Terrawurm

Finally! A game that combines the old school fun of Rally-X with one of my favorite '90s movies -- Tremors. That's the Kevin Bacon movie where a small town is menaced by a giant man-eating worm just underneath the surface. Terrawurm manages to use the tension of being chased by a massive sandworm to spin out an addictive little arcade-style action game where the goal is to pick up as many precious gems as you can before being gobbled up. It's fast and fun, but don't go in looking for a lot of depth.

Terrawurm tells the story of the survivors of a future nuclear war who retreat to Pluto and fight over precious gems. They do this on a distant planet called Terra, which is the home to subterranean worms who are none too pleased that their peaceful planet is being stripped of its natural resources by a bunch of annoying humans. This sets up an exciting action game where we drive a space van around Terra's sandy surface dodging worms and collecting precious gems.

What makes your job a little harder is that the square level is constantly being filled up with large rocks. You can destroy these blocks by crashing into them, but it will slow you down and leave you open to becoming worm food. The idea is to dodge the rocks and continue picking up the gems. Of course, this gets harder and harder as the already small stage gets filled up with these annoying blocks.

The good news is that there are a number of power-ups you can unlock as you play. One of the first you'll find will turn your van into a powerful drill, helping to clear some of the rocks out of the way. There are missiles and lasers that will also get the job done. And if you want to get that worm off your butt, there's a bomb you can drop that will stun it for a few seconds. Other power-ups are more about collecting the gems, such as a magnet that will suck them towards you and a score multiplier that will allow you to double the intake for a short amount of time. You can also use the collected gems to buy upgrades to these power-ups, which is how you'll get those high scores.

But don't think these power-ups give you a lot of breathing room, because that worm is always right behind you. No matter how quickly you race around the rocks and run to safety, it's always there. All it takes is hitting a few blocks or making a wrong turn and it's game over. The worm is aggressive, and about the best you can do is slow it down with one of those bombs.

This is a fun theme that is great in short doses. It reminds me of a lot of old arcade games like Pac-Man and Rally-X, only this time around the maze forms around you. The problem is that there isn't a whole lot to the game beyond collecting the gems and upgrading the power-ups. Every level essentially plays out the same way, and while there's no question that it's fun, it also only takes an hour or two before it becomes repetitive.

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Part of the reason for this is because we're always driving around the same plot of land. It would have been nice to see a variety of levels, even if the basic gameplay remained the same throughout. Tossing in a few more colors, different obstacles and a couple new vans would have gone a long way to shake things up, but there's nothing like that here. About the most we get are a few single-run challenges, like surviving for 5 minutes, destroying 100 blocks, hitting the worm with five bombs and so on so forth. These are fun, but not something I would specifically come back to complete.

And that's basically where I am with Terrawurm. After completing a bunch of the challenges, fully upgrading the power-ups and getting what I feel is a reasonably high score, I'm not sure there's much left for me to do. What I can say is that I got a few hours of slightly repetitive fun out of the game, which isn't bad considering the seven dollar asking price. What I would love to see is this idea fleshed out with more levels and unlockables.

Although a bit on the repetitive side, Terrawurm is basically Tremors meets Rally X. With a nasty sandworm constantly on your tail, racing around the block-filled level leads to an action-packed time. The problem is that there simply isn't enough content to keep the game interesting after an hour or two. I like the inexpensive price point and the fast-paced action, but wish Terrawurm had more content to play around with.