While QuakeCon draws the big anniversary headlines this weekend, there is a quieter but no less joyful celebration happening on a platform most people have not switched on in thirty years. Worms: The Director’s Cut — the 1997 Amiga-exclusive follow-up to the original Worms — has received a free expansion pack marking the series’ 30th anniversary, and it has been made by the person who created the franchise in the first place.
Andy Davidson, the original Worms creator, has released the expansion through worm.net with Team 17’s blessing. It is free, it is out now, and for a piece of gaming history that sold roughly 5,000 copies on the Amiga back in 1997 and was then largely shelved by time, it is substantially more content than anyone had reason to expect.
The release arrives during a week when gaming anniversaries are stacking up. Quake is also celebrating 30 years. But while that occasion is being marked at a major convention in Texas, Davidson’s anniversary lands differently: a single developer, a fan community, and a game that almost nobody played the first time around.
What the Expansion Adds
The pack — titled Worms: The Director’s Cut 1.5 — is substantial for a passion project built around a 29-year-old Amiga game. It includes over 40 custom levels, 10 DIY terrain sets, and more than 50 new sample packs converting voice lines from Worms 2, Armageddon, and World Party into the Director’s Cut format. New teams and terrain types round out the core content.
“The Expansion Pack is a chance for people to enjoy the full package of DC, with all it could do.” — Andy Davidson
There is also a full remix album: nine new tracks created by artists in the Worms community, all inspired by Bjørn Lynne’s original Worms soundtrack. The expansion page on worm.net hosts everything in one download — ZIP or LhA archive, unpack into your WORMSDC drawer — alongside a new online tool called WormPrefs 2.0, which lets you create custom dual-layer maps, mountain sets, DIY terrains, and teams directly from a web browser.
One of the levels in the expansion was created in collaboration with Jeff Minter, the legendary British indie developer behind Llamasoft, and features a Llamasoft-themed environment as a tribute. It is not a detail that will mean much to anyone born after 2000, but for a certain generation of home computer players, it is exactly the kind of nod that makes an anniversary feel genuine rather than performative.
The Quiet History of Worms: The Director’s Cut
Director’s Cut is an unusual entry in gaming history. It arrived in 1997 as an Amiga-exclusive sequel — at a point when the Amiga was already in steep decline — and reached a very limited audience. It introduced weapons that would become series staples: the Holy Hand Grenade and Super Sheep appeared here first, alongside a level editor and a backflip ability that would not appear in other Worms releases for years. Then it was largely forgotten.
The game was never ported to modern platforms, and Davidson has noted that it works fine with Amiga emulators if original hardware is out of reach. The worm.net site is also intended to become a long-term creative hub where players can submit their own custom levels, DIY landscapes, and sample sets — turning a 30th anniversary celebration into something closer to an ongoing platform.
How to Get It
The full expansion is available at worm.net as a free download. The Director’s Cut itself requires original Amiga hardware or an emulator — it was never released on PC, console, or any modern storefront. Davidson has confirmed that the expansion is fully compatible with emulation setups.
The Worms series continued well past Director’s Cut: sequels and spin-offs have run through Worms Armageddon, Worms 4: Mayhem, and as recently as 2025’s Worms Across Worlds on Apple Arcade. But Director’s Cut has a specific place in the franchise’s DNA — the version where many of the series’ most enduring ideas first took shape. Thirty years later, it has an expansion pack. Not every game gets that.
