keys. There's a solution for that, but read this first and try the default controls to see if they suit you.

Action Button
Move Left & Right arrow keys
Aim Up & Down arrow keys
Shoot Space key
Jump Enter & Backspace keys, press twice in quick succession for a different jump
Open & close chat PageDown and PageUp (or PgDn/PgUp)
View weapons menu Right click
Change grenade fuse The 1 to 5 keys above the QWERTY row (numpad doesn't work)
Switch the active worm with Select Worm Tab key
Select weapons quickly The F1-F12 keys, and additionally the key to the left of 1 for the utilities row
View options Esc key
Keyboard example Visual example of your basic controls. Keyboard image source.

To rebind these controls, install WkRemapKeys: https://worms2d.info/WkRemapKeys

For more detailed controls: https://worms2d.info/In-game_controls

Steam version fixes

Some content was removed from the Steam version due to being deemed offensive to certain demographics. I recommend restoring said content, otherwise you'll likely get into online matches where you'll hear default voices instead of whatever the other players chose.

The download below contains these missing files, and additionally some audio replacements that mute certain in-game sounds. Check the readme file included to see details on which these sounds are. To install these, just extract them over the base Worms Armageddon directory, where the exe file is.

https://mega.nz/file/VX4ClSgJ#ZzWSAncFdojMaR8VpqN7kPKO97vOzIEQkJ6hLdE8DV8

Resources

Places of interest around the web where you'll find stuff to do with the game: