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REVIEW
Worms 3 is a 2013 game on a 2026 phone, and it still works.
Team17's mobile-only artillery game is twelve years old and Android still rates it 4-plus. The card mechanic and four worm classes were the right additions to a series that didn't need them.
BY THE APP COMRADE DESK · MAY 8, 2026 · 3 MIN READ
Worms 3
TEAM17 DIGITAL LIMITED
OUR SCORE
7.4
GOOGLE PLAY
★ 3.2
PRICE
$5.49
In-app purchases
Worms is a series that won by refusing to change. Every entry since Worms 2 in 1997 has been a recognisable variation on the same artillery loop — pick a worm, pick a weapon, miss, watch them retaliate, miss again. The mobile entry from 2013 is more of the same, plus a couple of new mechanics, plus a UI that hasn’t been touched since iOS 7 was new. In 2026, the curious thing is how much that doesn’t matter.
The franchise’s longevity comes from the core gesture: the slow arc of a banana bomb you’ve over-aimed by 5 degrees, the twenty seconds between firing and impact in which you see the loss coming. Worms 3 preserves that exactly. The card system added on top — 41 modifiers that the player can deploy strategically — is the closest Team17 has come to genuinely changing the formula since the early 2000s, and it works.
The mobile-only design choice has aged well. Worms 3 was built to be played in two-minute chunks while waiting for the kettle. The asynchronous multiplayer, the four-pixel UI, the £4.99 pricing — it’s all calibrated for a use case the series understood twelve years ago that most premium mobile games are still re-discovering.
Worms is a series that won by refusing to change too much. Worms 3 is the mobile version that refused to change at all.
FEATURES
Worms 3 is the mobile-only entry in Team17's long-running artillery turn-based series, originally released for iOS in 2013 and ported to Android in 2014. Two-to-four teams of four worms take turns selecting a worm, picking a weapon (bazooka, banana bomb, holy hand grenade, sheep, dragon ball, prod, ninja rope, jetpack — the full series taxonomy), aiming, and firing. Last team with worms alive wins.
The card mode added in this entry — 41 cards that modify the start or end of a turn — is the only mechanical addition since Worms Revolution. There are four worm classes (Soldier, Scout, Heavy, Scientist) with class-specific weapons. Story mode runs 27 single-player missions across four themes (Beach, Spooky, Farmyard, Sewer), and asynchronous multiplayer lets you have several games on the go without committing to one in real time.
Pricing is a one-time premium purchase ($4.99 on Android currently, occasional sales). No in-app purchases. No subscription. Team17 also ships the more recent Worms W.M.D Mobilize as a separate paid app on both stores.
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED
Worms 3 nails the thing the series has always nailed: the eight-second between-turns experience where you watch the projectile arc, hold breath, and either land it or miss spectacularly into your own teammate. The card mechanic is the most interesting addition the series has had in a decade — drawing a "Strong Wind" card before opponents fire is genuinely enjoyable.
The asynchronous multiplayer was ahead of its time in 2013 and remains a differentiator: turn-based games on phones live or die on whether you can put the phone down for a day and come back. Worms 3 does this cleanly. The premium pricing model — pay once, no ads, no IAP — has aged exceptionally well in a 2026 market where every Android port comes with three different gem currencies.
ROOM TO IMPROVE
The UI is twelve years old and it shows. The text rendering is pre-Retina-era; menus stack awkwardly on tall modern phones; the resume button is hidden behind a sub-menu that exists for no reason. Team17 has shipped occasional bug fixes but no UI overhaul, and the launch screen still references "Game Center friends" in a way that hasn't been functional since 2018.
The 27-mission story mode runs out fast for any veteran of the series, and the AI difficulty doesn't scale. Once you've broken through Mission 8 or so, the rest is mostly muscle memory. New players coming to Worms for the first time have a better experience; returning fans will hit the wall faster.
CONCLUSION
If you played Worms in the 1990s and want twenty minutes of nostalgia on a phone, this is the cheapest way to get it. If you want a current Worms experience, Team17's Worms W.M.D Mobilize is the better purchase — newer engine, more ambitious. Worms 3 is the safe entry point: a five-dollar premium game with no nagware, no microtransactions, and the same artillery loop that still works after thirty years.