How to play Wormifi

The four-step first run

1. Steer: move the pointer on desktop, drag anywhere on touch, or choose a fixed left or right mobile helm before starting.
2. Grow: guide your head through coins, keys, maps, shells, carved jewels, and treasure chests. Collected value adds size and extends your crew.
3. Sprint: hold the sprint control for extra speed. Sprinting burns size, so release it before your advantage becomes a cost.
4. Survive collisions: your head is the vulnerable point. A rival head that strikes your crew is cut; your head striking a rival crew cuts you.

Reading the arena before you commit

Most runs are decided before the collision that ends them. The arena gives you three things to read, and the players who last longest are reading all three at once.

Length is a wall you are also carrying. Every length of crew you gain is another surface a rival can be cut against, and another surface you can accidentally steer your own head into. A long crew is a weapon pointed in every direction, including back at you. Early on you can turn inside your own body without consequence; past a certain size a tight turn is how a run ends.

Treasure density tells you where the fight is. A thick field of neutral doubloons usually means nobody has swept that water recently. A patch of marked rival-hoard treasure means the opposite — something was cut there moments ago, and whoever did the cutting is probably still nearby and now larger than they were. Free mass sitting in the open is rarely free.

Wake loot names its owner. Sprint loot carries the colour of the crew that paid for it. A fresh trail of someone else's colour is a live reading of where a rival went, how recently, and how much size they were willing to burn to get there. A rival burning mass in a straight line is either chasing something or running from something.

Sprinting is a trade, not a button

Sprint is the only control in Wormifi that spends a resource, and treating it as a panic button is the most common way a promising run ends small. Holding sprint converts size into speed and scatters that size behind you as wake loot in your own colour, which anyone can collect.

That makes sprint worth spending in three situations and expensive everywhere else. Spend it to close the last short gap on a rival head that has committed to a turn it cannot cancel. Spend it to break a converging pincer while you are still small enough that the size loss is cheap. Spend it to reach a treasure chest a moment before a rival who started closer. Everything else — crossing empty water, chasing loot with no contest, reacting to a threat that is not yet on top of you — is size handed over for nothing.

The tell of an experienced captain is a short sprint that ends the instant its purpose is served. The tell of a new one is a sprint held until the meter runs dry, arriving at the destination smaller than the rival waiting there.

Five mistakes that end most early runs

1. Turning tighter than your own crew. As you grow, the safe turning radius grows with you. The arena does not stop you steering your head into your own body.
2. Chasing a cut you have not set up. To cut a rival you need their head to cross your crew. Steering your head at their head is not an attack, it is a coin flip you usually lose.
3. Collecting a rival hoard without looking up. Fresh hoard treasure means a fight just happened. The winner is close, larger, and watching the same pile.
4. Sprinting away from danger in a straight line. You are now faster, smaller, and completely predictable, and you are laying a trail of your own mass for the pursuer.
5. Playing the edge of the map to feel safe. The boundary removes an escape direction. Rivals who understand this will pin you against it deliberately.

Choose your board, then your mode

Three boards sit right above PLAY LIVE: Open Seas (free roam with growth pads), Honeycomb Cove (the classic arena — just treasure and the crowd on a honeycomb sea floor), and Black Pearl Relay (two capstan objectives). A new room keeps the board its first captain chose. Watch for multiplier tokens while you play: each one adds time to its own ×2–×10 clock, they stack with no cap, and your running stack shows as gold chips at the top of the screen.

Choose a game mode

90-second solo rush

A short score chase with labeled AI rivals and an end-of-run result.

Endless solo

A local run focused on growing and surviving without the rush timer.

Practice

A guided local run with the built-in steering, treasure, sprint, and collision tutorial.

Live multiplayer preview

A server-authoritative shared room with humans when present and clearly labeled AI backfill. It is a limited preview, not a claim of large-scale production capacity.

Common questions

Is Wormifi free?

Yes — free in the browser, no account, no download, no purchase. Solo modes and the live preview are all open.

Do I need to install anything?

No. Any modern browser with Canvas support runs it on desktop or mobile. Installing to your home screen is optional and adds offline solo play.

What actually ends a run?

Your head striking a rival crew. Your head is the only vulnerable part of you. If a rival head strikes your crew, the rival is cut instead and its mass drops as collectable rival-hoard treasure.

Does sprinting cost anything?

Yes. It converts size into speed and leaves a visible wake of your own loot behind you, collectable by anyone — including whoever is chasing you.

Are the other captains real people?

Some are. The live room counts connected humans and labeled AI separately, so the population is never overstated. With nobody else online you are playing clearly marked AI.

Can I play on a phone?

Yes. Pick drag-anywhere steering or a fixed left or right helm before you start. The fixed helm keeps steering under one thumb and sprint under the other.