In September 1994 a 21-year-old from Bournemouth walked up to Team17’s stand at the ECTS trade show in London with, as Amiga Computing later put it, “two skanky looking diskettes”. “You’re probably not going to like this,” Andy Davidson remembered telling them, “it’s a bit weird.” Team17 played it for five minutes and asked whether he wanted it published. The game was Total Wormage, and a year later, as Worms, it was on its way to most of the computers and consoles of the day.
Fast facts
- Known for: creating Worms (1995), published by Ocean and developed with Team17.
- Tools: Blitz Basic 2, with some assembler, and Deluxe Paint on the Amiga.
- At Team17: 1994 to 1999, then again from 2012 for Worms Revolution.
- Born: about 1973; Amiga Format gave his age as 21 in its January 1995 issue.
Before Worms
Davidson told The One in 1995 that he had “always fiddled, since I had a Spectrum and a Commodore 64”, and that he had owned an Amiga since 1987. He chose Team17 because it was, to him, the company that put the Amiga first: “All the people who are knocking the Amiga should remember that it’s the only machine that people who have ideas can use to turn them into games.”
The game that became Worms started, he told Retro Gamer, as Artillery, a tank game on a Casio graph-plotting calculator. On the Amiga it grew into a game for teams of small, fast, jumping worms, drawn in Deluxe Paint and inspired by how much character Lemmings got into a few pixels. PC Zone quoted him on why he kept at it: “It started as a simple ‘tank game’ to keep me and my mates amused while we should have been doing our A-Levels.” He worked in a computer shop at the time and let customers play each new version. In November 1995 Amiga Format printed a reader’s memory of the Caltec computer shop in Wimborne, near Bournemouth, where the shop’s A1200 was running “a strange game called Total Wormage”. Asked whether it was a public-domain game, “the spotty assistant” replied: “No, I programmed it.”
Getting it published
Amiga Format’s November 1993 cover disk carried a full copy of Blitz Basic 2, with a competition to write a game in it. Davidson started work on Total Wormage in August 1993, he told The One, and entered it the following February. “Some of it’s in Blitz, but some of it’s in assembler,” he said. It did not win, “which was rather gutting”. A copy sent to Acid Software, the makers of Blitz Basic, in New Zealand brought no reply either. ECTS was his last try, and it worked.
Team17 let him develop the Amiga version his own way. “Team17 basically gave me a free hand with the game,” he told PC Zone; “I would go back to Bournemouth for a while and then go up to show them the new version.” He added the sheep, custom levels drawn in any paint program, and, by his own account, the Concrete Donkey. The worms’ voices in the 1995 game were his, re-recorded by the musician Bjørn Lynne. The One described the game in March 1995 as “the brainchild and sole work of Andy Davidson”; Worms went on sale late that year.
After Worms
Davidson stayed at Team17 through Worms 2 (1997), which he told Edge was his attempt to use the ideas he had not had time for in the first game, and Worms: The Director’s Cut (1997), a last Amiga version in which, Marcus Dyson told Retro Gamer, he was given “a free reign to do whatever was in his slightly strange brain”. He left after Worms Armageddon (1999). He told Retro Gamer in 2005 that he had worked on ideas for a different game that was not given the go-ahead, that leaving “was one of the hardest decisions I’ve had to make”, and that he had always argued against putting Worms into 3D.
In 2012 he rejoined Team17 to work on Worms Revolution, saying he wanted to “scratch the creative itch that’s been bothering me for the last fourteen years”. In August 2026 he released a free expansion pack for Worms: The Director’s Cut on the Amiga, made with Ben Paddon, with new levels, teams and a level-making tool.
Sources
- Amiga Format issue 67, January 1995, pp. 35–37: Davidson at 21, working in a computer shop; the Blitz Basic competition and Acid Software; ECTS and Team17.
- The One issue 78, March 1995, pp. 25–27: “War of the Worms” by Andy Nuttall (his Spectrum, C64 and Amiga; Team17 and the Amiga; August 1993; Blitz and assembler; the competition; “sole work”).
- Amiga Format issue 77, November 1995: reader’s letter from Andrew Crane about Total Wormage in the Caltec shop, Wimborne.
- Amiga Computing issue 108, January 1997: feature on Davidson and Worms (the Amiga shop; “the 1994 Amiga Trade Show”, which Davidson himself called ECTS ’94 in PC Zone 73; “two skanky looking diskettes”).
- Edge issue 53, Christmas 1997: Davidson on Worms 2.
- PC Zone issue 73, February 1999: “Worms” case study (the A-levels; ECTS ’94; working from Bournemouth; Bjørn Lynne on the voices).
- Retro Gamer issue 21, 2005: Team17 profile, Marcus Dyson on The Director’s Cut.
- Retro Gamer issue 23, 2005, pp. 26–29: “The Making of Worms”, interview by Ashley Day (Artillery; Lemmings; ECTS; the Concrete Donkey; leaving Team17; 3D).
- Mike Rose, “Worms creator Andy Davidson returns to Team17”, Game Developer, 2 April 2012 (web, secondary).
- Daryl Baxter, “Andy Davidson on Worms: The Director’s Cut Expansion Pack”, 7 August 2026 (web, secondary). https://darylbaxter.com/posts/worms-directors-cut-andy-davidson-interview/