Hedgewars – a worms clone
Blowtorch can kill, too...
Since it’s been over two years since the last time I blogged about Debian games, I figured it’s time to mention this small gem.
Hedgewars is a pretty polished & very playable Worms clone. It supports quick singleplayer games against the AI, hotseat multiplayer games, and multiplayer games over the internet. Naturally, the multiplayer game is the Crux here 
You can play on the global server where players seem to be available pretty readily. I’ve mostly played with known friends, but some extras have always joined in because I’ve forgotten to restrict joins and team additions.
Can you guess what happens next?
In case you haven’t played Team17’s Worms yet, the game consists of teams of hedgehogs that battle against each other with a variety of weapons. The weapons available can be controlled from game settings. Each team starts with the same set of weapons, all of which are not available for use in the beginning. For some weapons you have to wait a couple of turns until they become activated (for example: airstrike, napalm, cake). This allows players to prepare a bit for the inevitable airstrikes etc. More weapons can be picked up from crates that fall from the sky randomly.
Cake!
Last team alive wins the game, as simple as that. The game is turn-based, and there is a limit of time each hedgehog can use to move around and choose a way to attack other hedgehogs. After attacking the turn ends, and the next team gets to act.
Fire Punch!
Turns are team-based, not character-based, so a team with only one hog and another with three hogs get to act as often. This also means that in a team with only hog that hog gets to act every time, while for bigger teams the hog gets to act only every N turns (where N is the number of alive hogs). This can be used tactically for your benefit 
Assuming the opposing team does not have Switch Hog -charges left…
Happy Birthday!
Besides the limit of time on turns, the whole game time is limited so that Sudden Death mode is activated eventually in long battles. This reduces the health of all hogs by 5 (hogs start at 100 health, which can, by the way, be larger when health boxes are picked up) each turn, until it reaches 1. The water level also rises, drowning all boxes and hogs that are below the line. Naturally, the hogs that are higher, have an advantage in the end, so this adds more tactical elements to the game.
All in all, Hedgewars is a very amusing game to play with a bunch of friends, and the games are rather short, so it’s easy to have ex tempore gaming evenings 
Sudden Death for the win!
There is a similar project named Wormux, but I admit to only playing it once very quickly. The playability and polishing just seemed to be better in Hedgewars, but I admit this might be an erroneous evaluation. I guess I might need to give it some proper testing in the future.
Another game I should probably test out is teeworlds
