Worm Derby

Description

A game of racing worms through a field of obstacles. Each worm is a line of piecepack coins that moves by moving coins from one end of the worm to the other. The worm movement is borrowed from a German game called "Wurmeln" by Alex Randolph, but no other details are the same.

This game requires a playing surface of about 3x5 feet.

Rules

• https://ludism.org/piecepack/org/rules/WormDerby.pdf (local copy)
• https://web.archive.org/web/2016/http://www.piecepack.org/rules/WormDerby.pdf (original copy)
• WormDerbyTextVersion

Design Notes

1. I had seen about 5 minutes of a game of Wurmeln being played about 18 months before I wrote up this game, but didn't remember that until several months later.
2. I was playing around with a set of coins and kind of reinvented the move a coin end-to-end worm movement.
3. The first version didn't have the obstacles, just the start line and the turn pylon. The obstacles were added by accident during a playtest session, when one of my nephews built a wall with the unused tiles around his brother's run-away leader worm, saying "I've got to slow him down somehow."
4. The idea for moving obstacles was added several playtest session later.

Reviews & Comments

One of the RecommendedGames. (./) (./) (./)

This was my first piecepack game design -- Mark A. Biggar

Although Worm Derby uses the ridiculously clever "worm" mechanic and the race format that made the most of Würmeln, it has enough different ingredients to be considered more than a mere variant: instead of bidded values there are die throws (i.e. more excitement or frustration, depending on your taste), instead of a moving goal there's a fixed pylon that worms need to move around, and instead of empty space between start and goal/pylon there's plenty of obstacles that players can move at the throw of an ace. The overall feeling is of a longer, less controlled, less fair (not necessarily a bad thing) and more varied game for the same target audience (i.e. children and adults of a sillier disposition).

-- Antonio Recuenco Muñoz

Links

BGG page: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/20315

CategoryGame RaceComplexCategory GamesForChildrenCategory RecommendedGamesCategory MechanicRollAndMoveCategory