Mini Review: Can Of Wormholes (Switch)

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Version Reviewed: North American

review by Roland Ingram 2pm

Greetings, worms! Finally, for all you readers who are worms, scouring Nintendo Life for worm-related content, here’s a game that puts annelids front and centre. Wiggling onto Switch from solo dev Munted Finger, Can of Wormholes dares to open that proverbial can and launch squiggly bird food – if we may call you that – straight at a wonderful array of cross-dimensional puzzles. Worms everywhere can stand proud. Or at least just sort of lie proud.

The rules of the game are simple enough to get your minuscule worm brains around: on each stage, you, the worm protagonist, must wriggle into a worm-shaped slot. You move your head square-by-square on a grid and the rest of your body follows the path you take – much like when you eat through a flowerbed, aerating the soil. A critical tweak to proceedings is that, when reversing, your tail end always goes back in a straight line, not retracing the route it came by. Further mechanical additions include pills that can be eaten to grow longer, blocks to push, shapes to ingest, and more. The game even permits the sad discovery that slicing a worm in two does not, in fact, create two worms. (Not two living worms, anyway.)

The puzzle variety is seriously impressive. Challenges are grouped in sort of wormy spaceships, and hopping between ships – a meta-puzzle in its own right – introduces new concepts alongside new visual themes. But even within each ship, the range of logical tests is impressive, with new ideas stacked on top of each other continuously. And they are serious brain teasers – or at least they will tease the small, brain-like ganglion at the top of your central nerve cord. (No offence, but you worms are not really known for your intellectual prowess – you’re more about instinct. That and eating dirt.)

But to accompany the trickiness of the puzzles, there is a hint system that truly goes the extra mile. It doesn’t hold you by the hand – or by the bristle-like setae that cover your worm body – rather, it takes time out to actually teach you the core concept of each poser. It does this by dropping out of the stage into a smaller, simpler, black-and-white setting. Here, the crux of the puzzle is isolated so that you can work out the key ideas for yourself before taking them back to the ‘real world’ and applying them. It leaves so much up to you as the player that it never feels like a cheat or a cop-out to call on it.

For the most part, the presentation is clear and to the point, letting the puzzles do the talking. As worms with no eyes, you’re not missing too much on the graphics front. However, equipped as you are to detect vibrations, you will appreciate the music, which brilliantly drops in optimistic cues when you make a key step along a solution, or goes a bit dissonant when you’ve messed up.

With ingenious puzzles, a high level of difficulty, and an educational hint system, be careful or Can of Wormholes will have you hooked.