Wormventures: Barrier 51 review

• Reviews by Drew Onia
• Published:

Fans of late-90s point-and-clicks might just dig this retro invertebrate adventure that’s in need of bit more polish

When everyday citizens are asked to shoulder the burden of crisis, hold their heads high in the face of danger, or lend a helping hand to their neighbour, heroes are born, and humanity’s best shines through.

But what if you don’t technically have shoulders, a head, or hands, because you’re not human? What if you’re a worm?

Basement Society dares to ask this question in Wormventures: Barrier 51, a retro cartoon-style 3D point-and-click adventure that’s almost the right balance of whacky and smart. The indie German developer has put a considerable amount of thought into both the game’s worldbuilding and the puzzles – almost a Tolkien-esque level of commitment, in fact – making this planet of worms a lively and entertaining one to explore. Many times I asked ‘why worms?’ but ultimately it’s just as relevant to ask, ‘why not?’ While it’s a little too genuine with its desire to overwhelm and stump the player, and a poor translation and multitude of glitches can derail the experience, it’s nevertheless a soundly designed comedic adventure that’s sure to stir up nostalgia for similar games of its type from the late 1990s.

Looky lives in a small village on Market Island, adjacent to Mount Spit, a seemingly dormant volcano. A geologist by trade, Looky is volun-told by his small nation’s council of elders to investigate whether a major eruption is about to take place. This is easier said than done, with Looky having to gather information under the direction of the island’s Technologician – a mad scientist whose methods seem less than reliable, casting doubt on the whole operation.

Working with the friendly (and not so friendly) inhabitants of the oceanic island chain, Looky soon learns that there is far more to the impending crisis than natural volcanic activity. Gangsters run a black market on the southern island, a shotgun-wielding hermit lives next to the volcano, and a tribe of cannibal worms supposedly inhabits the base of Mount Spit. Fortunately, these obstacles make for great comedy. The game’s first few chapters take place on Looky’s home island, but after the question of the island’s tectonic instability is answered, he is thrown into a larger plot that threatens the entire world of Vermis, forcing him to navigate several other islands in order to get back home and warn the elders before it is too late. The central goal always stays in view, but the episodic detours and bizarre fetch quests presented in each of the game’s seven chapters are consistently entertaining.

As Looky makes his way around Vermis, he meets worms of other different cultures. In the worm equivalent of America, Looky must circumvent the bureaucracy of the military industrial complex, while on a Cyprus-esque island he is tasked with engaging in amateur archaeology as well as settling arguments between the two antagonistic factions claiming the island as home. While it’s never mean-spirited, how much you enjoy racial and cultural stereotypes may play into your enjoyment of the game. Despite its cartoon veneer, Wormventures contains plenty of mature humour, including the occasional outburst of profanity, and in the context of this bizarre worm-populated world it can be quite charming, even if not every joke lands.

Looky is controlled with the mouse; a left-click prompting Looky to squirm to the intended point on-screen or interact with the environment, and a double-click prompting him to hop a little faster. The right mouse button opens Looky’s inventory via an overlay in the middle of the screen, where items can be examined and selected for use in the environment. Looky will rarely use items automatically, meaning the onus is on the player to decipher what needs to be used in what order. Sometimes the order of these combinations can be important, or you may need to examine the hotspot first in order to zoom in closer before using an item on it. Though there is no way to highlight points of interaction available in a given screen, this is not a pixel hunt. Sometimes items are cleverly hidden in the environment, but thanks to the smart colouring and low-poly style, it’s never too hard to find what you need.

The first several chapters of Wormventures present quite a large area to explore, collecting items without limit or context. When visiting his neighbours’ house, for example, Looky will simply pilfer whatever he wants without cause (prompting passive aggressive comments from his neighbour that it’s alright if Looky takes what he needs, so long as it is for the sake of his quest). Looky will also take freely from vegetable patches, simply on the hunch that he might need it at some point – though that point doesn’t come for quite some time. Every item does have a use, eventually, but it can be overwhelming. The first few puzzles are set up in a sequential manner, with Looky commenting blatantly on what he needs to do at the few points of interaction available. However, the game’s increased openness soon afterwards did stump me several times, simply due to the fact I had so many things in my inventory and so many possible places to use them. 

Red herrings, too, are plentiful, and several times I was tripped up by trying to use the wrong item at the wrong time. Attempting to use a sleeping potion on a monster, for example, stalled me longer than I would like to admit, even though the actual solution involving an alternate ingredient made just as much sense. Modifying an item by way of chemical reaction rather than brute force also had me stumped early on, but I would hardly call either of these scenarios unfair.

Wormventures: Barrier 51

Genre:	Comedy, Science Fiction
Presentation:	Realtime 3D
Perspective:	Third-Person
Gameplay:	Puzzle, Quest
Control:	Point-and-click
Game Length:	Long (more than 10 hours)
Difficulty:	Medium
Theme:	Animal
Graphic Style:	Simulated realism

The puzzle style does change over the course of the game as inventory-based challenges become less prevalent. You’ll have to sneak through a library without waking up the librarian by squirming over a squeaky floorboard, work your way through a maze, write down passwords, and even brush up on local history in order to settle an argument between border patrol guards. Some of these tasks can be tedious, like the history quiz, but with multiple save slots you can manually record your progress in more than one place and go back to quickly check an answer or clue without having to slowly inch between locations.

The challenge can be significant, but even when I had to break down and revert to a walkthrough, I was rarely upset with the game for its intended solutions. Some of the difficulty feels a bit artificial, though. More than once a code consisting of several digits would flash on screen for only a brief second, which forced me to repeat the dialogue multiple times just to get the code written down. During one of these segments you are gathering coordinates by eavesdropping on a phone call, and while you have a recording device in your inventory, Looky refuses to use it for the code, stating that nothing important is being said. Instances like this occur frequently, and while a certain solution may make sense to the player, the path here is set in stone. If you don’t mind periods of wandering between screens aimlessly while trying to figure out what you’re missing, there is a good time to be had. That said, this constant gatekeeping does detract from the overall narrative. With so many charming characters and joke setups, Wormventures can be a drag when you’re not making progress.

The game is subtitled in English but lacks voices. German is supported both in voice and text, but while the German voices for the worms are funny, I actually thought most of the jokes landed due to the animation and sound effects alone. There are quite a few spelling and grammatical errors in the English translation, and a few of them actually halted my progress. One puzzle requires you to impersonate someone’s supervisor over the phone, and the dialogue options you use throughout this call must be chosen in a specific manner. The problem is that the grammar is so poor in this section that it’s hard to decipher what you need to say. Most other errors are harmless enough; for the most part words will just have a few letters out of place, making the gist easy enough to understand.

Although created in 3D, Wormventures operates from a series of fixed camera angles that pan and zoom as you move along. Entering an area is easy enough, with the camera typically pointed towards the main point of interest in the scene, but getting Looky back out of a scene can be a slow process for the same reason. Often you’ll need to keep clicking the bottom of the screen while Looky moves back towards you, as the camera barely zooms out far enough for you to make extended progress. Once your mouse cursor turns to a sign connoting the exit region, you can double-click to expedite leaving, but it’s still a tedious process. The tedium of one sequence, however, stands out in a good way. When Looky has to use the post office, he travels between the office’s five different windows in order to obtain the right supplies in the right order. It’s stupidly redundant, but in a relatable way, and works on a comedic level.

Most of the game is spent traversing various islands, and the architectural and topographical variety for each region is wholly unique. Foggy swamps, dark caverns, and volcanic dungeons contrast against sunny beaches, Greek-inspired temples, and densely packed urban environments. Each and every location has its own visual (and audible) identity, making the journey between screens feel like a genuine world tour. The character models and environments are all low-poly designs with (mostly) flat colour textures, giving the game an early SEGA Model 1 sort of aesthetic. The central map screens when travelling between areas are hand-drawn, but the rest of the graphics utilize the in-game engine.

There are some additional graphical flourishes, like music notes emanating from a jukebox, which add more charm to the world. Worm movements have been well developed, and the way they use their tails to handle items and squirm while holding their heads upright looks natural enough. It’s the facial expressions that really steal the show, though, and the game is so funny in large part thanks to its physical comedy. The use of sound effects in amusingly crafted cinematics contributes to the slapstick and cartoon humour as well. Music appropriate to the setting plays quietly in the background of most areas, like a twangy southern song in Vermis’s version of America, or ney arrangements in the Middle Eastern-inspired location.

Strangely, despite its hardly taxing system requirements, Wormventures does not run smoothly. The frame rate usually hovers below 30fps but regularly dips even below that. There is a considerable amount of clipping, and Looky’s pathfinding is a constant issue. Not every part of a scene is even accessible, and while visual cues like water or roadblocks are often used to connote these barriers, sometimes Looky just won’t squirm where you click even if it looks possible. He also got completely lost on me at times, moving via obtuse paths to reach a destination for no good reason. He even fell through the floor once, forcing me to reload my game just to escape.

NPCs and certain items would also respawn (or appear in a scene from an in-game cinematic) for no reason too, which was not only confusing but a bit creepy. One instance happened while Looky was infiltrating the mob’s hideout. Everyone was supposed to be gone, but upon loading my game, one of the gangsters was in the room, staring forward. He was not interactive in any way, and eventually disappeared, but it was nonetheless a bewildering occurrence while it lasted. There are also visual triggers that sometimes fail to reset, like a mailbox flag that was up, though Looky would comment that it was down, throwing off progress I thought I had made. One time I had an item disappear from my inventory, prompting me to go back to where I found it and re-collect it.

Final Verdict

While this style and era of 3D point-and-click adventures are not generally my cup of tea, I do have to hand it to Basement Society for making such a well-conceived, if a little too authentic, retro point-and-click adventure. It will likely appeal to a hardcore audience nostalgic for games of its time, but others may prefer to avoid some of the frustrations and pitfalls the genre has largely left behind. Still, Wormventures: Barrier 51 is a funny visual experience in a charming game world, the puzzles are nicely designed, and the variety of challenge types should hold player interest throughout the ten-plus-hour campaign. The translation errors, shaky performance, and leftover glitches need to be addressed in order to recommend this to anyone outside this particular area of adventure fandom, but look past those and it's a valiant debut effort for an indie designer that might just leave you hooked.

Drew played Wormventures: Barrier 51 on PC using a review code provided by the game's publisher.