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Review by toni all reviews by toni

Yet another Nibbles game. But as far as those go, Marsworm is certainly in the very different category. The play area is made from a sphere which represents one of the moons of Mars. The moons aren't really spheres, more like potatoes, but we'll let that pass, since there aren't glowing radioactive jellyworms either. The worm itself is a strange beast. It is green. And it's glowing. It's also very dumb, probably side effect of all that radioactive waste it has eaten.
The controls are very straightforward in theory. The worm goes mindlessly ahead until you click your mouse on the sphere. When that happens, the worm instantly turns towards the point you clicked and the view starts to rotate so the point directly ahead of camera. The first can have unpleasant results since the worm will happily try to plow through itself if you make acute enough turns and the latter can be very disorienting when the camera does strange acrobatics near the poles. Once you get used to it the system works well enough though.
The worm's choise of diet is equally strange as the worm itself. He eats rare gasses. On the playfield there are scattered chemical formulae for different gasses present in Earth's atmosphere. The more rare gas you eat the more points and longer worm you get. N2 (nitrogen) gives one point, and something like Xe (Xenon) gives plenty. Actually hitting the molecules is somewhat tricky. Apparently you need to hit one of the corners, which means you can pass through the formula and yet the worm doesn't eat it. This could use some improvement.
The graphics are relatively nice for the most parts. You can see Mars in the background as you rotate around the moon. There are no stars though, so the scenery can get a bit empty. The moon is regular flat shaded triangles. There's plenty of those though, so it doesn't look too bad. Especially to those who played 3D games in the early 90s. There is also a wireframe mode which treats you to an interesting selective see through view of the moon (complete with anti-aliased lines!) - you can see chemicals on the other side, but not your worm. The worm itself could look better. It's very clearly made out of sprite balls placed equal distances away. The sprite balls are fuzzy (good thing, debateably), but the sprite itself is not large enough, so you can see the sudden rectangular edges in the fuzz (bad thing).
TINS requirements are implemented with varying degrees of success. The worm is supposed to be jelly, but it doesn't look too much like jelly. Chemical formulae are there and play important role in the scoring scheme.
GUI with dialogs is limited to the standard Allegro screenmode dialog. Arguably the control scheme of the worm is a certain kind of GUI. Doesn't have dialogs or buttons though, but that was supplemented by the screenmode selection.
There is a grid, but it is very much non rectangular. The grid is made of subdivided triangles and is probably in a polar coordinate system anyway. So that requirement is implemented very nicely.
The genre was Mars. Well, there is Mars on the background and this happens on one of the moons but that's it. You collect gasses which are present in the Earth's atmosphere and there aren't any radioactive slag worms on Mars either... So it's just a bit of backdrop. Could have been implemented better. Like collecting Martian gasses for example (yes, there is more than just carbon dioxide in the atmosphere on Mars).
Overall the game is not too bad. It's fun for a while and it's certainly different from the usual Nibbles clones. The graphics are functional even if not always pretty. Controls and collision detection could be better, but also work for the most part after you get used to them. The programming is solid and there hasn't been any crashes or apparent bugs. A little more polish and you'll have a nice little game to kill a few moments every now and then.

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