Wormate Survival Guide: Heads, Boosts and Cut-Offs

Wormate looks like a game of luck: a small worm, a big arena, ten other worms that seem to come out of nowhere. It is really a game about heads and space. Here is how the arena works and what keeps a worm alive long enough to top the LIVE SCORE board.

The one rule that matters

Only heads kill. If your head touches any part of another worm, the screen says KILLED and you go back to the menu. If another worm's head touches your body, it dies instead and leaves a trail of glowing food behind. Size does not protect you: a huge worm that noses into a tiny one is out. Every tip below comes back to this rule.

Steering with the mouse

The worm's head turns toward the pointer. When the pointer is far away, it swings round in a wide arc; when the pointer is just in front of the head, it can turn almost on the spot. Keep the mouse close to the worm in crowded spots and further out when you are cruising. Tight turns are what save you when a rival suddenly cuts across.

Boosting without starving

Hold the left mouse button and the worm glows and races forward at more than three times its normal speed. The price is weight: the grams in the LIVE SCORE panel tick down while you hold it, and the game stops the boost when your worm is nearly as short as it can get. Use boost for short, planned bursts — to cross in front of a worm, to grab food before someone else, or to get out of a closing gap — not to travel.

How to make other worms crash

The easiest kill is a cut-off. Find a worm moving roughly alongside you, boost a little ahead of it and turn across its path. Its head meets your side and it bursts. The other worms are computer-controlled and head for food just like you do, so a body laid across the path to a pile of food is the classic way to catch one.

Once you are long, you can coil: circle a smaller worm so your body surrounds it, then tighten the ring. It has nowhere to go but into you.

Eating the leftovers safely

A burst worm leaves a line of bright food along the path it took. Every other worm heads for it too. Rather than diving into the middle, curl around the pile so your body keeps the others out, then eat at normal speed.

Power-ups

Four pick-ups appear on the floor: Freeze, Flash, Magnet and Shield. Each runs on a short timer — four seconds for Freeze, seven for Flash, ten for Shield and twelve for Magnet — so use them straight away rather than saving them for later. The menu's objectives also count how many of each you collect.

Where to play

The arena ends in a red wall. Near the edges you have fewer ways to turn and the other worms can pin you against it. Spend most of your time toward the middle, glance at the minimap in the bottom-left corner to see where the crowd is, and steer toward the quieter side.

Ready? Play Wormate, or read how the objectives unlock new worms.