A few days ago I reviewd WarMUX, a free and open-source Worms-like game for Linux. Today I’ll take a look to Hedgewars, another free Worms clone with funny characters, good playability and support for online multiplayer.
First of all, Hedgewars resembles the original Worms game more accurately than WarMUX, and I’m not referring to playability, which is great for both, but only to the way weapons and characters look like, and also to the in-game configuration and sounds. Here’s how the last Hedgewars release, 0.9.14.1, looks like:
The game highlight features:
– single player and multiplayer (online or LAN)
– bundled map pack
– wide range of weapons to choose from
– in-game fun sounds and in-game music (several entertaining soundtracks)
– possibility to configure teams, weapon settings, fullscreen/windowed mode
Hedgewars allows you to configure it in pretty much the same way the original Worms did: you can configure teams, weapons (weapon set, probabilities, ammo and also weapon delays), change screen resolution, run it in a window or in fullscreen mode, enable or disable music/in-game sounds.
Online playing is straightforward – connect to the official server, chat, choose a game and play:
Weapons include the usual bazooka, grenades, cluster bombs, dynamite, happy birthday cake, kamikaze, or even seduction, a weapon which will make the enemy hogs jump towards you (used best to make them jump into a gap or whole).
Default weapon set
I found the background music to be actually great and really entertaining, and the in-game sounds made by the hogs are pretty funny too.
All-in-all, Hedgewars is great. It succeeds in recreating that special feeling you had when playing the original Worms game, and it does it actually better. Great configurability, nice sounds and great music, both single player and online playing support, these are its strong points. Give it a try if you haven’t already!
