Earthworms Review

Earthworms is a sci-fi point & click adventure game developed by All Those Moments and published by Big Flat Potato and Ultimate Games. I am lucky enough to lay my hands and eyes on this title and share my first impressions with you.

Earthworms tells the story of a private detective named Daniel White as he investigates a mysterious event about a missing girl. The game is set in a surrealist world and thus, our detective has parapsychic abilities. This abilities provide him with visions which are helpful during his investigations. These visions are usually bad enough to send shivers down our spine.

We start our journey in our office and learn how to use the control mechanism here. It is rather simple; we click on objects to interact with them. If it is possible, we collect them in our inventory for later use and combine them if we must.

Not long after, a visitor provides us with a case, a case of the missing girl from a small fishing town. In no time, we find ourselves in this village with a disturbing and weird atmosphere. If I’ve learnt something from reading that much Stephen King; it is that if you are in a small village, a mysterious event is inevitable.

Earthworms is pleasing to the eye with its pale colors and environmental design. I can easily say that it is mostly a faded pinkish worm color which is as calming as it is disturbing. Earthworms offers 34 painted locations inspired by Edward Hopper’s work.

It is almost Lovecraftian or we tend to think about H.P. Lovecraft when we see tentacles. But it is surely a moody game. Along with that, the besetting feeling is always there. It is obvious that there is something wrong with this village and soundtracks are always in harmony with this feeling. They are rather disturbing like they should be and made me think about how much effect they have on us during our gameplays. Earthworm achieved that with no doubt and I loved this part of the game.

Even the atmosphere and the things you’ve seen during your gameplay are depressing, our detective Daniel is always full of jokes, sarcasm and always a little bit mischief. He shows a great contrast with the story of the game and offers an enjoyable gameplay while the game itself is tense.

During our journey, we will visit different parts of this fishing village and beyond, and solve the puzzles in order to go on. I can say that they are easy, even if they seem otherwise. When we meet another local of the village, a vision will appear on the screen. This vision is a hint about the puzzle and will link the events to places, events to people, people to places, vice versa. While trying to solve this puzzles, you will find yourselves in various, weird situations and mostly you will come across the mysterious Earthworms.

The thing is that even if the game shows no signs of sci-fi at the beginning, the story takes a huge step and turns into something very different. A plot twist, we may call it. Also, the game offers three endings: good, neutral and bad. I ended up with the bad one even if I was very sure that I was against what was going on and did my best. There are certain things you must do during your gameplay in order to trigger the endings. After some point, I am afraid that you won’t be able to trigger the good ending even if you try.

While your case is getting more and more complicated, you will begin to understand that this is not only about this small village. Something much more complicated is at hand and waiting for you to solve it.

When it comes to the performance of Earthworms, I must say that it works as smooth as a worm. Yet, the game suffers from some glitches and bugs which can be fixed in time. But for now, they can make you delirious. Specially if you are having a bug problem during a puzzle. Even if you are doing the right thing, a bug may prevent you from solving it. You may even have no idea if you already solved it or not. Developers of the game are highly responsive and eager to bring us a great gameplay experience. I can only recommend to you to always save the game for not to leave it to luck.

If you are looking for a not-that-long but enjoyable point & click adventure with excellent soundtrack, a great theme and beautiful story, I recommend you to take a look at Earthworms’ Steam page. You will not regret it.

Earthworms was reviewed using a Steam key provided by the publisher.